Toast! Interview with Alexander Soloviev, Wedding Photographer

A problem I so often see brides and grooms struggling with is how to ensure they are choosing the very best photographer. After having put so much in to their big day, ensuring every special moment is captured perfectly, and having incredible photographs to look back on is a must!

So I decided to interview Alexander Soloviev (a photographer we often work with) about the questions that I most often hear from brides and grooms trying to find their perfect photographer.

Alexander is a truly talented photographer and an absolute professional, so to all the brides and grooms currently trying to pick that perfect photographer for their special day, we hope the below interview helps ease the process for you.

On a final note I would like to thank Alexander for his generous donation of time, the team at Toast! and all of the brides and grooms currently looking for photographers are sincerely grateful.

THE INTERVIEW

1. What truly makes a good wedding photographer?
I would name three main factors: planning, commitment & of course talent. And I believe it is important to understand that all of them are equally crucial, only combined they create a valuable professional.
Planning can prove to be a difficult challenge in wedding photography. To start with, weddings are often planned a year or more in advance, so you have to plan your actions as far as a year ahead, and no matter what distractions or events occur in your own life, you absolutely have to make sure that you will not let the bride and groom down. So everything in your life has to be planned around these wedding photography commitments and you always have to be prepared with several organised agreements and backups to cope with major events or unexpected occurrences in your life. For instance, child birth. When my wife was pregnant last year, I realised that I actually couldn’t take orders for 2 weeks around her delivery date. And still, I had to resort to my contingency plan because, as we all know, life tends not to work out according to the plans we make for it.
Many customers believe that photographers live an easy life, as they charge “thousands a day”. In fact, photographers spend weeks on editing and post-production that is not visible to customers and that alone requires a huge commitment. I understand that it becomes very tempting to compromise on quality as, realistically, relatively few customers will actually note and appreciate all of the many fine details of photographs that are edited to a true professional quality. So, for example, many commercial wedding photographers have chosen to apply a Photoshop Macro or a Lightroom setting to a complete set of pictures in one go, therefore effectively automating postproduction. Every professional can tell straightaway where this method has been applied, as one “setting” will never work equally well on all pictures. However, the photographer using this method can point to the “consistent” style and make it seem something intentional and commendable, taking advantage of most customers’ understandable lack of knowledge. A truly professional photographer and artist is willing to spend that hefty commitment of days and nights manually adjusting hundreds of photographs to a fine art quality, and this is where the customer’s money is being spent – on the photographer’s dedication to producing the best pictures possible, not just on the day of the shoot, but in the days and weeks to come.
And finally, talent. It is not something we can define or obtain. It is so subjective and subtle, that it can seem impossible to grasp or describe in a meaningful way. What I believe is worth mentioning instead is that, as well as artistic talent, a good photographer should also be talented in dealing with people. He should be able to coordinate a wedding crowd effectively, getting guests to pose in an organised manner, while at the same time allowing them to feel relaxed, comfortable and joyful, so that the merry atmosphere of the day is not destroyed by too many instructions. That requires lots of personal charm and is its own special talent.

2. When choosing a wedding photographer are there any professional bodies or memberships that a photographer would usually be part of?
Yes, the main recognised body is the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWWP: http://www.swpp.co.uk ) It was established in 1988 to service the needs of professional wedding and portrait photographers and it is truly dedicated to providing quality training and mentoring to all who want to progress in Professional Photography without prejudice or discrimination. It is a well known and well respected for its continuous development and fair judgement.
It also has a “Mentor Me” programme developed for newcomers to the industry. As I consider myself a relative “newcomer”, after having changed my career from science to photography two years ago, I find this programme a very beneficial tool for me. There is a team of professionals, from which members can receive an invaluable one-to-one appraisal of their work and advice for progression. Their reports include recommendations for participation in training programmes that are the best fit for individual professional development.
From the point of view of choosing a photographer, they a have Qualifications Structure to differentiate between different levels of professional recognition and a database of registered photographers that you can use to find a photographer for you.

3. When our clients are interviewing photographers, what top tips have you got for ensuring they choose the very best of the industry?
Actually, my first advice would be not to find the most recognised professional, but to find a photographer YOU personally like the most. All photographers have different styles and preferences, that it becomes extremely subjective to say what is truly “the best” and what is not. And, at the end of the day, the only important thing is that you and your partner like your wedding album. I believe choosing a photographer is more of a question of personal match of tastes and characters, rather than a race for the most recognised top guy.
However, it is still indeed worth ensuring SWWP membership, number of weddings done, recommendations in social networks and position in Google search, the presence of Terms and Conditions and that printed samples of the work are available.

4. And how can clients ensure that they see the true skills and techniques of those photographers?
In order to answer this, I will elaborate a bit more on the printing subject that I just mentioned.
It is not always obvious for customers who are not familiar with the industry and possibly this could make a good test for a photographer’s professionalism. It is fairly easy these days to achieve a good-looking picture on the web, even just i-phone and Instagram can sometimes do an impressive job for an amateur. However, it does still require much training to produce something that looks just as impressive once it has been printed to the size of a professional photo-book or wall portrait. So my advice is to make sure you have seen a good set of printed samples, before you proceed with the order.
Also, I would recommend asking your photographer to show you some samples of a wedding he has done in full. Sometimes what you see on the photographer’s website is his portfolio, where he has collected the very best of his work collected during the years – the very cream of his ability. So the fact the he can show some 20-30 good-looking pictures, does not yet prove his ability to perform consistently through every wedding. Ask to view a complete set of several weddings and make sure you like all the photographs in all sets, not only those on the cover!

5. What other questions should our brides and grooms be asking potential wedding photographers?
I would also try to share your ideas with the photographer and see how flexible he is to accommodate them. Tell him about your style preferences, ideas for the shoot and special requests, then see if the photographer shares your enthusiasm and supports a conversation in a promising manner. Name the people that are special to you and ask if he could make sure he does particular portraits of them.
If your venue is big enough to accommodate for a photo-walk and posing, ask your photographer if he is going to visit the venue in advance. Good professionals normally do, as it helps them to work out in advance the best places to arrange people to pose, get some ideas of interesting shots for the Bride and Groom, have a better idea of lighting conditions and overall come well prepared.
It is also worth asking about publishing rights. The Copyright and Design Act 1988 assigns the copyright of the images to the photographers. It is contrary to the Act to copy these images, by any means unless a royalty-free license has been granted. It means for you that you can’t just print out a photograph from a CD that you have received from your photographer, unless he granted you the license to do so. Some photographers use this law and charge their clients separately for every print out of a photograph.

6. What truly makes great wedding photos?
I believe that the most important thing on a photograph is a genuine emotion being captured. I would say that the main goal of the photographer is to capture and reflect the atmosphere of the day. It takes, of course, special talent and training to click the button just at the right moment and at the right place. Just when the guests share a joke, just when the Groom is giving his future wife a tender support hug, just when her designer shoe is shown visible from that long dress…
Details and a good eye for details are very important as well, as these details are something that make every wedding unique and the pictures interesting to look at, while details are also so easy to forget later and so pleasing to reminisce about. Actually, our clients put a lot of effort to ensure every detail is perfect on their wedding day, so naturally they are pleased to have them captured.
Then all this should be refined with the technical skill of working with light, making pleasing compositions, choosing the correct lenses …and so on, so forth….

7. What do we need to bear in mind about the impact of lighting on our wedding photos?
Lighting of course is one of the key factors for a photographer to bear in mind. But I would say that the Bride and Groom should not worry too much about it, as it is for photographer to deal with. Yes, some conditions are more favourable than others. However, thinking practically, there is very little the clients or the Wedding Planner can do about. A marquee, for example, is a fairly difficult place to shoot from a photographic lighting point of view. However, we all understand that when choosing a venue our clients have so many other practical and personal considerations, that you certainly can’t just say “oh, don’t use a marquee, as I find it difficult to shoot there”. So a professional photographer will just deal with any light to create the best photos possible.
The only thing that I always ask my customers to bear in mind is that when lighting is very poor, for instance typically during the first dance, I might make pictures Black and White. Sometimes Black and White is just the only technically feasible option for quality output in very poor lighting. But normally it is not a problem at all, as Black and White pictures actually look stylish and appealing.

8. What do you suggest to brides and grooms whose venue doesn’t have any obvious area to take staged photos?
Well, firstly, three metres of space are actually enough to produce standard staged pictures and three metres are available in an absolute majority of venues, even in cases of the lowest possible budget. Sometimes, it would also help for the photographer to bring the elements of a moving studio, like white backdrops and lights to compensate for the possible distracting background of a location.
However, as I mentioned before, I do believe that the main purpose is not actually to reflect on the venue, but to capture the emotions: the happiness, the romance and the joy of the day. Those come absolutely irrespectively to the size of the venue. What we do is not simply a venue event, it’s a family celebration and so it should be reflected accordingly and treasured for a lifetime as a family memory.

9. What has been your favourite ever wedding photography session and why?
My favourite one so far, just happened to be a low budget wedding of a very young couple in their early 20s from Latvia. Being so young and so much in love was the first thing that touched me. I was just standing there thinking how many years ahead together they have and how much to go through. Then, yes, the bride was so young, so fresh and beautiful in her stunning red dress and the groom so obviously in love.
But what made this wedding a very special one is a group of their friends who arrived from Latvia. I have never seen such a well prepared entertainment programme than the one they delivered. I’m not sure how many hours went into the preparations, but it contained a complete performance with songs and dances, games, theatre, display of funny childhood photographs, video hello from a school teacher and many other surprises. All made with taste and a sense of humour. There also was a song that the Groom performed for the Bride and a very well-rehearsed first Waltz danced to a violin tune played by the granddad.
So overall, it turned out to be the most entertaining and romantic day I’ve seen, mostly due to that energy and enthusiasm that possibly only young people in love could possess.