What Does "Unconventional Wedding Photography" Actually Mean?
I use this word a lot. It's on my homepage, in my Instagram bio, probably in half the emails I send. Unconventional.
But I think it's worth actually explaining what I mean by it — because it's not about breaking rules for the sake of it. It's not about weird poses or trend-chasing. It's about something much simpler.
It's Not About the Style. It's About What Comes First.
Traditional wedding photography, at its core, is built around one goal: making sure every important moment is documented, in flattering light, from a good angle. The ceremony. The rings. The first dance. The cake. Check, check, check. There's nothing wrong with that approach. For a lot of couples, it's exactly what they want. But unconventional wedding photography flips the priority. Instead of asking "did we get the shot?", I'm asking "did we get the feeling?"
Sometimes that means the "shot" is a little imperfect — hair blowing across a face, someone mid-laugh with their eyes half closed, a candid moment that happened three feet outside of where I planned to stand. I'd take that a hundred times over a technically perfect photo that feels like nothing.
What It Looks Like in Practice
Candid over posed. I'm not going to interrupt you mid-conversation to fix your hand placement. If I see something real happening, I want to capture that — not stage a replica of it five minutes later.
Emotion over symmetry. A photo doesn't need to be perfectly composed to be the one you cry looking at ten years from now.
Movement over stillness. Some of my favorite images are a little blurred, a little chaotic — because that's what dancing, running, laughing actually look like.
Film, alongside digital. I shoot analog because it forces a kind of presence and imperfection that digital can smooth away too easily. Grain, light leaks, the unpredictability of film — it all adds a texture that feels more honest to me than a perfectly retouched frame.
Super 8 film, not just photos. Motion and sound and the in-between moments that a still photo simply can't hold — the way someone's voice cracked during their vows, the way the room actually sounded when everyone laughed at once.
Cinematic, not staged. A lot of what I do is influenced by film — not in the Super 8 sense, but in how I see a scene. I'm thinking about light the way a cinematographer would: where it's falling, how it wraps around you, what it does to the mood of a frame. I want a photo to feel like a still from a movie you'd actually want to watch — not a movie where everyone's frozen and smiling at the lens, but one where something real is happening and the camera just happened to be there.
A loose editorial touch. Every so often, I'll bring in something closer to editorial photography — a stronger pose, a more deliberate composition, a moment that's a little more directed. But I keep it loose. I might suggest where you stand or which way to walk, and then I step back and let whatever happens next just happen. It's editorial in structure, but never editorial in feeling — nothing stiff, nothing overly art-directed. Think less "fashion campaign" and more "a beautiful moment I nudged into place, then let breathe."
The mix of the two — cinematic instinct plus a light editorial hand — is really what "unconventional" looks like in my work. It's not one fixed style. It's paying attention to what a moment needs, and reaching for whichever approach lets that moment feel most like itself.
Who This Is For
Unconventional wedding photography isn't "better" than traditional photography — it's a different answer to a different question. It's for couples who care more about how their wedding day felt than how it looked lined up in a photo album. Couples who'd rather have one raw, real image of them crying together than twenty perfectly symmetrical ones of them smiling at the camera.
If you've looked at traditional wedding portfolios and felt like something was missing — even if you couldn't quite name what — there's a good chance this is it. The moments in between. The ones nobody staged.
The Honest Answer
At the end of the day, "unconventional" just means this: I'm not photographing your wedding the way it's supposed to look. I'm photographing it the way it actually felt — for you, in that moment, on that day. That's it. That's the whole philosophy.
I'm Jo, and I photograph weddings, elopements, and micro weddings across Europe — on film, digital, and Super 8 — for couples who want their day remembered honestly, not performed perfectly. If this is the kind of story you want told, let's talk.
