Choosing a wedding photographer can be difficult, and it usually involves searching through loads of portfolios. Yet to make your search more specific to begin with, decide on whether you want a wedding photographer, or a wedding photojournalist or documentary photographer.

What’s the difference? Well a wedding photojournalist or documentary wedding photographer is a lot more passive. By this I mean they don’t set up photographs (all the time) and heavily manipulate a photo. Instead, they aim to record the day’s events ‘truthfully’ and create a natural set of portfolio images.

Not to say that typical wedding photographer’s photos aren’t natural, some may be, but usually if they haven’t described themselves as a wedding photojournalist or documentary photographer, they may take the traditional approach, which usually involves staged images.

If you are someone that likes to be photographed throughout the day, rather than asked to pose in a certain way to get the final result, then wedding photojournalism could be the type you’re looking for. Remember, however, it’s still important to look through portfolio; some may only shoot in colour when you may fancy black and white. It’s also good to check out their images for editing, heavily digitally edited images may not provide a true reflection of the day, but the general rule-of-thumb for a photojournalist or documentary photograph is to not heavily manipulate.