working pro - Jeff Ascough

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Reinventing
Weddings
He is Britain’s most celebrated wedding photographer
and widely regarded as the father of documentary
wedding photography. Jeff Ascough tells Keith
Wilson about his pioneering approach and the
rangefinders that got him on the track to success
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JEFF ASCOUGH
J
eff Ascough’s ascendency to the top
table of British wedding photography
is far from typical. Here is a man
who never dreamt of being a photographer:
“When I left school I wanted to be a psychologist.”
Until he was 21, he had never used an SLR:
“I don’t think I’d ever taken a picture other than
a snap on a compact camera.” And when he did
embark on a life as a photographer in 1989, it
wasn’t weddings he had in mind: “My inspiration
was the street photography of Garry Winogrand,
Robert Frank and Cartier-Bresson, that’s what
I wanted to do.”
So what happened? Where did it all go… err,
so right?
Jeff is the first to admit that he owes a big debt
to his parents for the way things turned out.
“The whole idea was that my Dad was going to
become a full-time photographer. At the time, he
was employed by one of the universities in
Leicestershire and they were supposed to be
making him redundant in three years time,
but that never happened. Basically, it ended up
with me running what was supposed to be their
business.” So, instead of reading psychology at
university, young Jeff embarked on a part-time
City & Guilds photography course in Leicester.
His interest in street photography was sparked
by two of the City & Guilds’ tutors, but he had
to suspend all romantic notions of being the next
Robert Frank when faced with the financial
realities of running a studio. “The economic
pressures to earn money for the business meant
I ended up being a studio portrait photographer
for a couple of years,” he explains. “Then the
people who I did portraits for asked me
to do weddings, so that’s how I got into weddings.
I didn’t get the chance to indulge my interest
in street photography and black and white work
until later on in my career.”
Washington Post; three years later American
Photo named him one of the world’s 10 best
wedding photographers – the only European
to make the list – and Newsweek described
him as ‘one of the planet’s most evocative
wedding photographers’.
You would think that international recognition
and the rewards it brings would make Jeff
immune from the economic pressures faced by
every other wedding photographer in the land.
In fact, in a market saturated with photographers,
even the celebrated Jeff Ascough has to
travel further for work these days. Unsurprisingly,
he doesn’t mince his words when I ask him
about the threats to wedding photography.
“I think the days of running a really successful
local wedding photography business for the
majority of photographers are gone,” he declares.
“It’s mainly because of the quantity of
photographers that are in the industry at the
moment. In the old days, the photographer was
catering very much for his local market and there
might be two or three other photographers in a
five or six mile radius. Now you have 30 or 40
photographers. It is a shame because there are
a lot of talented photographers out there who
just can’t get the breaks at the moment.”
Of course, wedding photography has always
been highly competitive, but Jeff believes
success is not earned by being the cheapest or
the quickest. In his opinion, your work has
to be recognisable. “I have always believed that
if you can create a style, which is your own,
that you are recognised for, then people will
naturally gravitate towards that style. If you
produce a style that is the same as everyone
else, then the choice will come down to money.”
Fresh approach
Jeff’s own transition from jobbing Leicesterbased portrait and wedding photographer to
international shooting star is a case in point.
Back in 1994, bored and disillusioned with the
repetitive, formulaic method to photographing
weddings, Jeff was desperate to find a fresh
approach. “One day I came back from a job and
I said to my wife, ‘I can’t do this any more,
this is not me. This is the same regimented bunch
of pictures that we do at every single wedding.’
I found that you’d get to the end of August and
didn’t know one wedding from the other except
for the different faces in the pictures.”
Soon afterwards, Jeff went to a seminar given
by American celebrity wedding photographer
Denis Reggie and discovered there could be
more to photographing a wedding than forever
resorting to the traditional line-up of group shots
and staged portraits. He remembers: “Denis ➺
Global recognition
Now based in Lytham St Annes, Jeff is widely
regarded as one of the world’s best wedding
photographers. Ever since he broke with tradition
and turned to a documentary style of wedding
photography, shooting mostly in black and white,
there hasn’t been a year without industry awards,
international accolades and media acclaim.
America in particular has been lavish with its
praise. In 2004, he became the first British
wedding photographer to be featured in the
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{WORKING
JEFF ASCOUGH
JEFF ASCOUGH
I have always believed that if
you can create a style, which
is your own, that you are
recognised for, then people
will naturally gravitate
towards that style. JA
Reggie had just shot Arnold Schwarzenegger’s
wedding and he was showing these really candid
photographs and I thought, ‘Hang on, if he’s making
it work then why can’t I make it work?’ After that,
at every wedding I had booked, I did the formal stuff
that was expected and in between I did all the
informal photography. I stayed a little bit longer
at the end and arrived a bit earlier so I could get
more informal shots. I would then produce albums
of this work without the formal pictures in it so that
when people came to look at the photos of their
wedding day I had something else to show them
that was completely different to anything they had
seen. That’s how it took off. We went up to about 80
weddings a year very quickly.”
Breaking conventions
This new documentary wedding style also meant
that Jeff had at last found a way to incorporate
his beloved black and white street photography
into the formal world of the white wedding.
“I deliberately went for pictures that weren’t
considered to be normal wedding pictures,” he says.
“They looked as if they weren’t taken by a wedding
photographer, but by someone who was just
observing the day. It was very much that fly-on-thewall look, with no flash and in black and white,
which was unusual at the time. Nobody used to
shoot black and white because it was so expensive
to shoot it and print it.”
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Another break from convention was Jeff’s choice
of camera. He used a Leica and just three prime
lenses: 28mm, 35mm and 50mm. “Some people
have asked me what was the biggest influence in my
career that got me to where I am now and I said it
was using the rangefinders. I bought them purely
because there was an f/1.0 lens and there was no
mirror in the camera, so I was able to shoot in really
low light and still get images. I became known
for being able to shoot in low light while everyone
else was resorting to flash. The Leicas were bought
because they were the best tools for low-light
photography. You had to get in close to people and
get your photos quickly and not be in their face all
the time. Picking up a rangefinder to shoot a
wedding is the hardest thing to do. Once you’ve
done it everything else is easy.”
Future trends
Jeff has been shooting digitally since 2004, first
with the Canon EOS-1D Mark II, it was the low-light
capability of digital that impressed him; the
improved resolution and reduced noise at higher
ISO ratings meant he could happily select faster
shutter speeds in low light. He now uses two Canon
EOS 5D Mark III bodies and eight Canon EF lenses
ranging from the 8-15mm f/4L fisheye zoom to the
135mm f/2L short telephoto. This year he says he is
going back to basics by using just three prime
lenses: the 24mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.2L and 85mm
WHY JEFF AVOIDS FLASH
“I don’t use flash because I find it so
intrusive. For example, if I’ve got a
bride getting her make-up done, or
she’s getting into her dress you can
take as many pictures as you like with
ambient light, and she’s not going to
notice. As soon as a flash goes off she
immediately thinks, ‘God, what was
I doing?’ She immediately becomes
self-aware, her whole body language
changes, everything changes. I’m not
against flash itself, I just don’t like the
intrusion of it.
“Having said that, I have to use
flash on two parts of the day now.
One is the cake cutting. When you
have the cake cutting in the evening,
everybody gets their cameras out –
it’s usually in a dark part of the venue
– and you’ve got all these flashes
going off. I can’t compete with that, so
these days I have to use flash for the
cake cutting just to kill everyone
else’s flash. The only other time will
be with family groups. If I can’t get
even lighting with a family group then
I’ll use flash to even out the lighting.
But for the main coverage I don’t use
flash at all.”
f/1.8. It’s a selection that harks back to his
formative days of using the Leica.
Although describing himself as a documentary
wedding photographer, Jeff still takes the
traditional formal shots that have been the
hallmark of wedding photography since the
earliest days of the genre. “We probably do four
or five formal pictures, usually instigated by the
families I hasten to add! It doesn’t take too much
time and it gives them the pictures that most
people want, these formal traditional portraits,
because that’s what wedding photography
has been since the dawn of time.” However, Jeff
says he shot four weddings last year “that had no
formal photographs in them whatsoever.” But
that didn’t mean getting pictures of the happy
couple was any less important: “On the contrary,
it creates its own pressure because you still
have to get a decent picture of the bride and
groom together!”
With the rise of wedding photography apps for
smartphones, it’s not just the official
photographer who is working hard to get images
of the bride and groom for the wedding album.
Does Jeff feel at all threatened by such trends?
“I haven’t taken much notice to be honest,” he
shrugs. “I’m under the impression that if they’ve
booked me to do the wedding then they’re not too
worried about what everyone else gets. I don’t
really care what everyone else gets because
mine are the main pictures. The technology’s
great but you still have to get a decent picture.”
Traditional strength
If wedding apps have failed to make an
impression on Jeff, he can’t help noticing the
more conspicuous presence of the photo booth
whenever he turns up to the reception. “Booths
are a massive business now in the wedding
industry. Every wedding I’ve been on in the last
year has had some kind of booth in it. That’s
where I am seeing a big change. The guests go
into the booths with funny hats and wigs on and it
just gives the bride and groom a different angle
on all their friends, which I think is great. It’s
great for taking the pressure off the
photographer because he doesn’t have to worry
about getting everything that moves. As for
friends taking pictures, it’s always been the case,
it’s just more prevalent now.”
For all his efforts to create a style far removed
from the orthodox, Jeff still respects the
traditions of wedding photography and the
considerable strength of place it occupies in
modern culture. “I think wedding photographs
have been so ingrained in our culture that it is too
important to trust anybody else,” he says. “After
buying the house, a wedding is the most
expensive thing you will probably do. It’s a time
for getting together, a special occasion that’s
really important to the couple. From that point of
view, having a visual record is very important.
They always say, if your house is burning down
what’s the first thing you’d take out? It’s the
wedding album.” PP
www.jeffascough.com
JEFF ON THE SHIFT TO VIDEO “I think video is going to have a massive say in the next five years. I think the current technology and the
technology that’s on its way, means you will have one image-maker at the wedding. You will have a videographer of the day and then you will take the stills
from the video and present them as the pictures for the bride and groom. Or it may be that the bride and groom see the video and choose where to stop the
play for the stills they want and print them off. I think that’s where wedding photography is going. The styles and fashions come and go, but the actual
capture method will have the biggest influence on the way things go in the next four to five years. At the moment, everybody’s into all this vintage stuff,
which I despise to be honest. I just can’t see the point of it.”
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