Wedding photography is an important commercial endeavor that supports the bulk of the efforts for many photography studios or independent photographers.

Technology: During the film photography, photographers favored color negative film and medium-format cameras where as now more and more weddings are shot with digital SLR cameras since digital convenience enables detecting lighting errors quickly and allows creative approaches to be reviewed immediately.

Still some photographers continue to shoot with film, as they prefer the film aesthetic, while to others negative film captures more information than digital technology, with fewer margins for exposure error. Though it is true in some cases, it is found that exposure latitude inherent in a camera's native RAW image format (allows for more under- and over- exposure than JPEG]) differs among manufacturers. All forms of RAW have a degree of exposure latitude, which exceeds slide film - to which digital capture is commonly compared.

At present, many photographic labs have greater facilities to provide services in post-production for film compared with digital, such as quickly generate adequate prints in the event of some over- or under- exposure. This will change gradually, as manufacturers like Kodak announce a commitment to further develop streamlined services in the area of professional digital lab output.
Technology has evolved with the use of remote triggers, flashes, traveling light and with the ability to use creative lighting, helping wedding photographers tremendously.

Approaches Two primary approaches to wedding photography, Traditional and Photojournalistic, are recognized today. Traditional wedding photography shoots more classically posed images and have a great deal of photographer control and interaction on the day of the wedding while photojournalistic takes its cue from editorial reporting styles focusing more on candid and non-posed images with little photographer interaction. As these are two extremes several photographers follow a style in the middle of these two.

A third style that is gaining more and more popularity is a fashion-based approach. In contemporary/fashion-based wedding photography, photojournalistic images of the events of the day are combined with posed images that are inspired by editorial fashion photography as seen in magazines like Vogue or Vanity Fair.
The term contemporary wedding photography is used to describe wedding photography that is different from a traditional nature. The emphasis in Contemporary photography gives more emphasis to capture the story and atmosphere from the day, so the viewer gets a feeling of appreciation of what the wedding was like, rather than a series of pre-planned poses. But this term could be mistaken for meaning any photograph that is not posed or formal.  However, contemporary wedding photography is more than just not taking very formal photographs and involves the use of composition, lighting and timing to shoot images that have a strong visual appeal.

There is some uncertainty over what constitutes contemporary and how this differs from other forms of wedding photography. Even though contemporary wedding photography might have an element of photojournalism it is definitely not exclusively that style of photography.