I have been photographing weddings in San Antonio for over fifteen years. The work has stayed consistent throughout that time. The approach has not changed. The philosophy has been the same since the beginning: stay quiet, stay present, and document the day as it actually happens.

The brand, though, has not always reflected that as clearly as it should. So this year I rebuilt it from the ground up. I want to walk you through every decision I made, including the logo, the typefaces, the colors, and why all of it connects back to documentary photography and the craft of photojournalism.

Why the brand needed to change

Most wedding photographer brands look the same. Soft script fonts. Florals. Gold accents. Romantic, aspirational, and completely interchangeable. There is nothing wrong with that aesthetic if it reflects how you actually work. It does not reflect how I work.

I work like a journalist. I arrive, I observe, I document. I do not direct the light, the couple, or the moment. The images I make are records of things that actually happened, not recreations of things that looked good in theory. The brand needed to say that clearly before anyone ever read a single word on the site.

The new identity draws directly from the visual language of documentary photography, photojournalism, and print media. Everything you see here, from the typefaces to the color palette to the way the logo is structured, is a deliberate reference to that world.

The logo

The logo is called the Column Rule. It is a vertical bar, three pixels wide, sitting to the left of my name and the word Photographer beneath it. That is the entire logo. No emblem, no monogram, no icon. Just a structural mark and a name.

Why a vertical bar?

The column rule is one of the oldest marks in print journalism. It is the thin vertical line that separates editorial columns in a newspaper. It is purely structural, purely functional. It does not decorate. It organises. Using it as the primary graphic element says something specific: this is a journalism-adjacent practice. The photographer is not the subject. The work is. The bar creates a visual anchor without drawing attention to itself, which is exactly what I try to do on a wedding day.

There is a second reading. In broadcast and documentary filmmaking, the indicator in the corner of the frame means the camera is rolling. The bar, in its quiet position to the left of the name, functions the same way. It says: recording in progress.

Why just the name and Photographer?

Nothing more is needed. The name is the byline. Photographer is the role. Together they read exactly like the credit line at the bottom of a documentary photograph in a magazine: Christian Margain, Photographer.

San Antonio does not belong in the logo. It belongs in the headline copy, the metadata, the footer, and the search engine optimisation. The logo is a permanent mark. The city is a contextual signal. Confusing the two makes both weaker.

The typefaces

Two fonts. One for everything editorial. One for everything structural. That is the entire system.

EB Garamond — the editorial voice

EB Garamond is a revival of the typefaces originally cut by Claude Garamond in the 1530s. It has been in continuous use for nearly five hundred years, almost exclusively in serious editorial contexts: books, journals, academic papers, documentary publications, and long-form magazine essays.

I use it in italic for everything that carries an editorial voice: headlines, pull quotes, story titles, and the name in the logo. The upright version handles body copy. The italic says here is the frame. The upright says here is the content. EB Garamond does not look fashionable. It looks like it has been doing this for a long time, which it has.

DM Mono — the structural voice

DM Mono is a monospaced typeface. Every character occupies the same width. This is the font of technical output: code, data terminals, teletype machines, and wire service dispatches. It looks like information that was transmitted rather than designed.

I use it for everything that structures or labels rather than narrates: navigation links, captions, dates, metadata, category labels, form fields, and the word Photographer in the logo. When you see DM Mono on the site, you are reading the record of something, not the story of something.

The color palette

Five colors, one accent. Everything on the site is built from these six values.

Ink Black and Bone White

The background is not pure white. It is Bone White, a slightly warm off-white at #F4F4F2. The goal was a colour that reduces digital glare and gives the page the feeling of paper rather than a screen. Old newspaper stock, archival photo paper, the pages of a book that has been read many times.

The text is not pure black either. It is a very dark near-black at #1A1A1B with a tiny amount of warmth in it, so it reads as ink rather than as a digital value. The difference is small but it matters. The page feels like something that could have been printed.

Amber Oxide and the Leica connection

This is the colour I am most asked about, so let me explain it carefully. Amber Oxide at #8B6F47 is a warm bronze tone that references the brass found on Leica camera bodies. Leica has been making documentary cameras since the 1920s. They were the cameras of choice for Magnum Photos, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and most of the major documentary photographers of the twentieth century.

Amber Oxide appears in exactly one place on the website: the call-to-action button. Check Availability. Inquire Now. Get in Touch. Every time you see that warm bronze colour, it means there is one thing to do. This restraint is intentional. If a colour appears everywhere it stops meaning anything. By limiting Amber Oxide to the single most important action on any given page, its presence becomes a signal rather than a decoration.

The documentary journalism connection

The phrase I keep returning to when I describe my work is this: I photograph weddings the way a journalist covers a story. That means arriving with no agenda other than to document what happens. No staging, no recreating, no asking people to hold a feeling until the camera is ready.

The best wedding photographs are the ones that make you forget a photographer was there at all.

The brand reflects this methodology directly. The typefaces are from journalism. The colour palette references print. The logo structure is borrowed from newspaper typography. The word choices throughout the site, story instead of gallery, journalist instead of artist, coverage instead of session, are all deliberate.

When a couple sees this brand for the first time, before they read a single sentence, the visual language should already be communicating something specific: this person does something different. This is not the photographer who will pose you by the fountain at golden hour and call it documentary.

What does this mean for couples?

Nothing about the work has changed. The approach is the same it has always been: quiet observation, minimal direction, and a commitment to capturing the day as it actually felt rather than as it was choreographed to look.

What has changed is the clarity of the signal. If you find this brand and it resonates with you, it is because you are already looking for what I do. You do not want someone directing your day. You want someone documenting it.

• You want to be fully present, not performing for the camera
• You want the photos to look like your wedding, not like everyone else’s
• You want a photographer who works quietly and stays out of the way
• You want images that feel honest rather than idealised

A brand that tries to speak to everyone ends up saying nothing. This one has a point of view. Honesty over performance. Documentation over direction. The real story over the idealised version of it.

What comes next

The new brand is live across the full site: the homepage, the portfolio, the blog, the pricing page, the about page, and the contact form. The logo system includes versions for light backgrounds, dark backgrounds, social media profiles, and watermarks for delivered galleries.

If you have been following my work for a while, I hope this explains the decisions behind the new look. If you are new here, welcome. The work is the same as it has always been. The brand now says so more clearly.

If you are planning a wedding in San Antonio or anywhere else and this approach resonates with you, reach out and let’s talk. I am now booking 2026 and 2027.