AboutJohn Wilson Expertise Over 27 years specializing exclusively in professional wedding photography. I can answer most questions relating directly to wedding photography concerning the business, film, digital, traditional & digital labs, marketing, effects, pricing & packaging, shooting outdoors and in-studio with multiple flash, color management and creating magazine style wedding albums. I can't answer questions regarding other fields of photography.
Experience Over 27 years experience photographing weddings professionally. Past 4 years shooting digital exclusively.
Organizations Better Business Bureau.
Education/Credentials Going to photography seminars and reading all the wedding photography books I can find then applying the techniques and new styles I've learned with each wedding. You always need to grow and learn to keep up in this field. With each new wedding you photograph, you must challenge yourself to do better work than your previous wedding. You must always have the goal of making the wedding photographs for a bride & groom be the best photographs they have seen of any wedding.
Question Hi John,
Thank you for taking the time to help people on this website! I am an "all experts"er also, (in the picture framing area), so i know how much of yourself you must give. many thanks in advance!
So, the basic gist of my question is this:
For 5 years, i have had a picture framing shop which has been great, but has taken my attention away from what i love, photography. I have been a semi-pro photographer for about 12 years, working in portraits and weddings with an "old-school" artsy edge. I have a degree in fine art photography, but my art school, while well-reputed, gave us little in the technical side of photography as a career.
As I transition into doing photo full time, i am having issues with many things, most of which are flash and lens issues.
i took a flash and lighting class, and everything made sense and was great. i can apply all the techinques in studio, and understand the basics, and have even learned a lot on my own over the years. my main question is that in doing weddings, making decisions on the fly is very stressful for me, and I find myself worrying about the technical side while I should be certain i'm capturing what I should be capturing. the worry takes my attention away from the art of the day, which bothers me. While I love shooting weddings, I feel that I could be doing a better job for my clients if i just knew a few more tricks that would make the day less about my camera and more about the couple. i feel very lucky that every wedding I have shot the photo gods have been looking down upon me and all have gone beautifully, with great results, but as i hopefully start to do more, i want to feel confident that i won't be faced with something I can't deal with.. ie: bad rain at an ugly/outdoor location, capturing HUGE wedding parties with no lighting system save for two flashes, relying on autofocus to capture people and being disappointed with the result, low black ceiling reception hall, etc.. I'm sure you've dealt with them all! I feel sometimes my flash photos turn out beautifully, and sometimes they're bright subject/very dark background, which i don't love.
Being that i usually shoot weddings alone or maybe with a second photographer, what lenses/stuff would you recommend I dont show up without? I tend to not change lenses very much during a wedding, so is there a pair of lenses that you'd recommend i focus my attention on?
I guess my questions are very vague, apologies..
I am basically just looking to take my service to the next level, and I would appreciate any words of wisdom or general advice.
Many thanks again..
Answer Hi Sara,
Thanks for the photography questions. Your questions are broad in scope and since you mentioned you are also looking to take your business to the next level I will answer your questions the best I can with that idea in mind. Also will include a few other suggestions and simply my opinions which might benefit other readers here at All Experts.
I would like propose more photographers adding video to their services. I've been seeing a lot of videographers taking up (or trying to take up) photography. Their strategy apparently is to capture more bookings by offering both video and photography to brides. Generally speaking, I think we can all agree those videographers can be expected to capture more higher-end brides as well using that strategy.
Now, if you are an experienced journalistic photographer, it can be very easy to acquire the skills to shoot professional quality video. So far it has been my experience that most brides really just want video of the Ceremony. For the past several years brides haven't had much choice when it came to video coverage. Videographers would have so much money invested in video hardware and software that they would understandably have to charge $900+ for any of their video services to a bride. But with today's video cameras and video processing software, it is very easy for a talented photographer to offer video coverage of the Ceremony alone for just a few hundred dollars. I set up the video camera on a tripod and my 2nd shooter and I shoot from the sides and sometimes everywhere else during the Ceremony with our still cameras. Our still cameras also have video capability so we can easily do a "two-video camera production". While we shoot with our still cameras, we alternately shoot video footage which will be edited together with the footage captured by the video camera. The video camera I use is high definition capable and small enough to fit into a bag and wear on my waist when not needed. Cost $1500. I charge $600 for alternately shooting video during the entire wedding day and edit this down to 1 to 1½ hours on DVDs for standard definition or blu-ray discs for high definition. So it doesn't take long for video hardware and software to pay for itself. It also helps me to book those higher end brides I would have probably otherwise lost.
The vast majority of brides we shoot want journalistic with only some semi-posing at most. It would be a waste of time and money for me to show a lot of the old traditional wedding photography I shot years ago. But there are still brides with parents who would like to see some of the old cliche shots that were popular 20+ years ago. For those, like the father with his pants pockets pulled out or the bride's father holding a shot gun, we usually set those up at the reception for fun and laughs. And we sure do see a lot of fun and laughs when those are requested. One photographer shoots those while the other photographer is shooting the smiles and laughter of the family and guests looking on. The mothers usually put those shots in their albums and the brides usually go with a lot more journalistic.
Working with multiple slaved flashes is a big help. Even when your lighting isn't technically accurate, it will often look "creatively acceptable" as long as you got it in the ballpark. I see the work of many other photographers locally who do this. We use slaved flash which also fully dedicate to our Canon cameras. Our flashes are Canon 580EX. Very easy to adjust the output of each flash for the proper exposure and fire them all off with on-camera flashes. We use several of those on cameras, hand-held and on stands as needed depending on the venue. For background illumination, you might aim a flash at the distant background such as a wall with the proper flash output set. Another flash aimed at the ceiling as long as it is white for bouncing diffused light down on the people. Then your camera flash aimed directly at people perhaps knocked down a full stop for fill - depending on the specific lighting situation. We usually shoot like this at most reception venues. This ensures great illumination and no harsh shadows or dark backgrounds.
Sometimes lenses with autofocus need to be sent to the manufacturer for adjustment. Sometimes there are even just software downloads which can correct focus issues.
I don't like changing lenses so we work with four different still cameras. I can work faster and not worry about any dust between lens changes. If the bride likes the fish-eye look, and this is popular when done in moderation, you may simply place an attachment in front of your regular lens to get that effect. My favorite lens is the Canon 24-70mm. You can also use photoshop to create a fish-eye look later to any image.
Also some photographers don't know there are such things as professional lenses and cheaper lenses. The professional lenses I use help to avoid vignetting in the corners of my shots.
We also shoot RAW, custom process and the JPEGs created from the RAW files are also further tweaked in photoshop. Shooting RAW helps to make sure you can quickly go from one lighting situation to another when you don't have time to change camera settings. By shooting RAW, your exposure can be off as much as 4 to 5 stops and you will still be able to create a professional quality image. This is great insurance when you are shooting a lot of journalistic images and just don't have time to change camera settings to capture technically perfect JPEGs for each changing light situation. This should enable you to relax more. I think it's great that you constantly keep the technical things in mind during the course of shooting the day - that's one of the big things we professional wedding photographers are paid to do. Otherwise, anyone can pick up a camera and take great shots. But it isn't that easy.
You mentioned "tricks". Some things like which side of the camera you have your flash is a biggy. When the bride and groom are standing next to each other and you have to use flash, of course we don't want the flash casting a shadow from one's face onto the face of the other. During the cake cutting we usually don't want to have our camera flash on the same side as the cake or the cake might blow out and you can even get a shadow from the cake onto the bride and groom. Then there is the candlighting ceremony. If you have to use flash, you have to be careful that there arms are not blocking their faces and at the same time make sure their arms don't cast a shadow onto their faces. These are all just a few little tricks about using on-camera flash and these are things professional wedding photographers must keep in mind to help ensure the professional quality of the images they provide.
Well, I hope there were a few ideas here that might be useful in some way. Thanks again for your photography questions.
