LYNDSEY GODDARD

Photographing a wedding is not for the faint-hearted, but Lyndsey Goddard has found a lucrative niche with her documentary style, willingness to travel and love of her 24-70mm f/2.8 and natural light, as Keith Wilson discovers…

WEDDING photography isn’t what it used to be. Not so long ago, couples would book a professional photographer who would spend the day taking a list of formal poses of the bride and groom and their families, as well as the kisses and confetti. There was even a ‘wedding season’, with spring and summer being the peak time for couples tying the knot, while the photographer was usually locally-based with a studio in the High Street. As for receiving bookings for overseas weddings, they were virtually unheard of. But the dawn of the Internet and digital age has seen this most traditional genre of photography undergo a major makeover as wedding photographers no longer occupy a broad church of conventional style and services. Today, the new niches of ‘destination’, ‘reportage’ and ‘documentary’ wedding photography are proving increasing popular and photographers are travelling further afield for their shoots. For Lyndsey Goddard, her clients are now global and the season never ends…

When did you see the emergence of the documentary wedding photographer as a popular choice?

When I started I knew the style of wedding photography that I wanted to do, which was documentary, although there wasn’t a word for it back then. There were people doing it at that time, like Jeff Ascough for example, but more and more it’s becoming the style of choice. To a certain extent everybody is documentary because you can’t orchestrate the entire day, but there will be elements of the day that people expect to be orchestrated. So when you’re documentary it means you’re hands-off everything.

You’re being more reactive to what you see in front of you?

Yeah, absolutely.

But there are still parts of the wedding that you have to get, those sacred moments…