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 QUESTION: I photographed weddings for my family, and the word has spread. I now have people calling me to photograph their weddings too. Can you give me tips on etiquette as a wedding photographer? What shouldn't you do? (Take pictures from isle, step in front of guests etc)
I do photography on my own time, usually in a home studio. Senior portraits, Children & family portraits etc. But in the studio your not interrupting anything if asking the group to move around lol.
I am not used to photographing events professionally if you want to call it that since I've only done 2, and they were both for family. And now I have 3 more lined up, but these people are looking at me as a professional (a paid one at that), not as their little sister "the photographer" doing them a favor.
I know they are expecting the photojournalist approach as well as the traditional staged photos. I plan on meeting with them first to discuss when they want to do this. To make sure everything goes smoothly what things should I cover with them?
I know I'll get more confident with experience, but I just like to be prepared. It is after all someones wedding.
Thank you for any tips or advice you could give me. :)
ANSWER: Hi Tina,
Thanks for your wedding photography questions.
The first advise I should perhaps give is, "Don't rush yourself". Don't jump in without first finding out how deep the water is. Based on your limited experience and your confessed need to be better prepared, you might want to first prepare more before actually booking more weddings. The last thing you want to have happen when first starting out is a very unhappy bride suing you for 10 times the price of the wedding photography contract.
Once you are licensed and collecting fees because you claim to be a professional wedding photographer but on the day of a wedding you discover lighting and other situations on location which you don't have the photographic knowledge or equipment to handle, you could be sued for providing inferior images if any images at all.
So to protect yourself and the brides who book you, I recommend that you do NOT make any pretense to experience and skills you know you have not yet developed. Be painfully honest with prospective customers. Make sure they know your limited experience and price your work accordingly.
As far as etiquette, just use common etiquette but do NOT allow guests to keep you from doing your job. Go to the wedding to have a great time. Treat the bride and groom like rock stars. Be kind and patient with everyone. Just follow the Golden Rule. But do the job you were paid to do.
You may go to the home page of my website http://www.weddingphotographics.net and click on the Customer Login and Username: John Password: Wilson
to access some useful information about working a wedding day. You will find tips and ideas especially in the wedding photography checklist and in the PDF entitled, "Pitfalls For Brides To Avoid".
A few wedding photography books I would like to recommend you read are: "Professional Techniques for Digital Wedding Photography" by Jeff & Kathleen Hawkins, "The Art of Digital Wedding Photography" by Bambi Cantreel and Skip Cohen, "Master's Guide to Wedding Photography" by Marcus Bell, "The Best of Wedding Photography" by Bill Hurter, "Professional Techniques for the Wedding Photographer" by Georgia Schaub with photos by Ken Sklute, "The Art of Wedding Photography" by Bambi Cantrell and Skip Cohen, "Digital Wedding Photography" by Paul F. Gero.
Without reading and studying books in which seasoned pros relate many of their experiences, you will have to learn the hard way on your own. Learning the hard way is NOT the best way to learn when it comes to wedding photography! So it really is best to learn and be professionally prepared before booking weddings. Now, if you were working under an experienced photographer and you are there as the "2nd shooter" that is different. The only requirement I have for my 2nd shooters is they must be completely familiar with the operation, functions and modes of their digital cameras. They must also know how to help set-up creative multiple flash arrangements for both formal group shots and for broad illumination of various reception venues.
Well, your questions were broad in scope. I hope there are specific situations described and answered on my website and in the books I recommend which you will find useful.
QUESTION: Thank you for your book recommendations, there are so many on the market I wouldn't know where to start. Not to mention sometimes you don't always get books that are helpful, and it becomes a waste of money. I would know, I own about 100 photography books, half I found helpful.
I am being VERY upfront with my skills. I'm not trying to sabotage myself, but I even recommend other affordable photographers I've found (for my own wedding that's coming up) because I don't want a bride thinking she will get the same photos as a professional photographer.
Including the fact that I can't afford/don't own professional equipment. Which I personally think makes a big difference when your not dealing with strictly a studio (controlled lighting) setting. The payment was actually offered upfront from the bride, so I guess you could call it more of a donation. I even offered to do it for free (for experience) but they still offered payment. Bonus for me. :D
I own light reflectors (2) and a camera. A Canon power shot S3 6 mega pixel to be exact.
Which leads me to my follow up question (sorry for the long response).
I can't afford to run out and buy a lot of other equipment or even a better camera. What are lighting situations I should beware of? I am thinking church lighting is a no go, but I would like your opinion as well. The last two I did were outside, during the afternoon which left me with good lighting.
Also I read you shouldn't use a flash at all during the ceremony. What is your take on that? I've always had trouble with low lighting and moving subjects, but if you don't use a flash and its a low light situation how to keep from getting blurred photos?
And lastly, camera comes with a zoom, but its not one I can stand in the back and get an up close shot of the bride & groom at the alter with. How can I work around this, with out getting in the way or being obnoxious. (A wedding I attended once, the photographer was literally 2 feet away from the bride and groom during the entire ceremony. Not to mention when the bridal party was walking out they were walking up and down the side of the isle to capture the photos. I found it distracting, but maybe that's the way to do it??)
Thanks again! I've read a lot of your past answers too, I just wanted to say thank you for sharing all of your experience and knowledge with the rest of us. Maybe you should write a book of your own :P
~Tina
ANSWER: Hi Tina,
Thanks for the follow-up. Some of the background information you provided there has cleared up some questions that were in the back of my mind. No problem about the length of your response as I can enjoy talking shop all day.
Ok, regarding lighting situations and flash. There are some churches where the only lighting comes from florescents up in the drop ceiling just 10 feet above the floor. In this situation you are faced with shadows in their eye sockets, under their noses etc. The lighting is more often spot lights in larger churches. Many photographers today will just plan on gray scaling or simply desaturating these images, maybe throw in a little dodging and burning-in to spruce them up and call those black & white. Many brides will think,"Hmmm, that's black & white and that looks "creative" and so I like it". The problem. Even those look like crap. But what the unsophisticated bride doesn't know won't hurt her so many "photographers" today get away with hurting our industry like that.
The professional way of handling those lighting situations: Those lights should be turned OFF. During consultations with the bride, it might be suggested she have a candle-lite Ceremony. Depending on the venue - maybe a LOT of candles. Also depending on whether it is an evening or daytime Ceremony. But then . . . some churches will not allow candles sometimes because of fire marshal ordinances and insurance. But then . . . there are also artificial candles which are even battery powered. But then . . . even with a lot of artificial battery powered candles we can still have the problem with darkened eye sockets or just simply the entire area still being too dark to photograph with the proper exposure. Now what?
First, make sure you have set the highest sensitivity on your camera to get good exposures. Still not enough light? Well, you will have to use flash. Since you might be working in a candle-lite Ceremony, you knock your flash output down just enough so your flash doesn't blow out the "mood" or atmosphere created by the candles and it fills in the shadows in the eye sockets etc. But what if flash isn't allowed by the church? (I'm also assuming you are shooting RAW since RAW files can have exposure post-production adjusments made as much as 5+ stops and produce pro quality images).
If flash is not allowed (which of course would have actually been realized long before the wedding during consultations) you would have told the bride that some lights will have to be turned on. Which lights? Preferrably when possible spot lights and side lights which do NOT directly fall down on the wedding party. This of course is still an option even when flash is allowed.
Ok, the problem with any spot lighting falling on the bride is the dress may very well get blown out while the rest of your image looks very dark. Also, the color temperature of the spot lights, your flash and any side lighting on the walls will probably NOT make a good mix. Your resulting image will suffer bad color. The BEST way to provide the bride a professional image in these mixed lighting conditions is to be shooting RAW first of all. Then in post-production RAW processing you create two or three JPEG versions of that image. Each image is adjusted for proper white balance, color balance and exposure/tone of each mixed light. In photoshop you manually merge all three of these JPEGs into a single image containing all the selectively corrected qualities by layering them and using the erase tool in various opacities.
The result is a color image which the bride also wants and it is professional. It captures her Ceremony the way it looked to the human eye instead of being an amateur photographic image with lots of faults created by the limitations of today's photographic technology.
Of course, to do all this is tedious and time-consuming. So you must always bear in mind while you are shooting to limit shooting images which will NEED this work in order to produce a professional image. This is another great reason photographers should try to go to the wedding rehearsal. Most wedding rehearsals are just the day before and around the same time of day as the Ceremony itself will be. This gives you an opportunity to check the lighting and to discover what if any changes you may need to plan with the bride (or better, with the person appointed to control lights). Also, even when the Ceremony is at a location you may have shot at a dozen times before, you may still want to go to the rehearsal just in case the lighting or anything else may have changed since that last time you were there.
No, it is not professional etiquette for a so-called photographer to be right up there with the wedding party. A professional photographer DOES have the lens needed to get great shots from the distance so they are not a distraction to the Ceremony. This is especially expected of photographers who are suppose to be journalistic and "hiding in the background" capturing great candid moments. Capturing great candid moments is not as easy to do when a photographer has to get in your face to get the shot.
More etiquette: When the bride enters to walk towards the groom, do NOT stand in the aisle between the groom and bride. Allow the groom the opportunity to see her. That's also a great time to grab a shot of him seeing her for the first time. After a few seconds, then go into the aisle to get as many shots as you can of the bride being escorted down the aisle.
Well, I better stop for now. Hope there is some useful ideas here.
My camera does not come with a RAW option. All the images are JPEG.
Some more info I found about my camera that I wanted to get your opinion (though the more I find out the more I want a new one that i can't afford lol)
I have it set on Large (2816x2112)? and setting is very fine. This comes out to about a 9x12 inch image w/ 180 resolution without cropping ....
What I'm thinking is this means I will have to compose all my shots on the camera otherwise they will not be able to pull off an 8x10. Does that sound right? If that's true can you give me tips on quick composition? Also how should I explain this?
And have you ever used HDR (high dynamic range)...where you bracket an image and then merge them? I read something about it online, and I was wondering if you knew more about it.
Definitely shoot at the highest JPEG setting you have. Lately these days wedding photographers rarely use the rule of thirds in composing. Gallery 63 of my website http://www.weddingphotographics.net/gallery63.htm shows some examples of popularized tilted compositions. I don't think there are tips for quick composition. That will come with experience and especially as you develop your photography style. The only composition rule you might want to always keep in mind is simply leaving a "little extra space" around everything you shoot if you are concerned about cropping to standard print sizes.
I've attached an example of a high dynamic range image of Patten Chapel at UTC Chattanooga Tennessee. HDR is usually done of still life images so that you can capture a normal exposure, an under exposure to bring out more details in the highlights and an over exposure to bring out details in the shadow tones. The actual amount of under and over exposure is best determined by the photographer depending on whether the image is going to be printed in black & white or other end use. Having a digital camera which can rapidly shoot all three (preset) exposures is great for wedding photographers. Then the normal procedure is to open these three JPEGs in photoshop by clicking File > Automate > Merge to HDR. Photoshop will then automatically merge your bracketed shots. But this usually leaves a LOT to be desired. There are stand-alone programs and photoshop plug-ins which provide superior performance, but nothing beats shooting RAW, creating the JPEGs you want during RAW processing and then custom merging these images.
Wedding photographers shoot very little still life. But, for wedding photography, instead of firing off three bracketed exposures of "problem scenes", it is better to shoot RAW. In RAW post-production, you can get your ONE shot, and quickly and easily create the perfect exposure, contrast, tone, color balance, white balance and MORE you want in two, three or even more JPEGs. No digital camera today can be pre-set to bracket for all of these JPEG characteristics. Further, when you manually process these JPEGs created by your custom RAW processing, you have complete control to ensure the highest quality results. No camera or computer will ever be able to make human judgements like this. By merging these JPEGs in photoshop manually by layering them together and using various opacities with the erase tool, you will be able to create images with selective contrast, selective tone, selective white balance and MORE that Ansel Adams could not even imagine being able to do using a film camera and every wet lab trick in the book.
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