Not everyone can be a wedding photographer. One of the obvious reasons is that they could not handle the pressure that comes with it. Unlike portraits or arranged shots, you can’t tell the couple and the guests to redo certain parts of the ceremony because you didn’t get the shot you’ve wanted.
Days or even months before you shot for a wedding, you should already have techniques, skills, and mastery. In weddings, you can’t afford to make mistakes.
Nevertheless, with these tips in hand, you can reduce the learning curve and turn yourself into pro a lot faster than your competitors:
1. Don’t try to book right away. Just because you’ve made some few shots with your camera doesn’t mean that you can already be prepared to shoot someone’s wedding. You need to test your skills and judge for yourself if you have the potential that you can cultivate.
Instead, try attending the wedding of your friends and family. Shoot along with their professional photographers. Don’t try to direct or organize—just capture what you think are good moments. Then, allow others to criticize your work.
2. Take some time to know the couple. Most of the professional photographers would spend days or months to really sit down and talk with their clients. More than anything else, you want the couple to be satisfied with the results, and you can only do that when you can give them what they want.
On the other hand, being able to mingle with your client will give you an idea of their personalities and be able to reflect them in their photos. For instance, if your clients are romantic people, perhaps some of your pictures would have silhouettes.
3. Come up with your own portfolio. This is how you can market yourself to your potential clients. Besides, most of them would look for one, so you might as well be ready. You can upload them on your own website, or you can display them in your office, if you have one. Ensure that you can choose the best shots for your portfolio.
4. Plan, plan, plan. If you don’t want to mess up during the wedding or waste your time thinking on what to do, make sure that you already have a detailed and fool-proof plan in hand. For instance, you should already have a shot list in mind. These are ideas for your camera shots during the actual wedding.
You also need to identify the people who are going to help you out. After all, you would be bringing plenty of equipment with you. You may also need support who can take minor detailed shots for you.
5. Be a good director. Candid shots are great, because they always reveal the purest emotions of people during the event. However, couples and even guests would also like to do glamour shots, when they know that they would look their darn best. They also need photos that they could proudly display in their respective homes one day.
Thus, always ask for at least a couple of minutes from both the bride and the groom to take their well-directed shots. Perhaps you can do this at least 15 minutes before the actual ceremony. You can make directed shots again after the reception. Don’t forget to include their guests too.
6. Have a backup. You don’t know when technical problems could happen. It’s always best to bring along extra cameras, battery, and even staff. You may even want to use different lenses for both of your cameras for your various techniques. Of course, ensure that you know how to manipulate the extra camera, or else, it would turn out to be useless.
7. Learn from the pro. You can also speed up your learning process on wedding photography if you work closely with a professional. Look for someone who can be a good mentor to you. Perhaps his or her style has captured your attention, and you want to learn more about it.
Here’s a warning for you, though. Not everyone would be open to the idea. Others would see you as competition, so you would definitely get some rejections. Nevertheless, as long as you persevere, you would definitely find someone out there.
You can also read books published by world-renowned wedding photographers as well as reviews, or attend lectures on wedding photography.
8. Always practice. Even if you don’t have any wedding shoots, use your free time to practice some shots. You can perhaps try techniques on how to create different perspectives. You can check out nice wedding locations and discover great angles that can be excellent suggestions to your future clients.
Source-Tips for new wedding photographers
Professional Photography: Create the best! by howtophotos
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Tags: digital wedding
These are the good tips to be a good wedding photographer. Even there is some good tips for professional wedding photographer also such as know the couple etc.