want to shoot weddings? this might be interesting

First, the ‘marketing’ notes (how I got the job…skip this if you’ve heard it before)

A couple years ago, I got a digital camera (a Canon 300D). I took it to a street festival to get some practice shooting candids. A woman came up to me and asked what I was shooting for. I told her, “practice.” She asked if she could see my shots. I asked her who she was. She said, “I’m in charge…”

I told her sure, and the next day I took her a CD of my best shots. She said she would give me a booth at the next festival if I would let her use the images on her website. I said sure, she used them, I got credits, and I got my booth.

A few weeks after the festival (last June), I got a call from a woman who picked up my business card while I was away from my booth. She said she liked what she saw, and she wanted to know if I did weddings. I told her I wanted to, and that I was getting ready to shoot my first one. I also told her that I didn’t expect to be doing things the same way traditional wedding photographers do. She said that was fine, that she wasn’t looking for a traditional wedding photographer. I shared with her my vision of focusing on capturing the life and spirit of the event, rather than spend all the time shooting standard faire. She said that was exactly what she was looking for, and that even though some things had to be done to make her step-mother happy, she was primarily interested in someone capturing the essence of their party. Basically, in the course of that phone call, she decided that I was going to shoot her wedding.

The ‘Portrait’

Over the course of the summer, I honed my photojournalistic skills shooting for a number of local papers. I applied that experience to the first wedding I shot last August. By October, I was ready to tackle the portrait.

The shoot lasted a couple hours, and yielded a number of contenders. As luck would have it, the one selected was the last shot of the day…

The finished product was over the top. It was a 20×24″ print, printed on canvas and mounted on art board, with a hand-brushed shellac finish. Looked just like a painting. When the step-mother cried upon seeing it, I told her that I obviously undercharged her. She agreed.

The ‘Job’

The wedding was December 31, 2005. Yep, that’s right–the reception was actually a New Years Eve party!!! We had met in early December to finalize the plans, so when I showed up, I had a real good idea as to what to expect. The best part was that everything was being held at the same place. For the most part, it came off exactly as planned. I got some shots before the ceremony and during it. If I had blinked, I would have missed it–it was barely 10 minutes from processional to recessional. The bride was serious about getting to the party.

The only variable was the formals. I had stressed that I didn’t want to spend all night shooting them, and she had stressed that she didn’t want to be doing it either. What she did was this: a week before the wedding, she made a list of all the shots and itemized who was going to be in them; she gave the list to her best friend who organized it by participants. The night of the wedding, her best friend acted as a drill sergeant, calling out the names of those who were to be shot. It wouldn’t have worked any other way. The bride and groom were both from blended families, and they wanted every possible configuration shot. I ended up shooting nearly 30 different family portraits in about 45 minutes.

Once done with the portraits, the reception kicked in. I probably could have left around 9:30, but I ended up hanging around, shooting another hour and a half. I was having a good time, and decided to make the most of the opportunity to shoot. After all, how often do you really get to practice shooting other people? Even so, I still made it home in time to see the ball drop.

Post-Production

I knew this was going to be a monster. During the course of 5 hours, I managed to take about 700 frames. I quickly narrowed that down to about 500…

The thing was this: all she wanted was a coffee table book. She said she might want some prints to hang, and maybe some others might want some, but what she wanted was ‘the book.’ She had seen one done for a friend of hers, and she had decided that was it. Let me tell you, you have not experienced wedding post-production until you produce a book.

See, it’s not enough to edit an image so that it can be printed. You have to edit it so that it can be printed, and included in the book. You have to organize your images so that the story can be told. You can’t just thrown them into the book the way you would sequentially insert a set of glossies into an album. You have to lay out the pages. There are so, so, so many more variables involved…

…but, it is oh, so worth it!

I learned so much from this experience, and I really can’t wait to do another one. I wound up with what will be about an 80 page, hardback, 9″x12″ four-color glossy book containing 330+ hand-edited images. I primarily used Photoshop, but I also used FotoFusion for a lot of the collage work. I’m having it printed at MyPublisher. I think this will be a pretty good portfolio to be able to show the next time someone ask if I do weddings…