We’re quite a ways away from the traditional wedding season, but I wanted to talk about this anyway. Whether you’re a client look for ideas, or a photographer looking for some inspiration (or perhaps you just like feeling woefully inadequate), the place to go is Style Me Pretty.

Style Me Pretty is a wedding blog, frequently updated, and chalked full of enough useful tidbits and amazing photography to keep you busy for weeks. I learned about it through my girlfriend, who is enamoured with the site – I dare say she has her whole wedding planned under its influence, which doesn’t bode well for me.

Each time I’ve looked at it over her shoulder, I’ve been impressed. Enough so that I’m starting to check it out on a regular basis – along with a few other blogs I keep daily track of. And the closer I look, the more impressed I become. The photographs presented there are top-notch.

There is a certainly a “type” of look that SMP’s photos seem to have. In general, they’re modern and somewhat trendy (sometimes trendier than I prefer, with heavy vignettes or cross processing). From a technical standpoint, the majority is excellent. And I doubt there’s a photog out there who wouldn’t benefit from studying the way this group uses light.

In fact, that’s how I’ve spent a lot of time lately – trying to figure out just how these wedding photographers are lighting their scenes. It’s a project in reverse-engineering, and an excellent learning tool.

As a client, this is an online resource to take a long look at no matter what kind of wedding you want. It’s much easier to show a vendor a sample of what you want, instead of trying to describe it in vague terms (“I want those photos that, you know, have those funny colors and kind of glow.”)

And as a photographer, you could do worse than spend some time studying the work of your competition – successful photogs working in the field.