style?

The trend today is 'photo-journalistic' candids with low depth of field and a washed out background. That is what couples are looking for and it would be foolish to not (somewhat) tend to the market if you want any business at all.

As I've stated before, consistency in a style is important to brand yourself, but which direction to go?

You can go with the trend and look like everyone else but get a steady stream of clients since there are more people looking for the trendy style.

You can stick to your principles and work with the traditional, timeless style (I personally appreciate the work required in this style to light everything, it's a science), but less and less people appreciate this older style that our parent's generation love.

You can go way out of the box and do something no one is doing or have done. If you're successful, you carve out a niche and go down as the pioneer of the style in the history books. Or you fail, hard.

As more and more people buy DSLR's and there's more exposure on the art of photography, manufacturers will put in more built-in functions into these cameras, such as automatically generating HDRs. Maybe we'll see a full wedding done in HDR soon enough.

(no...I didn't shoot Mike and Ann's engagement in full HDR)