A pair of LA photographers went viral for all the wrong reasons with a post telling couples their wedding photographer is too old for them, and explaining why Gen Z couples need Gen Z photographers and videographers. It got deleted, it got apologised for, and it got us talking. Is there anything in it, or is it just generational nonsense dressed up as marketing? We are, as usual, about the last people in the industry to get round to discussing it.
We look into the claim that younger suppliers speak the same visual language as their couples, with the massive contradiction buried inside - the current wedding aesthetic is nostalgia for a time Gen Z never lived. We suspect they've mixed up age with cultural fluency. You can absolutely be twenty-five or fifty-five and be making exactly the same work.
Has age ever changed how we shoot or how we connect with a couple? Since starting at age 21, we've always just ended up bonding with the parents first. Maybe we're just old souls. There's also now this really annoying problem; we're proud of having shot weddings for over 20 years, but that also makes us sound sixty on our websites.
Before that we catch up after an accidental two month disappearance, compare backlogs (48 items on one to-do list, ten weddings deep), and run through a summer of travel including a wedding near Paris with a two hour ceremony, eight plus speeches, surprise fireworks and a boat trip that meant abandoning a full camera setup mid day. Laura shoots her first roll of Super 8 with a broken light meter and guesses the exposure all day long, we weigh up whether film only bookings are worth the risk, and we get into the TikTok row about couples writing wedding speeches with AI.
Plus tennis elbow, a dead boiler, no sleep, and Bee's spiky cucumbers.
Timestamps:
00:00 Welcome back after an accidental two month break
02:53 The run up to Christmas is the worst part of the year
03:23 48 items on the to-do list and ten weddings still to edit
06:01 Where everyone has been shooting this summer
07:12 The Paris wedding: two hour ceremony, a boat and surprise fireworks
11:03 Laura's first roll of Super 8 and a broken light meter
14:50 Are couples writing wedding speeches with AI?
16:24 Topic of the week: the \"your photographer is too old for you\" post
19:03 The nostalgia contradiction
22:00 Does saying you've shot weddings for 20 years make you sound old?
23:55 What experience actually gives you when things go wrong
27:00 Why generations are a lazy generalisation
28:58 Enquiries, bookings and how the diary is looking
31:47 Highs and lows
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The British Wedding Film Festival
https://www.britishweddingfilmfestival.com/
Lawson Film School: https://www.lawsonfilms.co.uk/lawson-film-school
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