Want to Be a Professional Wedding Photographer? Here Are 10 Things You Should Know.
Wedding photography is joyful beyond description! In fact, it’s all the rage in the realm of digital photography, and you can turn a pretty penny as well! But professional wedding photography definitely isn’t for everyone. Here are 10 things you should know about being a professional wedding photographer, before you take the leap and quit your day job.
1. Know Your Gear.
I hate to even include this on this list, because it’s clearly a given. However, it bears repeating, and repeating (and repeating). If you plan to represent yourself as a professional, you need to have a professional level understanding of your gear. This may sound contradictory if you’ve read my post, Photographing Your Best Friend’s Wedding, so allow me to clarify. There is a significant difference between representing yourself as a professional VS setting clearly defined expectations and allowing a friend or family member to hire you with eyes WIDE open to your level of inexperience. If you’re going to market yourself as a professional, you’ve got to know your gear up, down and side to side.
That said— I BELIEVE IN YOU!!! Wholeheartedly! If you don’t know your gear YET, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn! If professional wedding (or portrait, or journalism, or travel, or commercial) photography is your goal, I say “Go for it!” I don’t care who you are, or where you come from, your goal can become your reality if you are willing to WORK for it!
2. Wedding Photography is Collaborative.
Remember, wedding photography is a collaborative effort between the photographer, the bride and groom, the planner, the parents, the guests, other vendors and more! You’ve got to understand this foundational information if you’re going to be successful. I’ll elaborate throughout the points below, but take this wisdom and let it sink into your core. It is essential to your success.
3. Know Who You Work For.
You’ve got to know who you work for. Do you work for the bride? Do you work for her mother? Do you work for a planner? You’ve got to clearly understand (and articulate your understanding) to all the parties involved in the event. Generally speaking, at the end of the day, even if the referral came from a planner, you work for the bride, and SHE is the one you’re aiming to please. Meet her every need, with your whole soul, she deserves it. It’s her big day. . . Additionally, she’s the one signing your check. It pays to make her happy (pun unintended, but welcomed nonetheless).
Kellin and Sean’s beautiful wedding: Kona, Hi.
4. Remember: Wedding Photography is Relationship Based.
Wedding photography is relationship based—referral based. You’ve simply got to over deliver, at every single event. This goes for delivery of self (more on that to come), images, correspondence, and final products. You hold the holy grail for these people: IMAGES! You are documenting their memories for a lifetime, and in terms of vendors, you are helping build their professional portfolio.
Share, give, collaborate, always.
NOTE: Above I mentioned knowing who you work for. Don’t mistake me to mean that you shouldn’t respect, revere and do your very best to accommodate a planner. They take on the lion’s share of the work involved in the wedding day. They’ve been working for months and months (sometimes a year or LONGER) putting all these beautiful details together. Offer them the respect they deserve. They are wonderful people (and have the potential to be wonderful resources to you as your progress as a photographer).
5. Take Care of Yourself (yes, you heard me right).
As I mentioned above, and have continued to illustrate throughout this post, wedding photography is a collaborative effort. You’ve got to show up at your BEST—mentally, emotionally, physically and creatively. Make sure you’ve prepared the most important piece of gear you own: YOU!
Show up as the best version of yourself, ready to work HARD, focus fiercely and listen carefully to ensure you anticipate the needs of your client completely.
6. Be Prepared for the Time Commitment.
Wedding photography requires an astronomical amount of work. Yes, I know your mind flows directly to editing, and yes, that can be extremely time consuming, but I’m not referring only to post production. I’m referencing the booking process, the email correspondence, facilitating questions, managing expectations, shooting, editing, providing images and other products. You’re committing to being completely accessible to your client for MONTHS leading up to the event and months after the big day. Make sure you don’t over commit and thus find yourself less available to your clients. Remember, this industry is relationship based. The better care you take of your current clients, the more likely they are to refer you to their friends. I equate more than 80% of my business to past client referrals. That’s pretty darn significant. Wouldn’t you say?
7. You’ve Got to Work to Refine Your Style.
Part of setting clearly defined expectations for your clients and collaborating effectively, is for you to have a clearly defined style—a clearly defined artistic voice. Heaven knows that this is an organic process and that you will constantly refine and re-refine yourself artistically, however your clients need to have clear expectations as to what they will receive from you. If you want to achieve consistent bookings from enthusiastic clients, who are willing to pay you fairly, you’ve got to present yourself to them consistently and effectively.
If you don’t do the work necessary to refine your style, this industry will soon become filled with a million “minis.” Minis are watered down versions of other photographers. This industry does not need a zillion photographers simply regurgitating each other’s work. This industry needs YOUR creative voice, YOUR unique vision. Refining your style lends itself to better clients—clients who you really resonate with, because they have hired YOU because you’re YOU! They love your unique style and want to work with you. You become a scarce commodity, rather than just another photographer, and while this isn’t the motivating end in mind, the truth of the matter is that it does make you worth more money. Yay!
8. It’s Not Always as Glamorous as it Seems.
I vividly remember being on a flight to shoot my first celebrity wedding. I was 8 months pregnant, sitting in the back row of the plane, my seat didn’t recline, and I was nestled in between 2 fairly large gentlemen flyers. Not quite what I’d build that moment up to be! Ha!
Be prepared to WORK. Hard. It’s not all glamor and glitz. You’ve got to give your absolute ALL, to every single client, at every single wedding you shoot, ALWAYS. Don’t get jaded. Don’t lose your creative edge. Fight to stay in your best creative space (by caring for yourself as mentioned above). Each client deserves the VERY BEST you have to give—without exception!
My friend Gina and I, after a 10 hour wedding in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Exhaustion.
9. Don’t Be Discouraged By Rejection.
You’re not going to book every single client who sends you an inquiry. Get used to hearing “no.” It’s not an indication of your talent or lack there of. Not every client is “your client.” Remember, you’re not looking for every single client the world over, you want to find the RIGHT clients for you. The clients that you can really connect with and thus COLLABORATE with effectively toward your very best work. Remembering this, that you’re not looking for every client, just the right ones—helps you keep your head on your shoulders when you are inevitably turned down from time to time.
NOTE: If you ARE booking every client that comes your way, that’s a clear indication that it’s time to raise your prices! You should really only be booking approximately 50% of the inquiries that come your way.
10. Enjoy Every Minute of It!
You’re living a dream! Photographing weddings is such a joyful experience! Yes it’s tough, yes it’s WORK, but it’s completely and totally fulfilling as well. It’s absolutely worth any and all the sacrifices it requires in order to be an integral part of such a significant time in someone’s life. Every day, my clients remind me how to love . . . completely. Who could ask for anything more?!
Me, jowling in a wedding photo booth. Enjoying every minute of it! I love my job!
Happy shooting!
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
Want to Be a Professional Wedding Photographer? Here Are 10 Things You Should Know.
5 Wedding Photography Composition Tips
Daniel Lowe and his wife Cindy photograph weddings as Orange Turtle Photography in sunny San Diego. Check out more of their work at their blog.
Get the first kiss. The first dance is coming up. How do I pose the couple so they don’t look so awkward? What should I set my aperture at for group photos? All of these thoughts and more run through my mind when shooting a wedding. With so many things to think about, it’s easy to forget about composition.
Composition is the core of any photo and should never be forgotten even when you’re struggling to get a clean shot of the first kiss or trying to deal with 30 family members waiting for a group photo. We talk about composition quite a bit when it comes to photography, but it’s difficult to bring composition into a real fast paced wedding. Here are a few easy ways to get great composition while at a wedding.
1. Shove ‘em to the side
We all know the rule of thirds right? At a wedding it’s so fast paced that we often don’t have time to perfectly compose each shot for the rule of thirds. So what can we do? Just don’t compose in the center! Throw the bride and groom during the first dance on one side of the frame. The groom is putting on his tie? Put him in the corner of photo. Bride looking into the mirror? Put her at the bottom. Don’t worry about hitting the third of the frame exactly, just don’t put them somewhere other than the center.
2. Follow the lines
If you see a bunch of lines going in the same direction, follow them. There’s usually something good to shoot at the end of those lines. If you’re posing the couple, put the couple right at the end of those lines. The center aisle is always a converging line leading to the couple. Use those lines.
3. Shoot wide open
It can be dangerous to shoot wide open all the time, but it can also help you with your composition. Why? If you have an SLR and are able to turn your aperture all the to the lowest F-number possible, you will get more blur in your photos. Whatever you focus on will be clear, but everything else will be blurry. The best part is that you can just set your camera for f2.8 or even f1.4 and then just focus on hitting the shot. You cannot see the cluttered ballroom in this photo:
4. Peek a boo shoot!
Hide in the bushes and shoot. Peek around a corner and take your shot. Peer over someone’s shoulder and take the shot. By doing this you frame your photo and give it depth and mystery. It’s sometimes difficult to find depth in a hectic wedding, so create it. Jump behind something and shoot away! I took this shot through some branches giving it a third dimension and some magic.
5. Two people one portrait
Give your portraits context by including a bit of another person in the photo. This is especially true for bride and grooms. Take a photo of the bride while her face is leaning on the groom’s chest. Weddings are all about the relationships and it’s great when we can show the relationship in the portrait even when we’re taking a portrait of just one person.
For example, in this photo, the subject is the groom, but I’ve sliced off a bit of the bride to give him some context.
Each one of these composition tips takes some practice and getting used to, but once you’ve mastered them, you’ll find yourself doing them naturally. You’ll probably still worry about missing the first kiss, but at least you won’t have to worry about framing it correctly.
See more of Daniel’s wedding photography at his blog.
Tags: Wedding Photography, Weddings