Becoming a Wedding Photographer Assistant

[susan_winn]

<p>Susan, I am based in Colorado. </p>

<p>I have heard several time about becoming the main photograph competition. I never thought of that and I think I really need to analysis what I can do for them and if this is the best option for learning the ropes.<br>

Now I am curious how did all of you learn to be wedding photographers? did you just read books and go out shoot wedding and learn or where you second shooters? </p>

[picturesque]

<p>I did a bit of both apprenticeship and jumping in on my own. I apprenticed at a local photo studio when I was in high school. Years later, after a detour into a business career, I jumped in quickly, reading everything I could get my hands on. No internet at the time so I couldn't go as fast as one can now. My self taught routine included doing things like spending hours at the pro photo store, looking at everything in it to figure out what it was used for. I considered this part of my education.</p>

<p>If you go on your own, it is harder, because you may miss things that may be brought to your attention if you apprentice. Plus, apprenticing is safer, since you don't risk your clients' images by doing dumb mistakes. Dumb mistakes could cost you your career. There are also still certain technical concepts which may have been taught to you in photo school, but aren't used in quite the same way as in wedding photography. People skills are something you can't really learn in a classroom.</p>

<p>If you are mature, and have common sense, a natural ability to deal with people, and the discipline to learn, you can do well jumping in. If you don't, it will be hard.</p>

[chris_lawman]

<p>I stumbled across this post whilst looking for something unrelated but found it interesting to read the different responses.</p>

<p>I run my own successful wedding photography company but was once in your position. I don't personally have a degree in photography but I don't think your education (Self taught or otherwise) has much to do with the problem you are having.</p>

<p>When I started out, I searched high and low for assisting jobs but many photographers were simply not interested and the ones that were, already had assistants. But I eventually found a photographer that was willing to let me tag along. I photographed about 5 weddings as an assistant and felt that I had a sufficient body of work to do it alone. </p>

<p>I followed 3 steps:<br>

I built my portfolio<br>

I created a website<br>

I marketed my website</p>

<p>My advise to any start up photographer is simple. </p>

<p>Create a strong portfolio - if you think you would hire yourself then customers probably will too.</p>

<p>Create a professional looking website; simple, functional and easy to use. you don't need to overload your customers with the inns and outs of yourself or how your company works.</p>

<p>Display your work. List your services and what they will cost and give your customer a means of contacting you.</p>

<p>Avoid displaying your work on sites such as Flickr or Facebook until you first have an actual website of your own.</p>

<p>Once you feel your website is good enough, market it. I used Google Adwords to start with and I found this to be very successful. I also used many of the free advertising platform, i.e. Yell.com and various directories, but ultimately you have to spend money to make money.</p>

<p>Somebody else on this post said that you have to have business acumen. They are 100% right. You can be the best photographer in the world but if you don't have any business sense, you will not succeed. Always look at things from your customers perspective and then combine this with what works well for you.</p>

<p>There is a lot to running your own business and it will likely take up most of your time, so forget about having much of a social life within the first few years of starting up.</p>

<p>There are lots of things to consider when running your own business and you should be thinking years ahead of yourself; Such things as:</p>

<p>Accounting<br>

Website maintenance<br>

Insurance<br>

Expenses, i.e. Fuel costs; website costs; equipment repairs, maintenance and upgrades; backup systems<br>

Contracts (Very important)<br>

Workflow<br>

Will you be employing additional staff?<br>

Laws and regulations surrounding your industry<br>

Which photographic services are you going to provide, i.e. Portraits, events, wedding, etc.</p>

<p>It's probably best if you just pick one discipline to begin with, i.e. Weddings or portraits. This way you can focus all of your efforts.</p>

<p>Your main focus should be customer satisfaction and never losing sight of your passion as a photographer. You probably wont make much money in your first year of trading because you will need to invest most of your profit back into the future success of your company. As I said before, "you have to spend money to make money".</p>

<p>There are assisting jobs available but you need work very hard to find them; just don't give up.</p>

<p>Take on constructive criticism and ignore those who just wish to upset you or put you down.</p>

<p>And finally, your current job has nothing to do with your future success. So what if you work in a coffee shop! It's better that you have a source of income whilst you are starting out (spend money to make money - A repeated theme in business)</p>

<p>I personally work with assistants and they always have plenty of opportunity to take photographs whilst assisting me. There are those out there that wish to simply exploit you but there equal amounts of genuine people to balance things out.</p>

<p>Anyway, that's enough from me. Hope this helps anyone who stumbles upon this thread.</p>

<p>P.S. My website address is www.CroydonWeddingPhotographer.com - for those of you that have a healthy curiosity.</p>