I’ve just returned from a lovely little mid-season getaway to Copenhagen and thought I’d share a few images from my trip along with my thoughts while shooting.
What Happens When a Documentary Wedding Photographer Goes on Holiday?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve brought some form of camera on holiday with me and used it to take snaps of places I’ve visited and things I’ve seen. For all those years I purposefully avoided including people in my holiday and travel photos, instead waiting until the frame was clear before taking the shot as I didn’t want people to ruin the photo.
Fast forward to 2024 and I’m photographing weddings, which involves purposefully including people in my photographs – oh the irony!
I’ve always enjoyed watching people at weddings and seeing how guests behave and interact with each other. I especially enjoy being able to capture that creatively for my couples, so I thought it was about time that I let the human element creep back into my personal photos too.
After a street photo walk in Dublin earlier this year, I realised that photos are much more interesting with a human element included and I enjoyed having the chance to play and experiment with this idea more in the last couple of days.
From Snapshot to Storytelling – A Mindset Shift
I found switching my mindset from snapshot to storytelling mode to be the most difficult part of photographing this trip. It didn’t always go to plan, but that’s ok. I had zero expectations and reason to beat myself up over the results.
For example, I spent a good while wandering around a palm house and botanical garden and I was content enough to snap away at the plants and the little details without too much thought, simply because I enjoyed it. I was on holiday after all!
But then as we came across the famous Little Mermaid statue, I knew I wanted to try something different and come away with a more unique shot.
Here’s the average snap I took on my iPhone as evidence that I’d ‘been there’ and ‘seen that’. Of course, everyone around me was taking a similar shot, just like everyone who went the day before that, and the year before that, all the way back to 1913 (or when camera phones were invented, I guess).
Bringing my camera up to my eye I noticed the statue was in shadow and the shoreline and the water behind were lit by the sun. Exposing for the highlights I brought the Little Mermaid further into shadow until she became a silhouette. Everyone knows what the statue is, you don’t necessarily have to be able to see it clearly to take an interesting photo. I love the contrast between the fairytale the statue represents and the modern-day behind that this photo shows.
Going back to my favourite pastime of people-watching, I decided to include the tourists, scrambling to get their own almost identical photo, for context. For me, this is the most interesting way of telling the story. What I love most about this frame is that everyone is wearing clothes of similar tones to the environment they’re standing in, something I noticed and capitalised on whilst composing the frame.
I tried to carry this idea of context and storytelling with me on my trip and so here are a few of my favourite shots, with some no-people snaps thrown in for good measure.
Copenhagen and Malmo Travel Photos
All the photos below were taken with a Fujifilm X100V camera using various film recipes courtesy of Fuji X Weekly.