Hey, this is LENSEL.
Your weekly dose of hot takes, cold facts and pro moves in the wedding photography world. Here’s what we have on for you today:

Storytelling is DEAD. (Kind of)
We’re jumping into something that may be a touchy subject for many photographers, but let’s hold judgment a sec and hear this theory out: We are no longer storytellers, but vibe curators…

For years, it was practically wedding photography = storytelling, right?! The word found somewhere on a photographers home page description. The idea was simple: capture a wedding day as a cohesive narrative, with a visual arc with a beginning, middle, and end. From the morning nerves and waiting to the golden-hour portraits to the final dance-floor chaos - wedding photographers saw themselves as the silent narrators of love stories. BUT something is changing…

A few weeks ago, we posted a short Instagram reel titled “Story to Vibe,” (here) pointing to a subtle but profound movement happening in the world of wedding photography. Here’s the lowdown:

Millennials (generalising of course) connected with stories—narratives built around tension, release, growth, and resolution. They sought meaning through storytelling, believing truth was housed in a well-constructed arc.

But Gen Z?

Gen Z grew up in the era of social media saturation, where authenticity became performed and narratives are constructed rather than discovered. (see this for a deeper dive into performative authenticity.) So, they don’t look for meaning in a traditional story. They don’t need the whole back story, or the arc of a traditional narrative. Stories can now be too easily made up to be a good vessel of the truth. So instead they want a feeling—a singular, distilled moment that encapsulates something deeper, something real.

And HONESTLY? Wedding photographers were never truly storytellers anyway. Every time we press the shutter, we curate. We frame, we exclude, we emphasize. We’re not the pure documentary photographers we thought, passively recording a neutral reality—we’re always bringing and shaping a vision. And increasingly, that vision isn’t about telling a story. It’s about creating this feeling - what has come to be know as a VIBE. So maybe it’s time to move away from this ‘story’ word and embrace something new?

So what exactly is a vibe?
A vibe isn’t a sequence of events—it’s an energy. It’s just how something feels rather than what it explicitly and exactly says. It’s immersive, intuitive, atmospheric. Hard to nail down. It’s the mix of visuals, emotions, and intangible cues that shape an experience. Jump into this article trying to get at an elusive explanation of just what vibe is for more.

Let’s think a sec about the word itself. VIBE is shorthand for something you can’t quite put your finger on, yet you feel completely. It’s why an out of focus, super grainy, blurry photo might feel more real than a sharp, perfectly lit image. It’s why a weird, offbeat framing that’s not technically correct can say more about a moment than a PERFECT composition.

Vibes are built on mood, texture, movement, and imperfection. And that’s exactly where (SOME) wedding photography is heading.

What this looks like in weddings
We’re already seeing this shift happen. Wedding photographers are prioritizing aesthetic, atmosphere, and feeling over traditional narrative sequencing.

It’s in how we post on socials (out of order), how we curate our websites, and of course, what we focus on when we shoot and the techniques of how we actually shoot.

There are countless photographers leading this shift, but one standout is Norman & Blake. Their work doesn’t follow a traditional wedding-day arc. It’s not about all the perfect, neatly packaged moments—it’s about energy. The way they put colours and locations and poses and textures together to make the overall experience of the images to feel intimate, effortless, luxurious, and like you belong on the inside or the outside of the in.

They and many other photographers in this direction are jumping into:

The funny irony of all this
A lot of photographers who don’t quite get this shift just dismiss it. They look at these kinds of images and think, ‘This is just bad photography. It’s sloppy. It’s not real skill. Anyone could do this.’

And in some ways? They’re not totally wrong. Some of these photos are ones that anyone could take. But that’s exactly the point. The power isn’t in technical perfection—it’s in the feeling an image gives.

Wedding photography has never just been about skill. It’s about taste. Curation. Knowing what to shoot and how to put it together. And that’s why this shift isn’t just a passing trend—it’s a redefinition/or a re-learning of what makes an image meaningful.

The takeaway
If this is new for you, here’s the takeaway: you don’t have to abandon storytelling, but you do need to expand your approach.

The best wedding photographers moving forward won’t just be documenting honestly what happens, they’ll create work that makes you feel something—that is curate the vibe.

WOW what a huge response to last week’s issue on about the rise of all these new agencies for wedding photographers. We heard it all: photographers who feel stuck in restrictive contracts with little payoff and others who say representation completely changed their career—opening new doors and taking big admin burdens off their hands. We are excited for AGENCIES in our industry, so we wanted to give a quick roundup of a few recommendations from all the observations. When considering an agency ask:

BIG shout out to some amazing new and established agencies we have around the industry you can check out: Luago Agency, AiA Management, and of course the very wonderful The Wedding Artists Co.

⬇️ Genius in every frame. Do yourself a favour and savour these.

⬇️ Time and time again The Ferros push the boundaries and we can’t not share it. This time with some BEAUTIFUL posing and frames that need to be seen to believed.

⬇️ Ok this is bring EPIC back. An insanely beautiful shoot at sunrise in some rice fields in Bali. We love mix of the perfect wide shots with the closer blurry ones too.

⬇️ A WHOLE series of unique and creative frames to inspire you to look at things a little differently and use every inch of your frame.