Wedding Photography as Art

©Ian Weldon

By Emma Coyle

“I’ve never thought of myself as a wedding photographer, just a photographer that
photographs weddings.” –Ian Weldon

Weddings are on the mind this week as the world looks at the wealth of images coming
from the most recent royal wedding. The photographs are glamorous, styled, editorial.
The way that we remember weddings is often based off those images, not the moments
in between which are truly the substance of what are arguable one of the most
important days of many people’s lives.
Ian Weldon is a photographer known for capturing the in-betweens with his
documentary style photography of weddings. He came to wedding photography nearly
seven years ago while he pursued other projects and discovered along the way that
“weddings became [that] project”.

©Ian Weldon

It is an interest in people that drives him, not the weddings in and of themselves. His
photography isn’t the traditional take on weddings, he doesn’t take posed pictures and
he considers those shots a disservice to the couples he has worked with and his
personal body of work. It is the little moments he is known for capturing, faces between
smiles and frowns, laughter midway of of a mouth, children making faces.
His work doesn’t fit in either the world of wedding or of documentary photography “who
cant see past the wedding photography aspect”. But Weldon has more recently started
to be recognized by the international community and is talking with a gallery in the UK
regarding an exhibition.
It is impossible to not to smile at each picture and realize that this is the way that
families remember each other. Grandparents teasing grandchildren about the way they
danced at the wedding years later. Weldon says that “that’s where the good stuff is” and
looking at his work, it is impossible not to agree with him.

©Ian Weldon
www.ianweldon.com