Sepia bride TikTok drama currently stirring stems from TikToker Alexandra Jaye Conder (@alexandrajaye5), who was none too pleased with the photos she got back from her otherwise picture-perfect wedding day.
Her complaint? The photographer’s sepia color grading turned everything orange and teeth yellow. Folks on TikTok have mixed opinions on the situation, with some siding with the bride and others with the photographer.
Unfortunately, not all photographers’ styles mesh with their models, married couples, and so on. Sometimes the color grading will look beautiful for one set of photos due to the lighting, scenery, and a myriad of other factors, but look awful on another, even coming down to the skin tone of the person whose photo is being taken.
The bride shared a story time with a series of photos the photographer had taken at the rehearsal dinner versus what they took at the wedding, all of which had a consistent color grading put on them.
Without being able to look at the RAW photos, it is hard to tell if the photographer did any tweaking to individual photos beyond the color grading itself, although photographers in the TikTok‘s comments shared their professional opinions.
“I think these are all gorgeous. The editing is consistent, the difference is the lighting & background which plays a role in the final product. No image will look exactly the same in different light,” Hudson Valley NY Wedding Photo said.
Photographer @asiachristine_ shared her own take on the photos, saying, “11 yrs as a wedding photographer- it’s 100% the lighting, location, backgrounds that makes them look so different. LOVE film edits, but it’s so tricky bc it can look so beautiful in some situations & muddy in others. They can be tweaked so they’re not so warm & give more true tone. Photog edited in her style & this is expected based on her edit bc lighting/environment is constantly changing on [wedding] day.”
The spread of Sepia Bride’s drama
But the story doesn’t end on TikTok, as the drama of her wedding photos spread out to Threads, where @hannahreed.co asked, “I wonder if sepia bride knows her drama has left TikTok and is now being widely discussed over here on threads…And that we’re all team photog 😂”
To which Alexandra cheekily replied that she was…and was getting the photos redone by a different photographer.
The end of the story, according to the bride
After her videos went viral, Alexandra posted an ending message for anyone who followed along with her story. She posted a series of short videos from her wedding day with the caption, “All that matters in the end 🤍 thank you to everyone who listened to my experience & my story. I will no longer be sharing more on this issue as i need to move on with my life. If the photographer ends up sharing her story on the matter, i will comment. But as of now, im going to try to re do my wedding portraits & close this off…”
“if anyone has questions regarding wedding vendor decisions, i will follow up on those subjects. But i have left everything on this situation on the table,” she continued. “I wish this doesnt happen to anyone in the future, and i hope we as clients & photographers can learn from our mistakes from both sides.”
In an email with the Daily Dot, bride Alex shared, “I sent the photographer multiple Pinterest galleries for the vibes I was looking for. Ultimately now I’m realizing that there was miscommunication between the 2 of us with the reasons of the Pinterest board.”
“Additionally, I liked her style & her editing upon booking her. I just found that a lot of the special moments in my gallery did not live up to the expectations of her work. I had yellow-looking teeth, red streaks in my hair, extremely harsh shadows and she made the greenery look super brown & dead looking. I was not expecting that, due to what I saw on her social media. No person on her feed looked like (in my opinion) to have red streaks, yellow teeth, huge shadows under their eyes along,” she added. “She’s a really great photographer, no discredit to that. The editing is what I wasn’t happy about on certain images.”
