I just recently started thinking more and more about wedding photography, and so this is what I decided to do my research on.
It makes for a pretty good income and they usually take place during weekends, so that makes it a lot easier to cover. Plus its all on location so there is no need for a studio setting, and the selling will be done in the home so that makes no need for an office.
Wedding photographs can be taken with almost any equipment you own, so that's cool. Although most photographers use a standardize camera with a 21/4 35mm, and one thing to remember is that the smaller equipment is easy to hold, and is easily maneuvered.
Another important key to wedding photography (and most other photography professions) is to always bring spares, you must have two camera bodies, two strobe units, and three or more synch cords. The reasoning for this is kinda obvious; if your camera stops working midway through an assignment their not just gonna stop the wedding and re-plan it, the wedding will go on with or without you, so it's always good to have spares just in case a catastrophe like that happens.
When it comes to flash equipment , it isn't actually necessary to have identical units. The price of a good unit would cost me about $60 or more, but the good ones come with a high-powered battery pack so that is a plus. A wedding photographer is usually hired to shoot the wedding, the reception, and the time whenthe bride is home when she's getting ready for the ceremony.
The price rises according to the time spent and the degree of coverage.
All weddings are usually photographed in negative color film.
Most professional photographers offer 4 x 4 or 4 x 5 proofs, and a suggestive thing to do is mount together the proofs in an album before you show them to the bride and groom. Because a album of the proofs looks more professional then just loose prints. Never show your client all the pictures you took, you don't really want to have discards anyways but if you have some photos where it's to dark or to light or the groom is opening his mouth, you want to get rid of those and you want your client to think that every picture you took was pure perfection. This is very helpful information for future business cost.
You should charge about a minimum of $25 an hour, figure an hour for the wedding, an hour before the ceremony in the brides home, and maybe two hours for the reception.
Some must have photos you will have to take; the bride coming down the aisle on her fathers arm, the bridesmaids and best man, the wedding ceremony, the throwing of the rice, the bridal bouquet, and the couple dancing and with their parents.
As far as advertising goes, you can use many methods, such as "the student market" most high schools have a newspaper and/or yearbooks that are avidly read by the student body. Most colleges and junior colleges have newspapers too, and these are an even better placement for your advertisement.
For your advertisement to be effective it must be fairly large and have a photograph that spells out romance.
Where did you get your information? Did you talk to anyone who actually does this for a living? Did you find any information about how many weddings you would need to shoot each month to get by?
ReplyDeleteFrom a book called:
ReplyDelete"How to become a professional photographer."
And yes, my teacher C.B. is actually a wedding photographer and so I got a lot of my information from him too, I also got to see a few of his wedding albums on the field trip, so that was a really big help.