Matt Kay of The Woods, based in Durban, South Africa, believes that a good wedding photo has layers, “either of meaning or just a level of visual complexity,” he says. “Watching this frame unfold, there’s so many small stories in one image that it was just about timing it as best I could. Although an elephant balloon and a crazy sculpture made it pretty hard to get wrong!”

Kay has been photographing weddings for about two years, bringing his background in street photography shot on film to his nuptials. “It teaches you how to look for moments and not force an image if it’s not happening.” He sticks to his 35mm lens (unless he’s shooting a portrait and decides to pull out his 50mm), which he thinks brings a level of storytelling consistency to his work. “I find jumping from wide angle to a zoom makes the narrative feel disjointed. Using one lens also forces me to move around to get the shot, and because I’m moving more, I’m seeing more, and it stops me from being a lazy photographer.”

(Shot on a Canon 5D Mark III and Sigma 35mm lens at f/10, 1/1000 sec. at ISO 640.)

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