Wedding Photographer: How Thibault Chappe Attracts International Couples

Australians, Americans, Swiss, French and international couples: half of Thibault Chappe's couples live outside France. Yet 99% of his weddings take place within an hour or two of his home, between Aix-en-Provence, the Luberon and the French Riviera.

In this episode, he tells Anthony Heukmes how he became a wedding photographer almost by accident, where his clients really come from, what photography competitions and qualifications are worth, and how he now balances weddings, his studio and his involvement in the professional federation.

Who is Thibault Chappe?

Thibault Chappe is a professional photographer based in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. A specialist in documentary wedding photography, he takes a photojournalistic approach: letting couples live their day, stepping in as little as possible and capturing the details, the glances and the bonds between loved ones.

• A former generalist: when he started out, he photographed everything, from weddings to food, corporate work and orchestras.
• A co-founder: with Sophie Bourgeix and Etienne Clotis, he created the Maison de la Photographie d'Aix-en-Provence, a place where each photographer is an expert in a single field. For five years, he made his living from weddings alone.
• An award-winning photographer: Master QEP (Master Qualified European Photographer) earned with a documentary wedding series, member of the French national team for the World Photographic Cup, and holder of the French title Portraitiste de France.
• A portrait artist: he took over a fine art portrait studio, Studio Chappe, where he photographs maternity, family and portrait sessions.

He is also an educator, a speaker and, at the time of recording, communications director of the FFPMI, the French professional federation of photographers and imaging professions.

1. How do you become a wedding photographer?

For Thibault Chappe, it wasn't a career plan. Friends asked him to photograph their wedding; at first he said no, because he didn't see wedding photography as something “rewarding”. He finally agreed… and it was a real eye-opener.

A job where you have to be good at everything, all the time

Weddings won him over precisely because they are hard. In a single day, you need to be able to:

• photograph the tiniest things, like the rings and the details;
• capture the atmosphere of a venue and take natural, spontaneous portraits;
• work in full sunlight, then in the dim light of a church;
• handle the movement of the evening party, the flash and the settings.

“Because it's complicated, I like it. It's like pastry: one small adjustment can change everything.”

Thibault Chappe

2. How do you attract international clients as a wedding photographer?

Contrary to appearances, Thibault hardly travels at all: he prefers waking up on Sunday with his family. It's the couples from abroad who come to him. Aix-en-Provence is an hour from the Luberon, very popular with American and British couples, and an hour from the French Riviera, where many Eastern European couples get married.

Among his international clients, there is often a French expat and their partner coming back to get married in France, or American couples who choose Provence for Provence itself. And because he loves his region, he shows it: the lavender, the orange sunsets, the light. These images speak directly to these couples' imagination.

“I think they chose me, because of what I wanted to show, more than I chose them.”

Thibault Chappe

The venue is a tool, not an end in itself

A beautiful venue attracts clients, but it can also trap the photographer. Thibault sees a lot of failed photos in front of stunning backdrops: just because there's a château or the Eiffel Tower, people forget to work on the light, the composition and the emotion. He also shoots very simple weddings, “in a little country cabin”, which he finds just as powerful.

If you are targeting international clients, your photography website should show your region the way you feel it, with the couple at the heart of the images, rather than a simple gallery of prestigious venues.

3. Should you impose your style on your couples?

Thibault doesn't try to impose the same visual signature on every wedding. He doesn't photograph a bride in a princess gown in a château the same way as a bride wearing a flower crown in a field. Contrast, backlight, warm or cool tones, black and white: these choices depend on the atmosphere of the moment, not on a preset applied to everything.

He has also turned his back on trends. There was a time when you had to make certain images to get featured on certain blogs; he told himself that “fashion goes out of fashion”. A wedding story documents the life of a family: it has to remain timeless.

“They'll still be my photos, but I won't season them the same way.”

Thibault Chappe

4. How do you attract couples who are like you?

His answer comes down to an Oscar Wilde quote he often repeats: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” On his website, Thibault talks about his wife, his daughter, music and museums. The result: the couples who contact him often share his interests.

In meetings, in person or by video call, they talk about “everything except the wedding”: the latest documentary, an exhibition, a concert. That's where the connection happens, and couples trust him with their day because he's “like them”. He remembers a wedding where Guns N' Roses and Megadeth were playing at the party: not very traditional, but one of his favorite weddings.

He doesn't try to book 100% of the couples he meets either: he wants couples he really clicks with, because he gets extremely involved on the wedding day.

5. Where do a wedding photographer's clients come from?

After 12 years in the business and 300 to 400 weddings, with around a hundred guests per wedding on average in Provence, tens of thousands of people have seen him at work. Here is how his clients find him:

The Master QEP is a telling example: American couples go to the website of the Federation of European Photographers, filter for French Master QEPs and land on the only one specializing in weddings (at the time of recording). They call him, explaining that they know nothing about photography, but that this qualification reassures them.

“Having a qualification doesn't make you good. But if the work is there behind it, it's one hell of a door opener.”

Thibault Chappe

6. Photography competitions and qualifications: which ones to choose?

Thibault first distinguishes two approaches. In a competition, you have to be better than the others on that day: “I've always felt really sorry for the guys running next to Usain Bolt.” A qualification, on the other hand, validates a standard: it's a competition with yourself, and that's the one he prefers.

The main titles for a photographer in France

He readily admits that these titles are little known to the general public: “None of my clients knows what it is.” And the criteria vary: a photo that wins at Fearless won't necessarily win at the FEP, and vice versa. The right choice therefore depends on the values you share with each competition. That's also what Emilie Zangarelli found, as her awards became a sales argument with her clients.

7. Why enter a photography competition?

For years, Thibault thought competitions were pointless. Everything changed in 2015, when Sophie Bourgeix pushed him to take part in the World Photographic Cup. When he opened his computer, he looked at his images through a judge's eyes rather than his clients': a crop he'd forgotten, the wrong lens, sloppy editing.

“An international judge's standard isn't somewhere between mine and my clients': it's above both.”

Thibault Chappe

A virtuous circle, all the way to your prices

Aiming for that level forced him to compose each image more carefully. He describes the chain reaction: better work, better photos, a better experience, clients who are more like him and spend more, which allowed him to raise his prices. To see where you stand, a photography price calculator helps you check that your prices keep up with the value of your work.

Show your images, even when you have doubts

There's no need to wait until you have ten years of experience: some beginners have an eye that others will never have. His advice is to have your photos critiqued by other photographers, without telling the story behind the image (“if I show my wife a blurry photo of my daughter, she'll tell me it's a beautiful photo because it's her daughter”). He also keeps in mind a saying attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.

But he also knows how to keep his confidence: a photo that fellow photographers found “meh” won a Ruby Borvo award at an international portrait exhibition. As the physicist Etienne Klein, whom he quotes, puts it, finding nothing is already a discovery. Winning nothing is already progress.

8. Why open a studio as a wedding photographer?

Specializing in weddings had forced him to give up maternity photography, a subject he loves: “choosing means giving things up”. Several events brought him back to portraiture: the birth of his daughter in 2013, then the loss of his mother in 2017. He realized the importance of what he calls a family's photographic heritage.

In the studio, he no longer tells the story of what's happening, he builds the image: light becomes a tool to reveal the person. He welcomes mothers-to-be, families and children, but also more serious moments: an 83-year-old grandmother who came to have the portrait she wants to leave to her grandchildren, or a person undergoing cancer treatment who wanted to keep a proud record of that period.

“Having lost my mom, what I miss today isn't her physical body, it's who she was.”

Thibault Chappe

The studio is a natural extension of his wedding work: most of his brides come back to see him when they're pregnant, and some clients travel across France for a maternity session with him.

9. How do you balance weddings and studio work?

Weddings are no longer entirely seasonal (his first wedding of the year was on January 18), but most of them still happen in the warmer months. So the studio mainly takes up the time he used to spend on talks and creative projects. To make both work, he rethought his organization:

• Buffer periods: in August, before the September peak in births, he takes fewer weekday weddings to keep room for maternity sessions.
• Realistic delivery times: he now tells his couples to expect a longer turnaround than their friends got the year before.
• A streamlined workflow: faster equipment and a reorganized editing process, without lowering quality.
• Time blocking: fixed time slots for each task, and nothing else during that time.
• Automation: his clients book their appointment online, instead of the five emails it used to take to find a time slot.

In 2020, unable to meet clients in person, he also delivered his wedding stories by video call with a slideshow shared on screen, which he finds more stressful than seeing his couples' reactions face to face. That's the whole point of an in-person viewing session whenever possible.

“All the time you don't spend doing boring stuff, you spend doing cool stuff.”

Thibault Chappe

10. Why join a photographers' federation?

Thibault got involved in the FFPMI not because he thought it was perfect, but because he considered it necessary and wanted to improve it. First president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, he then became the federation's communications director.

He points out that the FFPMI is not a club: it is the representative professional organization for photographers in France, speaking on their behalf to the public authorities. The 2020 Covid crisis proved it: the federation drafted a health protocol and got the government to recognize the difficulties faced by photographers, especially wedding photographers, so they could access financial aid.

He sums up its role in three pillars:

1. Bring together: a national network and regional groups where photographers help each other.
2. Defend: represent the profession, fight unfair competition, and lead battles such as the one over ID photos.
3. Promote: showcase photographers' expertise through qualifications, competitions and the press.

At the time, membership cost about 195 euros a year, “around twenty euros a month” for an organization that defends your profession. And he calls on young photographers to come and share their vision of the profession's future.

Mistakes to avoid as a wedding photographer

FAQ: wedding photographer and international clients