Wedding Photography Inside

Marcus Bell is an accomplished wedding photographer and his book does an excellent job of conveying his approach to the business. The coverage is less comprehensive than many other books but that is to his credit as he covers what should be covered in an introductory book on the wedding photography business. It is a great first book that should be followed by books on posing, lighting, Photoshop, album design, and sales and marketing and promotion.

Bell discusses how he uses his Canon gear but his suggestions are generic enough that people reading his book will not take them as recipes for taking pictures at a wedding but only use them for guidance. Digital camera equipment improves and changes with each new generation of camera and flash and what was a good practice for older cameras can be completely wrong with the latest models. What applies to Canon often does not apply to Nikon and even one Nikon may require quite different settings than another of a earlier or later generation.

It is difficult to know which books are really any good as it is a bit of the man with one eye being king in the valley of the blind. People just starting out with wedding photography, and often new to digital photography, posing, lighting, and Photoshop, are really jumping in at the deep end and seldom realizing this to be the case. Lots of books that are severely dated or show really cheesy images that were the staple of many medium format film photographers for a whole generation (see figure 2-13 in Glen Johnson’s book for classic cheesiness). Most brides today are influenced by fashion magazines and the images they see in the ads – in particular the high degree of colorization in post processing. They expect this in the pictures they get and it is only good business to provide it to some degree (something Bambi Cantrell and Yervant and others demonstrate very well in their pictures).

The Australians have done the most to revolutionize the approach to modern wedding photography over the past decade and are still leading the way in most respects. Any exposure to their approach is going to be beneficial whether it is from books, DVD’s, or workshops. The Australians may not produce anywhere near the volume of books that US photographers generate but the quality of what they do manage to get into print is often head and shoulder above that of American photographers and likely to much more relevant to today’s bride.
Rating: 4 / 5

Marcus Bell’s MASTER’S GUIDE TO WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY: CAPTURING UNFORGETTABLE MOMENTS AND LASTING IMPRESSIONS is a winning survey of what makes for a unique wedding image. From building relationships with each couple to hone in on subjects, themes and approaches which will elicit the best result to using photojournalism to capture spontaneous emotions and developing a shooting strategy, this moves a step beyond most photography guides on wedding pictures and offers collections a rich alternative packed with insider tips.

Rating: 5 / 5

Marcus Bell gives us his perspective on this multi-faceted career. Don’t expect to master the spectrum of wedding photography from any book. This author provides guidelines, along with his personal philosophy. This is a magazine-style book of 124 pages. A lot of space is taken up by images. What you come home with is some food for thought.
Rating: 3 / 5