Kansas City Documentary Wedding Photographer
Have you ever been to a wedding and the speech all starts with: “For those who don’t know me” well, “For those who don’t know me I am Etienne, pronounced ATN, and I am a documentary wedding photographer based in Lee’s Summit near Kansas City Missouri.”
I specialize in taking photos of weddings in a documentary style because that is what gives me joy. The art of catching a unique moment, a funny situation, an emotion with no redo and no safety net. That is how I get photographs that actually touch the people who see them, including myself.
My Approach to Documentary Wedding Photography?
I am interested in telling the story of your big day. How I decide to tell that story is what makes the difference. It is called documentary wedding photography because I document the day as it actually happened. I don’t direct or stage scenes and I never interrupt the moment to recreate it. Like a journalist if you prefer, I take photos of candid moments that have a high impact to illustrate what happened.
"As someone who usually hates posing for photos, his documentary style approach was exactly what we were hoping for." Hannah, wedding at Union downtown Kansas City.
The story is you and your people celebrating your love. To tell that story, I am not very interested in delivering mostly photos of the venue, the flowers or the table settings. I am not a product photographer for a wedding catalogue. Your flowers and details tell part of the story too and set the scene but it is not the main subject of the day. I much rather take photos of the details and decorations with somebody experiencing them.
I move through your wedding like a guest who happens to have a camera, reading the room, anticipating what is about to happen, putting myself in the right position before it does. No direction. No interruption. No killing the vibe. Claire had her wedding at Elysian Fields in Bates City and she describes "Throughout the entire day we genuinely barely noticed he was there, but somehow he still captured all of the important moments perfectly."
The opposite approach is what you see in wedding magazines. Beautiful, perfectly lit, meticulously arranged. Those images are impressive. They are also not your wedding. They are a version of your wedding that required stopping your wedding to create.
A photographer working through a checklist is focused on his list, not on the joy happening around him. He is setting up the next shot while your grandmother is doing something on the dance floor that will never happen again. He misses it completely. Sarah, who had her wedding at Topgolf in Overland Park, noticed that when discovering her photos : "Moments where I felt like nothing was going on, Etienne captured bringing back the same feelings I felt on my wedding day."
My job is different.
It looks like I was taking a photo of the bride by the window but I was actually documenting a nice interaction between her, her dad and her bridesmaids.
How Does Documentary Photography Work at Your Wedding?
I am here to give you back the joy of your wedding day. Regardless of what you are doing all day, dancing, animating the room, watching your people laugh and cry and do things only they would do at only your wedding. I want you to open your gallery six weeks later and think: people had fun, people were touched by our love story. That was an amazing day. And I want that memory to be the one that stays.
That is what documentary photography is actually for. Not a style choice. A different set of priorities entirely.
For Ruby and Ryan, my documentary style fit perfectly the key moment of their wedding.They had their ceremony in an old church reconverted in a house / theater: Greenwood Social Hall and their reception at a bar Ruby used to work as a server, called “The Ship” in west bottoms. Between the 2 locations, they wanted to walk the 1.3 miles including walking under the bridge of West 12th Street with all their guests to the music of Marching Band “Top of the Bottom Dirty Force”. That was the key moment of their wedding. Pure joy, people dancing and that was a perfect fit for me as I am a photographer used to catching real moments happening fast! Btw, their guests were impressed by how I was running around back and forth, getting on the ground, climbing on the side wall all of that under a typical Kansas City hot summer day! I did earn my glasses of water at The Ship when I arrived!
Why did I lean toward Documentary Photography
I have to admit, my dyslexia puts me at a slight disadvantage when it comes to reading. More often than not, a picture was all I was looking at to understand an article, a book, or a magazine. My memory is filled with images from documentary magazines, newspapers, and Bande Dessinee, the French version of comics, that carried the meaning I was not getting from the words. So from the day I started photography I was always drawn to catching a special moment from a unique angle, one that communicates everything without needing a caption. I guess the flip side of my dyslexia is that I learned early that a great image has to be worth a thousand words. Because for me, it literally was.
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I am not a paparazzi shooting from the corner of the room. I am right there in the middle of it, close enough to feel the energy, invisible enough that people forget I am working. I interact, I break the ice, I make the occasional joke that does not always translate. That trust is what lets me get close. And close is where the real photographs happen.
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Before your wedding I take the time to get to know you and who matters most to you. The more I know going in, the more I tell your story with images when I see it happening.
Is Documentary Photography Right for Your Wedding?
If you are still wondering whether documentary is the right approach for your wedding, ask yourself one question. When you look at your photos ten years from now, do you want to see how everything looked, or do you want to remember how everything felt?
"His documentary style photography really captures the emotions of the day, we could see and feel the love, warmth, happiness, excitement, in all of the moments." Veronica, wedding at The Stanley downtown Lee’s Summit.
I know which one I am here for.
