Photo Credit: www.digitalpicturezone.com
I recently had the opportunity to talk off the record with a wedding photographer about his profession. Below is a portion of the conversation. Click here to read Part Two The Lament of A Wedding Photographer.
1. How long have you been doing weddings?
A. I’ve been doing weddings since 1991, a couple of years after I started getting into photography. I was asked by a friend to do his wedding, and things just took off from there.
2. Do you do a lot of weddings?
A. I probably do 20 or so weddings a year. I could do more, but I have other projects to work on, and weddings aren’t as easy as people think they are to do.
3. Why not?
A. There’s a lot of work doing weddings. It pretty much consumes your entire day. While everyone else does their thing then moves on, photographers sometimes start the morning usually with the bride, and can sometimes end the day late in the evening after the cutting of the cake, if you can get away then. That’s a long day.
4. I never thought about that before. You get paid well though, right?
A. People don’t think the work we do is all that valuable all the time. Like I said, I could be with someone more than 10 hours in a day, yet they all want me to give them a deal. This isn’t a hobby; it’s my profession. You should see how much my equipment costs. I have one lens that cost me almost $5,000.
Anyway, it’s a long day, and I have to get lots of different shots throughout the day. That, plus lighting is always problematic. And sometimes the preachers put restrictions on where you can be and when you can be there, including sometimes saying we can’t use flash during the ceremony. Luckily I have this great lens, but before then I was stuck. And couples want perfect pictures every time.
5. Sounds like you don’t really like doing weddings.
A. Actually, sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. When people are great to work with it’s a great day. When they’re not, it can be the worst of times. I tend to get along well with people, so I don’t have all that many bad days. It’s still not easy, though. I’m really glad digital photography came along, though. I can take so many more pictures than before and weed out the bad ones without costing me a lot of money. And I usually get a free meal and some cake; hard to beat that.
This is the second half of my conversation with a wedding photographer:
1. Digital photography made things easier for you. Did it make your costs go down?
A. I don’t have to pay for film anymore, so that’s a good thing. But those costs shifted to the printing side. I used to take film in to the print guys, and then wait for a week until they called me to pick up the prints. Then I’d go through them all to see what bombed and remove those pictures.
Now I have to spend a lot of time looking at the pictures up front, and if they need altering I have to do that, which takes a lot more time. Then I take the digital copies to the print guys, who charge more because laser printers cost more than developing film used to cost, as well as the paper being more expensive. All of that, and the couple might not like most of the pictures and then won’t order them all, and I lose out there because of all the time I put into it.
2. So, costs went down in one way, but put more work on you in another?
A. Yup. It takes time away from the other work I do, because at a typical wedding I can easily take a thousand pictures or more. That’s more than I would take with film, since I can erase my SD card and use it again, and I can buy a bunch of them, and it gives me more opportunities to get some special shots that couples and guests might like. I load the pictures on the internet and then direct their friends and families to the page. But I need to make sure only the good pictures end up there; my reputation is always at stake.
3. Sounds like a tough way to make a living.
A. It’s not so bad when you consider the alternatives. I get to work for myself, which is great. Most of the people are great, and I get a lot of work from working weddings without having to advertise. I could work every weekend if I wanted to. So, I’m in control of at least a big portion of my income. And people will always get married, so I won’t have to worry about business drying up unless people stop liking me. I did have more people asking for deals this year because of the economy, but I held firm on my price. And I still did as many weddings as I wanted to. Everyone can’t say that. It can be a lot of fun, and it can be challenging. But I can’t think of anything else I’d like to be doing other than this.
See more:
Wedding Photography Survival Tips: The Preparation
Important Things To Consider When Choosing a Wedding Photographer
Wedding Photos: Do’s and Dont’s
Each year in almost every industry, there are people who make predictions of what’s to come. Sometimes they base it on data from previous years. Sometimes they’re just guessing, which means it doesn’t really matter whether they’re correct or not. Without giving out any names, since none of these entities are big name people, here are 5 predictions for weddings in 2010.
