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Here are three photos that won’t mean much to you but mean everything to me. They explain why I love wedding albums.
The first is from my parents’ wedding in 1945, a beautiful sepia print in a classic folder. Young as he looks, Dad had just returned from five years at war. The girl on the left is his younger sister. Seven years later she married the young man on the right. Like my parents they were together for 55 years. The other woman is my mother’s best friend. I remember her, but she died quite young. The other uniformed man is my father’s best friend.
I’m writing a family history so these vibrant people — all dear to me — aren’t reduced to stiff, old-fashioned faces, names and dates in a family tree.
My second photo is older still — my mother’s parents’ wedding in 1911. I look at that photo in vain, trying to recognise my grandparents, the pioneer farmers.
The third photo is of Heather and me, photographed by a professional in 1968 — one of only two in our possession! I don’t know where the others went. Just lost, I suppose, or given away over the years.
In a way our photo is a step forward, in that it’s less formal and there’s a hint of personality. But how ironic that two people who built a business around wedding albums don’t have one of their own.
Our good friend Rod Ellmore was starting out as a professional when we got married. If he’d shot our wedding he’d have brought his twin lens reflex camera with a few rolls of black and white film, and delivered us an album. But film and processing were expensive, so the number of photos would have been a tiny fraction of what you’d expect today.
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Which brings me to why I love albums! Twenty or so years ago I designed some sample albums to show photographers as I drove around New Zealand. I used images sent me by our clients. Photos of people I never knew. People I’d never met.
I knew I’d struck gold when I could use those images to tell a story that moved me personally. The story of the day of course, and the “formals” — but much more than that. Little touches like flowers or hymnals or table settings to colour the story. Smiles. Intimacies. Old mates laughing. Kids. Dancing.
Some images have stayed with me ever since — like one I remember of people milling round after the church service. The groom is looking out of shot to his left. To his right is his new mother-in-law, hat on her head, glad it’s over, smiling at him, her love and pride obvious. In the next shot they embrace. Never going to win an award, but powerful enough to move me, who knew nothing about them.
When we got married wedding photos like that would have been impossibly expensive, and before that literally impossible. Our albums would have been impossible too. Digital photography, digital workflow, digital printing, digital processes in the bindery. I think they’ve created a golden age for wedding photography.
I started out saying how I don’t like to see people who mean a lot to me reduced to their names and faces in a family tree. A good wedding album resists that. It’s not just the faces but the relationships too. Everyone looks their best. Some will have travelled a long way. Some may rarely see each other. One or two you may never see again — one or two you may be glad to see the back of! It’s much more than a party.
When you, the photographer, deliver an album, understand that you’ve given your clients something that will outlive them. Help them remember forever.
When you receive that album, understand that it will grow in value even more over the years.
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By the way, here are my grandparents as I remember them, 46 years later. Shot by another professional, and still dressed to the nines. But unlike their wedding photo, everybody who knew them would have said, “Yes, that’s Hugh and Vi alright!” It reminds me of why I love them. Grandpa kept that moustache all his life. And that’s my mother’s writing. The power of print.
First published on Queensberry’s blog.