how is the wedding industry really like

[ChrisPerry]

Issues will vary from wedding to wedding to some degree, but also it will vary based on the market you're trying to serve.
Low end - price is all that matters. They don't look at style or album or anything else.
Move up to mid market and clients want more handholding, more editing, just expect a bit more than your package offers.
I've not hit the high end (yet) to know what challenges lie ahead.

The age of the bride will affect things too. What images have they been looking at? Those images are what they consider 'normal' and that's what sets their expectations. I really hate the week after the wedding when the bride has seen her photos and she asks "But you didn't ....." and you have to explain to her "But I don't do the flowers on the train shot, unless you specifically ask for it" or "You didn't get a picture of my aunt Donna!".

You can explain to them till you're blue in the face during consults over this stuff, but they hear only what they want and expect what they expect.

I had a bride last weekend that wanted outdoor formals. So what you ask? She wanted them at 6:30 pm in late november....It's completely dark outside then. When we talked the night before at the rehearsal she agreed to skip them, (a month + of asking fellow photogs garnered few ideas). Driving home from the rehearsal dinner I had an idea and she got her outside formals. I got some cool photos, and everyone is happy.

Just like the wedding itself, there are highs and lows. There are good parts to the business (like knowing I have booked weddings, and therfore income, next year) and low parts (like meeting 4 brides in a row and not booking any of them).

Portrait clients can be difficult to, so it's not limited to just wedding photography.

One of the night shots (i liked her fur wrap too much not to find a way to use it!)

[dkphoto1]

Michael:

Been at this for 40+ years. There have been worse days for me. Details dont matter, what does, is do you want to do weddings or not. But back to the basic question, what is the industry like, you can correctly say it is in a state of decline, in a state of change, and will be harder to make a living at in the future. The digital age has fractionated the industry, allowing any one with ~1.5+ K $ to enter it, WITH OR WITHOUT, experience, knowledge, or MANNERS.
You must be able to separate you self from the pack and the best way to do this is with knowledge of the basic of wedding photography, because no matter how wacky the bride is about photojournalism, he mom will BUY well posed, well lit, family photos. Remember, American families gather for wedding and funerals. Sell the wedding photos no one else has. And, make sure you contract prohibits Uncle Charlie from shooting your posed groups

[Ross Throndson]

Originally Posted by Jerry Skrocki

There was no alternate location and on the day of the wedding we had 60 mph winds with scattered showers. The rain held off for the mountain top ceremony, but the wind took the brides veil as soon as she exited the limo. The bridesmaids were dressed in skimpy dresses and were shivering throughout the ceremony. Lighting was horrible with varying degrees of darkness. The reception hall was a 45 minute drive in traffic affected by the storm. Traffic lights were out from power loss by downed trees. The reception hall was lit by battery powered emergency lights in the corners of the room. The emergency generator was reserved for food service. Shortly after the bridal party arrived, the Best Man got really drunk and started a fist fight with another member of the bridal party. The local police were called and while trying to get the man under control was literally rolling around on the front lawn with him. The Best Man was taken away in handcuffs.

Wow...that's too much, Jerry....sounds like a Great Movie though....lol.....Glad to hear you survived it!

Hope i never have to shoot a wedding!

[David_Buzzard]

I really love shooting weddings, and I take it very seriously. You owe the client a much higher duty to perform than in any other discipline of photography. It's a one-off event, and you are in complete control of the photos, and totally responsible for anything that goes wrong. You need to be able to get good pictures in bad conditions, and make the couple feel good about it. I knew a news photographer friend of mine who shot a wedding for another friend of mine. I was in the wedding party, and I could see that he had made a total mess of the photos. He spent a year doing post production fixes, and every time he would call the bride, she would start the conversation with, "you bastard, you ruined my wedding photos".

A big plus for me is that my family owned a campground/resort for years, and every summer I would come home and help run it. That gave me a lot of customer service experience that really makes the difference in shooting weddings. I don't think you have to be an incredible photographer as much as a good people manipulator.

If you do run into a difficult situation, and that could just be something as common as a rainy day, you have to be able to not only get good photos, but make the couple feel good about not having a sunny day. You're also dealing with couples who may never have sat for a formal portrait, and you have to make them comfortable to that as well.

David Buzzard's Tehcnical Blog

[Alan_Ackoff]

George Jardine has just posted a great Adobe Lightroom podcast of an interview with wedding photographer/photojournalist Catherine Hall. It will address a lot of your questions. You can find it by going HERE.

Hall feels that by continuing to pursue challenging personal work in between her wedding jobs she keeps herself sharp for shooting weddings. It's a good approach. I think if you continue to grow and improve as a photographer then you will enjoy shooting weddings.

It comes down to attitude. Assuming you have an eye for pictures, and know how to use your equipment, then your success or failure will depend on your attitude. IMO the most important thing to remember is that it's all about the bride (and groom). It's not about the photographer. Egocentric artist types do not make good wedding photographers.

-Alan

[EricC]

I shot my last wedding in August after 20 years. I doubt that I will long to shoot a wedding anytime soon. I agree with anyone who says that shooting weddings is by far one of the most stressful shooting assignments. Lately to add to the difficulty of the job, everyone in the room will either have a Rebel or a cell phone and be determined to prove that they can do as good a job as you.

This last wedding I had a 'friend' of the groom that would slide under my shooting position and fire off a few frames with his Fong flash-whatever firing straight up at my chin. The third time he did this I had a few quite polite firm chosen words for him, and the rest of the evening was grand. Dealing with these people became tiring, I decided 18 moths back to end it.

I remember a middle aged couple who were getting married the 3rd time 'round. When the time for the family portraits came everyone but the Bride's daughter was present. After a 15 minute search and a heated exchange between bride and groom, we were told to shoot without her. We did, even posing one group shot with a hole in it so that if she turned up I could have her pasted in. At the end of the evening I found out from the M/C that the girl was home from school for the wedding and had skipped out with her boyfriend for a quickie. The bride sent us a nasty note for not having kept track of the tramp.

By far the least stressful wedding I've ever shot was for a 2 time super bowler. This couple was SOOOO laid back, unassuming, carefree, that if every wedding was like their's I'd have cut my prices 15% and may stayed in the field a little longer.

I also think that digital has impacted the business in a less than beneficial way. Mondays were a half day around here. We would catalog/package/ship film, do some recording keeping or other light tasks and be closed by 11, noon the latest. Storage of film required nothing more than good file cabinets. Negs didn't get corrupted, or need to be backed up. The lab never called me to complain about the color-space of my film or ask me to correct anything.

My D2x cost us well over $10K considering the needed upgrade in storage. I absolutely HATE the fact that digital turned ME into the lab rat. If I had wanted to run a lab I would OPENED a lab. There are a few labs that have cropped up that will take raw files and do the PP but the numbers are small and the premium is ridiculous (last time I looked). I just read in the PPA mag about a studio in FL that has a 60TB IN HOUSE data center. 60 TB!!! Now not only are we lab rats but IT geeks to boot!

I really wonder, if all things were to be laid out and considered, are studio really better off today than pre digital?

I know of at least one shooter of HIGH HIGH end weddings that went back to film. He has the negs scanned for the internet gallery but at the end of the day he now has good old film as his backup no more worries of that the windows limits on penta-bytes might be or any of the nonsense.

Drew is right about putting everything into your contracts. We have a 3 year pledge on files as part of ours. I didn't want to get caught with file formats or storage media (5.25 floppies) that would be imposable or cost 3x more to deal with because somebody dragged their feet.

I much happier in jeans shooting.

[KevinStecyk]

Here's a blog by wedding photographers.

FlashFlavor


They've got some terrific images. Check out this post:

FlashFlavor » Blog Archive » for the next time you encounter mayan warriors

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