How did you get into Wedding 'Togy

shrimperblue

shrimperblue

Suspended / Banned
Messages
625
Name
Dave
Edit My Images
No
Hi.

I want to get into Wedding Photography but i'd love a little guidance on exactly how to go about starting off.

How did you get into it, do have any tips,does it pay your wages? Etc Etc.

Ty in advance.

SB
 
I don't profess to know everything about this as I'm fairly new to the world of wedding photography myself but my advice would be:

-Do a lot of reading
-Do a lot of practice
-Know your equipment inside out so it's second nature
-Make sure you have backup equipment
-Feel comfortable taking pictures of people that you don't know
-Try and get a few weddings as an assistant first - the locals might not want to do this so look further afield and be prepared to travel.
-Then try and get a few unpaid but make it absolutely clear you are after experience. -Have a look a wedding websites such as hitched but again stress you are looking for experience so they don't expect professional (there's that bloody word again!) service.
-When you are confident you know what you are doing start looking for paid work but charge reasonable fees.
-Learn from every wedding you shoot. You will make mistakes but make sure it's only once. I hope I've done all of my gaffes on the freebees - I missed the confetti once and I kicked myself for it all day.

Confidence and people skills is the key. If you like taking photos of people that's great. If you're just doing it to earn a bit of cash it's probably not right for you. I wasn't sure until I did it. Everyone told me how stressful it was and not worth doing. I tried it and yes it was stressful but I really got a buzz from it and they liked my photos.

Finally, good luck and going by your username can I just say I really enjoyed the last minute equaliser at Brisbane Road yesterday:p
 
Do a search of the forums for 'wedding photography', there was a long thread with loads of advice in it not so long ago m8.
 
Thanks for your time and advice. I was thinking of trying to "tag along" with a pro but I dont know where to start?

I enjoy taking photos of people and I want to do it for job satisfaction and the end product.

.....yes and thanks for the equaliser lol, although you gotta admit...Peter Clarkes goal was awsome :clap:
 
shrimperblue said:
Thanks for your time and advice. I was thinking of trying to "tag along" with a pro but I dont know where to start?

I enjoy taking photos of people and I want to do it for job satisfaction and the end product.

.....yes and thanks for the equaliser lol, although you gotta admit...Peter Clarkes goal was awsome :clap:
Click to expand...

Best way to find a photographer to tag along with is to phone round your local photographers. They probably won't have a lot on at this time of year and they may be reluctant to teach a potential future rival so have a look further afield. Look on photographers.co.uk for a list of photographers by area.

That goal would have been even more awesome if it hadn't been deflected ;) (and that's the last time I'm mentioniing anything about football before this thread gets moved to Out Of Focus.)
 
We used to run a Wedding & Portrait business but gave it up due to family commitments and we were both still in full time employment.

It all started when my wife took some pictures at my cousins wedding but only as a guest. My cousin found them to be better than the 'paid pro' and we gave them a bunch of prints to use how they wanted. (she used film back then).

Someone suggested that she should do it professionally and we considered it and finally took the plunge.

My wife went on a Barratt & Co Wedding Photography course (fairly expensive but very good and taught her as much about running the business as taking the pictures). Soon after that a colleague of my wife asked her to take pictures at her wedding. We agreed and offered our services 'free' as a wedding gift to them.

Using the photos from this we made ourselves a preview album to show customers.

I set up a website and added it too all the wedding listing sites I could find, plus Yell, Tompson etc etc. We paid for a Yellow pages advert (we still get calls, 3 years since stopping!! :cuckoo: )

Gradually we started to get business and at our peak managed 20 weddings in one year, 10 or so portraits and 1 school prom. It was this year that we decided it was too much for us as we had a young daughter and full time jobs.

Wedding Photography is hard hard work!!

A typical wedding:

1) Initial Wedding interviews: 1-2 hours
2) 2nd Meeting to discuss photos, times etc: 1-2 hours
3) Visit venue: 1-2 hours
4) Wedding Day: 4-10 hours depending on package
5) Processing pictures: difficult to say 2-3 days
6) Producing proof album: 2-3 hours
7) Producing proof website: 2-3 hours
8) 3rd Meeting to discuss what pictures they want 1-3 hours
9) Producing final album: 4-5 hours
10) Organising reprints: 1-5 hours
11) Final meeting: 1 hour

Bare in mind this was with normal albums...digi albums maybe quicker!

As you can see this is not easy when you have other commitments as we did.

My advice would be to seriously consider what you are doing. Then, rethink it and if you are still serious then go for it.

Yes it is stressful (though not as stressful as you get told!), it is great fun (on the day), you get an enormous sense of satisfaction when you get thanked by B&G, their family etc etc and you get to see people of perhaps the happiest day of their lives!

Go to a wedding and watch what a 'pro' does and if you get a chance talk to him/her (We had plenty of people chat to us about it all and we were happy to talk). Ask them if you could 'hold their bags' on another wedding to see what they get up to etc. You will probably be surprised how many will be happy to have someone along!

ooh this is a long post...sorry! :lol:

**EDIT**

Did it pay our wages? Considering the time spent, possibly not enough to live on. However, Portraits and the Proms that we did, we certainly could have, as the time spent on these was no where near as much as weddings!

**/EDIT**

Good luck. :)

AB
 
thank you for your time, very much appreciated. How much roughly was the course? Was it full time/evenings etc?

Obviously I have a full time job out of the tog industry. I am covering semi-pro football matches at weekends right now. I am aiming for a lot of varied experience and then specialising and weddings is where I like to think I can go. Plus my mrs loves all that wedding stuff and is really really good with people (as its her job)
 
shrimperblue said:
thank you for your time, very much appreciated. How much roughly was the course? Was it full time/evenings etc?

Obviously I have a full time job out of the tog industry. I am covering semi-pro football matches at weekends right now. I am aiming for a lot of varied experience and then specialising and weddings is where I like to think I can go. Plus my mrs loves all that wedding stuff and is really really good with people (as its her job)
Click to expand...

Oh, this is going back 5 or so years...about £2500 I think. I think it was over a course of a year with about 10 practical sessions, all of which were mock wedding based with models and all done at weekends.

It seems very expensive to me but my wife practically ran the wedding photography all by herself so the course must have taught her something; I was just the 2nd photographer who dealt with the Pro-printer guys and the website! :lol:

There are plenty of other courses listed in the back of magazines so you may want to investigate others! You may want to try http://www.photographers.co.uk as this site USED to have alot of pro-wedding togs posting but I haven't used the site in a while.

AB
 
Andy
Very nice breakdown. Yes 30-35 hours work for a wedding is about right. When you break down into an hourly rate, you need to be charging quite a lot to make a decent livig.

When you have a full time job, it's easier to charge less and sell your services cheaper than if it was your sole source of income.

Another thing to consider is the initial investment. 2 cameras, a range of high quality lenses, flashes (making sure you have backups of everything), fast PC, software, printer and you are close to £7k. Then add maybe studio equipment and you are up another £2k....

So far my investment is a lot more than this!
 
EOS_JD said:
Andy
Very nice breakdown. Yes 30-35 hours work for a wedding is about right. When you break down into an hourly rate, you need to be charging quite a lot to make a decent livig.

When you have a full time job, it's easier to charge less and sell your services cheaper than if it was your sole source of income.

Another thing to consider is the initial investment. 2 cameras, a range of high quality lenses, flashes (making sure you have backups of everything), fast PC, software, printer and you are close to £7k. Then add maybe studio equipment and you are up another £2k....

So far my investment is a lot more than this!
Click to expand...

Thankyou

I didn't mention the equipment investment as I thought my post was long enough! :lol:

You are right though..we spent about £2k on studio lights and backgrounds etc (one school prom made up that amount! :woot: )

We actually managed with:

1 EOS 3 film with 28-135 IS, 1 EOS 30 film with standard 28-90.

When we went digital, My wife had the 20D (still has!) and I had a 300D with just the kit lens! That was it! :nuts:

The images we produced were pretty darned good if I must say so myself (:lol:)

I guess though, if we had carried on with it, then the equipment investment would have increased.

We are doing one wedding this year for a friend and we shall only be using the 20D with 28-135, my 400D with my 10-22, 17-70 and nifty-fifty.

AB
 
I suspect a lot of people will give the same answer as to how they got into it - asked by a friend which might lead to another job and then (hopefully) it takes off from there. It's also important to make some contacts with the associated companies in your area (bridalwear, etc) and build up a relationship with them. Not only will you be working with them but they can provide a good recommendation to potential clients.

35 hours is about right for a wedding if you're offering a full service package and put the hours in to get it done right, there's plenty of corners you can cut to save time and increase profits but it will show in the work which could then be reflected in the word of mouth feedback from your clients.

I also think it's better to do free rathe than cheap because as soon as you start charging you've formed a contract and are open to legal comeback should it all go wrong :(
 
I was asked by a friend about a year ago and I jumped at the chance. I've done two more since and I was contacted via word of mouth. I'm hoping to talk to a few more people about doing theirs and we were also put in contact via word of mouth.

I'm putting my own website together and I'm hoping from there I can start to take things further on a more commercial level.
 
andy borzi- did you use flashes for the prom?. I am thinking of hlping out at it next year as it may be good experience.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top