AboutJohn Wilson Expertise Over 25 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. I am a full-time self-employed wedding/portrait photographer. I can comprehensively answer most questions regarding portrait and wedding photography. I've operated a custom color and black & white photo lab processing films and photographic prints. I now shoot digital exclusively and process in Photoshop CS3.
Experience I have over 25 years experience working as a portrait/wedding photographer.
Education/Credentials School of hard knocks. Self-study. Purchasing all books I can find about portrait and wedding photography and attending photography seminars over the years.
Expert: John Wilson Date: 8/8/2007 Subject: Photography business??
Question I am a 19 year old Amateur photographer,just starting out on my own.I will be taking photography in college in a few weeks.I want to start my own small business and I have a few clients already intrested.How would I go about setting up prices etc.Would I need to print business cards?I have no studio.I thought perhaps at a park etc.Any ideas?
Answer Hi Cami,
Thank you for your photography questions. Without knowing a lot of other details, here is the best advice I can offer.
You describe yourself as a 19 year old amateur photographer. Knowing nothing else about you and your photography ability other than you being an amateur, I would recommend taking all the photography courses you can. Also study business and take a few psychology and sociology courses.
To answer your questions as a wedding photographer, I can tell you that you must LIKE PEOPLE. You must be a people person. This is actually true of any person who is self-employed. If you want to make a living serving people, it helps when you genuinely like people and interacting with them. Especially as a photographer when you are working very closely with people and want to show them at their best, you have to be sensitive to their needs and be an effective communicator. You want them to feel comfortable during the shoot with you and help them to relax for the best expressions. Everything I just said in this paragraph are contributing factors to how much you can charge for your work! It is part of what you must DO for setting up your prices at the higher end. But so many SPECIFICS have to be considered to objectively and fairly determine the actual market value of your photographic work.
Yes, you will need business cards. But most importantly you will need a website. A professionally produced website with great work, FAIR prices instead of OVER-PRICED work will help get you more photography work than you can handle.
Many photographers have their wedding photography OVER-PRICED. At least in my market. It has resulted in an oversaturation of newcomers who think all they have to do is push a button on a camera and charge at least $3,000 per wedding. How sad that so many of them go out of business the very first year.
Without a studio, you will be stuck meeting with people at their homes for appointments to see your work. Sometimes they will be there. Some of your calls will be fake. So make sure to confirm appointments. You can use a park when the season is right. When its hot and or humid, be sure to have plenty of towels to wipe away sweat.
Unlike many of my competitors who charge a minimum of $4,000 and who are NOT even certified photographers by the PPA, never won any photographic awards and who never studied under any renown photographer - GET YOURSELF CREDENTIALS. College and photography courses are a great start! These are valuable credentials which you may use as part of your resume to show potential customers you are worth higher prices than those competitors which don't offer these credentials.
For more information about wedding photography in particular and about how I do business as a wedding photographer, check out my website at http://www.weddingphotographics.net
