The original title was ‘Epic wedding photographs’ but I don’t really want to do clickbait, so I did the research and it turned out what Google thinks people consider ‘epic’ in wedding photography is when the bride and groom stand in a sublime and / or unlikely landscape. So I thought, maybe I should say these photos are funny, because they are, a little bit. Turns out, that’s what people on the internet call ‘Hilarious wedding photographs’, those generally involve copious amounts of booze and / or photoshopping. So ok. Hence the title. I don’t know.
The lampshade
Even in my time as a pro wedding shooter (more than 10 years ago now) I never witnessed the actual wearing of a lampshade. However, at this beachwedding of two beautiful women which I attended as a guest, this woman (left) just found her slippers to return to the hotel, while another woman (right) quickly reached for an adjacent lampshade. Hilarity ensued obviously. I snapped the shot, happy to be there.
The Matrix
At the end of my wedding photography days I agreed to shoot one last wedding. It was my sisters. We did a couple of ‘epic’ landscape shots where I photoshopped the bride and groom into the scene later, for the book. We also had these old theater seats in the studio and, the groom being a film buff, decided to do some shots about movies. Obviously, the red pill – blue pill dilemma came to mind…
Remote controlled groom
Some wedding couples are very serious, others are more whimsical. In most wedding shoots I tried to squeeze in some funny shots, which also works well to relax the bride and groom. I always brought props in my car that I thought would fit the particular wedding. For this nice couple I brought among other things a remote control, so the bride could direct her husband without much effort. It works better on video in hindsight and I don’t think this made it to the album, but we had a hilarious time shooting it.
Wedding dress mishaps
The dressing of the bride and later the meeting of bride and groom are important events that most couples want documented professionally. So naturally I shot my share of brides getting into their gown, and let me tell you, most of the time that is no easy feat. Very often children are running around as well that find this enormous piece of clothing very interesting. Inspecting all the ways it can be turned into a tent etc. This results in all sorts of hilarious mishaps which I will not put on this blog because of privacy. But while looking through my archive I found this moment where some wedding guest or maybe one of the bridesmaids (I don’t remember) suddenly proved very interested in what the bride was hiding under that gown…
Showing the ring
The ringshot is an important shot in any wedding, be it epic or not. Now famous wedding photographer Ryan Brenizer introduced me to the ‘giving the finger’ ringshot, where the bride and groom lift their ring finger to the photographer, confusing any viewer into thinking they’re flipped off at first. The weddings I shot were not nearly as epic as Ryan’s of course, but the photographer at my own wedding caught me flipping her off with my ring finger. Still a proud wearer of that ring by the way.
Trash the dress
After the wedding, a well known amusement is a so called ‘trash the dress’ shoot. Because you don’t need to keep the wedding gown clean (or even whole…) during the shoot, these photographs have a lot more potential of becoming epic and / or hilarious. My friend and fellow fine art photographer Marieta Landkroon (together with professional makeup artist Sophie van Bijleveld and photographer Sjoukje van Gool) organizes epic underwater shoots for brides, check out their joint project Chapel of Art.
For a contest (I won third place, thank you) I needed a wedding couple, the dress would not be damaged though. This is not the winning image, but an outtake I wanted to do for a long time, very small, very understated, like most of my photography.
Love conquers all
Weddings are wonderful occasions. I wish there were more of them. I know there is still a lot of love in this world, but I wish it were more visible, for instance at lavish parties… Hopefully when Covid-19 has subsided a bit we will once again be able tot enjoy some epic and hilarious weddings. Until then, keep loving eachother.
Some great shots Joeri. I knew about the ‘shotgun wedding’ but ‘remote control’ and ‘the blue or red pill’ were new to me. Awesome shots!