Help me achieve my goal to shoot weddings for family and friends

[michaelchadwickphotography]

<p>Sorry, one more thing. Know the day in and out. It can happen (it has happened to me multiple times) that the couple can recess down the aisle, look at you, and say "Now what?"<br /><br />Be ready with the right answer. Every time, at every possible moment.</p>

[athena_cupp]

<p>Thanks again for all of your advice. I am truly grateful and I am taking it to heart. <br>

I am shooting in RAW. I generally use Aperture priority, I do shoot in manual sometimes.<br>

The online portrait class I am taking right now mostly covers lighting and posing. I am finding it very helpful. <br>

The three weddings are in completely different type of locations. One is outside at a farm, one in a church with a restaurant reception and one is at the beach. The church / restaurant one will be the most challenging as it is a 10 hour drive so I won't really be at all familiar with the location aside from attending the rehearsal the night before. I have asked my poor husband and sons who so LOVE being my guinea pigs to let me practice with them in our own church, I know all churches are different but it least will give me some type of experience shooting from the aisles..etc. </p>

[michaelchadwickphotography]

<p>Watch out for the barn - lighting conditions in them can frequently be awful.</p>

[Thomas J.]

<p>How many disasters have happened when inexperienced photographers agree to shoot weddings for family or friends? Countless. "Oh, I explained my inexperience and he/she is such a good friend, they really understand, so I'm safe. They'll be happy that I saved them lots of money!" OMG, I'm glad I'm not you.</p>

<p>I'm a pro-photographer and I wouldn't agree to shoot anyone's wedding, ESPECIALLY a family or friend's wedding!! I shot two weddings, both for friends, 3 years ago and 5 years ago, and I was an experienced photo journalist, but let me tell you something.....you think your friends are cool and understanding? THEY ARE NOT and they're going to get VERY DEMANDING BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER. If I didn't go 1000 extra miles in my wedding shoots, I would have lost both friends......and I'm still a little resentful on how abrupt and demanding they got with me. I had to push back and it was uncomfortable to say the least. Think about this before you do it. The amount of time and money you're going to spend on these 3 weddings will be absolutely staggering.</p>

<p>And with all due respect, your lenses and flash unit are all inadequate for shooting a wedding. <br /> <br />Did you talk about prints with your clients? OMG, shooting with a cropped sensor camera you'll need to compensate for the 8x10 print crop while you're shooting or you're headed for disaster.....something that is EASY to forget when you're in the chaotic midst of shooting a wedding.<br /><br /><br /><br /> God be with you.</p>

<p> </p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>While the scenario Thomas J described does seem to occur, my own experience in shooting weddings and events as gifts for family and friends has been completely positive. When I shot film I simply had a local pro lab do the processing and printing of small proofs, and gave the negatives and prints to the couples. I didn't even keep copies for myself. When I shot digital I just burned the photos to discs and gave them to the families to distribute as they chose.</p>

<p>I didn't worry about copyrights, usage or anything else. These were gifts and I didn't place any restrictions on them. No complaints, no problems. </p>

<p>I may be luckier than average. But I had the same experience when settling my grandparents' estate after they died. Instead of the anticipated mad rush and family spats over who got what, I had to beg family members to come over and take what they wanted before calling in the auctioneers. My grandparents had some really nice stuff, but our family simply didn't indulge in the cliched grabfest catfights. It was quite refreshing and a relief.</p>

[athena_cupp]

<p>Thanks Lex! I am not going into this with blinders on. I am definitely the type of person who gives people the benefit of the doubt and always try's to see the best in people. Even if the first one is bad I will go into the second one with life lessons learned and more experience than I had! </p>

[Marcus Ian]

<p> The farm will likely be the easiest (ceremony at least), especially if they have a covered (but not enclosed) area to do portraits and group shots. If they utilize the barn (likely, especially for dancing) You will be hard pressed to get good clean shots inside. Not only is it dark, but there is rarely a nice clean ceiling to bounce off of. The plus side is that it will give good to great backgrounds.<br>

Be ready for high ISO, and f2 w/ the 50. I'd advise taking more, not less, pictures. Don't be afraid to spray and pray in those instances, and shoot in shutter priority to control your SS. </p>

<p>The Beach is it's own set of challenges. See if you can convince them to hold the ceremony until late afternoon/early evening. You'll want the light mediation. Bring a polarizer or ND filter to kill the glare/brightness if not. Some people like to use HSS flash to cut the shadows, but that might be a bit above your experience level. OTOH you have time to practice.</p>

<p>You must know whether the church is going to mind you using flash. You'll want to be able to do either. Hopefully you'll have something to bounce off of. I wouldn't worry about walking the church to far ahead of time, even an hour ahead of time is enough to scope out FLs and framing, and taking some test shots. If it's a small church/ceremony, you could even take some painters tape. why? to X an aisle seat ( and put a bag there) so you can duck out of the aisle but still have position that utilizes your fixed FL 50mm effectively.</p>

<p>I wouldn't worry about printing 8X10s w/ your 16mp crop camera *rolling eyes* a clean file is a clean file, and making clean files w/ your lens set and lighting might be challenging, but if they are, they'll print fine.</p>

[Thomas J.]

<p>*rolling eyes* cropped sensor image files are not WYSIWYG when you print to 8x10. If her framing is too tight, heads and feet will get cut off printing 8x10's and there's really not much you can do to fix it. It's a fail. Of course there's nothing wrong with the IQ of cropped sensor cameras, especially 16mp and above.</p>

[michaelmowery]

<p>I am happy to see this thread loosed up a bit from Doom and Gloom to some helpful suggestions. LOL. Who crops for 8x10 anymore? With todays digital design albums there is no 8x10 cropping for your layouts. Some shots you don't have time to give additional space. The environmental shots is a different story but I am not thinking 8x10 crop. I put many full frame images in my albums. As long as I did not cut off the feet in my composition then I am not worried. I do however like to leave room as a general rule of thumb.</p>

[michaelchadwickphotography]

<p>I leave room in just about everything, only because you can always crop in during post. Not quite so easy to invent stuff you didn't put in the picture in the first place.</p>

[bjcarlton]

<p>One thing I have not seen suggested here is that you get yourself a Stroboframe or something equivalent. These devices don't require any more skill to use than a regular hot-shoe mounted flash, and will produce much nicer images. You don't get red-eye, and shadows drop down behind the subjects. This is particularly useful when shooting in portrait orientation when someone is standing in front of a wall, which otherwise tends to result in really hellacious shadows to one side of the subject. This device alone will make your images look substantially better than those of the casual snapshooters in attendance, and while you could of course do better with softboxes on light stands and radio-controlled speedlights like a real pro, that's not where you are at the moment.</p>

[tom_boston1]

<p>Backup body</p>

<ul>

<li>I like the suggestion that you shoot with the 18-270 on a single body. Keep it simple. Work with what you know.</li>

<li>You could forgo the 2nd body. Just tell them up front. "I'm thrilled to help photograph your wedding. I'm happy to do it for free. It's unlikely something will happen but I'm not a professional photographer and if the camera breaks then we are just out of luck." - My contract has a line that reads "This limitation on liability shall also apply in the event of camera or other equipment malfunctions or any other circumstances beyond the photographer’s control"<br /></li>

<li>Try to get a backup body anyway. Is it possible another guest would let you use their camera in a pinch? Is there someone you know who can lend you something?</li>

<li>Worse case is buy a used body at KEH for about $325. But if you were spending that much, a better use of the money would be to buy a new SB-700. Shoot with the SB-700 and use the SB-400 as a backup.</li>

</ul>

<p>Memory cards</p>

<ul>

<li>Make sure you have a memory card that is large enough. I use big cards that are large enough to hold the entire event. The rational is that I don't have to worry about losing cards or damaging them while changing them. Others will argue that you should swap.</li>

<li>Format the card in the camera before the event. NEVER EVER DELETE PHOTOS DURING THE EVENT. Do it after copying everything to your hard disks. In the unlikely event you need to do data recovery because you accidentally format the card, you can almost certainly recover everything. Even for certain other card failures, data recovery could still do a lot.</li>

<li>Bring a backup card just in case. After the event, you can do your regular shooting with the backup card and save the event card for a little while as a backup to hard disk.</li>

</ul>

<p>Batteries</p>

<ul>

<li>At least two spare camera batteries. You are more likely to exhaust a camera battery than for the camera to fail.</li>

<li>Buy the backup batteries now so you have time to try them out and confirm their capacity. Especially important if you go with third party batteries.</li>

<li>Battery reliability is important to me so I use only the hugely expensive Nikon brand batteries.</li>

<li>Bring your battery charger. Do your first battery swap early. Don't wait for the first battery to deplete all the way before you begin charging it. The sooner the first battery is on the charger the sooner it gets fully charged again.</li>

<li>I never bring a battery charger. I just bring too many batteries.</li>

<li>I was referring only to the camera batteries above. A lot of people, myself included, use rechargeable NiMH AA batteries. Make sure you bring enough batteries for the flash equipment. NiMH batteries last longer than alkaline batteries.</li>

</ul>

<p>Flash</p>

<ul>

<li>Someone pointed out that flashes are more likely to fail than the camera. So it makes sense to buy a backup flash before getting a backup body. The SB-700 is a good choice. Possibly the single most essential piece of equipment that you should buy.</li>

</ul>

<p>Lenses</p>

<ul>

<li>The 18-55 is the backup to your 18-270.</li>

</ul>

<p>Photos</p>

<ul>

<li>Accept that you won't capture every shot. Tell your friends that you won't capture everything but you'll do the best you can.</li>

<li>It's not the end of the world if you miss the kiss or ring exchange or anything else.</li>

<li>I put another line in my contract that says "Because events are not fully controlled, the Photographer cannot guarantee delivery of any specifically requested images."</li>

<li>Your friends are asking you to do this because you take better photos than any of their other friends. Most likely they will be thrilled with whatever you produce for them because it will be better than anything they could have had otherwise.</li>

<li>They've probably seen the kind of photos you shoot so you know they already like your style of photography. You are already working through on-line courses to improve your photography. Don't try to absorb all the shooting tips you've received here. </li>

</ul>

<p>Data backups</p>

<ul>

<li>Writeable DVDs can degrade after a few years. Make enough backups. What constitutes enough is a completely separate issue that you don't want to get into here.</li>

<li>For now, keep a copy on your hard drive, a DVD copy, and third copy on an external hard drive.</li>

</ul>

<p>Hope this helps. Apologies for repeating at least some of the stuff that's bee repeated several times already.<br /><br />Good luck. You'll do fine.</p>

 

[Marcus Ian]

<blockquote>

<p>...cropped sensor image files are not WYSIWYG when you print to 8x10. If her framing is too tight, heads and feet will get cut off printing 8x10's and there's really not much you can do to fix it. It's a fail...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Crops have the same Aspect Ratio as FF cameras. Why would a crop camera not be just as able as my 5D2s to execute 8X10s? They pretty much all have a 3:2 , not a 4:5. (and certainly her camera is no exception). You are of course absolutely right that too tight of a shot can loose the ends if you then print on 8X10 - But then the vast majority of printers offer 8X12s now too. Since the OP does a fair amount of portaiture, I'd expect she'd know that she'll need to frame so she can cut the ends off. But even if she forgot to, given the availability of 8X12 printing, it'd <em>hardly</em> be a disaster, or <em>even</em> a fail. </p>

[Marcus Ian]

<p>Tom brought up memory capacity. I had totally forgotten that you may not have enough. I'd say if you are shooting 16mp RAWs, that you should should have at a minimum 2x 32gb cards. Figure that's about 13-1400 shots per card (varies of course). It is easy to do 2k+ in a day of constant shooting. Of course it depends on the event, and it's duration, but I frequently will do 3k+ in a wedding day (13+ hours). </p>

<p>If for some reason you feel like you are getting low on memory, switch to JPGs immediately. It's better to have a JPG than nothing at all.</p>

[DickArnold]

<p>I am afraid that Athena, with all the diverse information offered in this thread it may like trying to drink from a fire hose and it may be very confusing. It is probably time to take some of the things you have learned and go out with a camera and try some things out and then bring some pictures home, process them, and see what you have. Good luck. </p>

[studio460]

<p>Athena:</p>

<p>Wow! Long thread! Well, although I've taken on a few commercial assignments, I've yet to book my first wedding. Of course, that won't stop me from adding my own $0.02! Here's some of the things I've been doing in preparation for my first wedding:</p>

<p>1. I've been building up my entire gear inventory so that I have at least two (or more) of <em>everything</em>. Quite a substantial investment, but now I'm pretty much covered--one less thing to worry about.<br /> 2. My gear uses half a dozen or so <em>different</em> types of batteries. Make sure you have <em>plenty</em> of charged/new/spares for each type required.<br /> 3. Although not essential for your immediate needs, the liability insurance offered through the photo.net vendor, Ellis Insurance, is one of the most affordable professional liability and equipment polices available.<br /> 4. And, lastly, but I think, most importantly, I've been testing all of my equipment in every possible type of scenario I can think of which may be encountered at a wedding: hotel interiors, daylight exteriors, dark reception halls, etc. I've also devised specific technical approaches, as well as specific equipment set-ups for each scenario.<br /> <br /> For example, we happened to go to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. So what I did I do? I brought a bunch of gear and performed some tests in the hotel! My specific goal was to hone my ambient + flash technique (often referred to as "dragging the shutter") in a <em>real</em> hotel environment. Here's one of the test exposures with a couple of women who kindly offered to pose for one of the tests: <br /> <br /> Exposing for ambient + flash (i.e., "dragging the shutter"):<br /> <br /> <img src="http://studio460.com/images/vegastests1.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="466" /><br /> Nikon D3s + AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4.0 VR.<br /> Assistant-held, pole-mounted Profoto 3' octa + Nikon SB-800 + Quantum Turbo + PocketWizard TT1/TT5 RF triggers.<br /> ISO: 1,000; f/4.0 @ 1/25th.<br /> <br /> <br /> Do a dry-run:<br /> <br /> Along the same theme as practicing with your gear in environments similar to what you'll be expecting on the day, performing dry runs helps iron-out any detail-oriented gear issues. For example, it's always good to do a dry run a day or two before a shoot. Tomorrow, I have a portrait session with an on-air broadcaster. Last night, I set up the exact gear I'm planning to use, and shot some test frames. It turned out that I needed a piece of grip equipment that I had to retrieve from the garage to keep my strobe from slipping on its boom (a baby pin, which needed to be inserted into a grip head, vertically). I kind of knew I needed it, but this <em>confirmed</em> that I did, and made me go get it, and pack it in the kit for tomorrow.<br /> <br /> Pressure:<br /> <br /> Doing all of these tests without any pressure is one thing. Performing complicated, fast-changing technical duties under pressure is quite another. I've also been shooting various types of non-wedding events to train myself to work under pressure, and within extreme time-constraints. If you're not 1,000% sure of any given technique, there's a high probability that under pressure, you may not be able to figure it out on the spot. So again, the mantra is practice, practice, practice! Good luck!</p>

[herma]

<p>That was way to much too read. Here is my small list of tips:<br>

1) Shoot the entire day, from the bride and groom getting ready through the bride & groom driving off. That way you have captured their story.<br>

2) Shoot, shoot and shoot with two bodies and different lenses. Take mundane details, kids, grandma, flowers, funny things, table settings, ANYTHING.<br>

3) A good time for you to take a break is when people are shoving food in their mouths.<br>

4) If you have no time to figure out creative settings, turn it to auto.... that will still be better then missing the shot. Make sure you know how long the ceremony is. I once took my sweet time and before I knew it, the ceremony was over and I barely had time to get the kiss.<br>

5) Cat-herding: Make sure there is time to take pictures of the bride and groom. Ask for 20-30 minutes exclusively for these shots. The bride spend money on her dress, make sure you capture it. Usually directly after the ceremony if they do not see each other beforehand. You HAVE to be scheduled into their timeline for their formals. Start with the biggest group so their attention is still fresh. 20 minutes for these formals, best time is usually when the bride and groom are done with their session or before you take the B & G on their solo session. Be prepared to take them away from the reception site. Try to take pictures they have requested: B & G with great-grandma, special aunt, etc. Have a designated person keep track of this list. Don't waste too much time on shots with either the bride and her family <strong>or</strong> the groom with his family. This is tiring and these family members want to take pictures later with the couple, not just one of them. <br>

Ok, that's enough for now. Let me know how you did. I think this is an excellent way to get experience. Looks like they know what they are getting into so their expectations should be accordingly. Maybe you will blow them away! They do NOT need to know how many pictures did not turn out. Keep that to your self.</p>

[lindsay_dobson]

<p>"IMO the insurance for you, in this situation, is largely a red herring. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been asked for proof, and those were all at uber-snobby hotels... I highly doubt that it'll be relevant given the context. And as long as you aren't being paid, your liability is minimal."<br>

<br>

If there is any indication or suggestion that you are there as the "official photographer" with an agreement between yourself and the bride and groom (no matter how casual or friendly), paid or not, then it is quite possible you could be held directly liable for any loss or damage to people or property. You would not need a specific written contract in order to fall into this category.</p>

<p> </p>

[rick_chen]

<p>Good luck and have fun! I think there's nothing wrong starting out to shoot for free or little experience, as long as the brides trust you with it and accept the experience and background you have. Chances are they dont have much expectations as well. A few weddings later, I think the biggest challenge is how to establish your business and start charging what you think you deserve.<br>

Me and my wife started out doing this as a passion, shot the first 7 weddings for either free, $600, $1000 or slightly more than that, built up somewhat of a portfolio. Invested about $50k into the gears, all full frame with every piece of lighting gear imaginable. Everyone love our work , appreciates our hardwork, give excellent reviews and say they will refer. We love being in weddings and are real passionate about what we do, just like all the newbie photographers are. But it's such hard work, we started to think if we want to keep doing it, especially when brides find it hard to pay above $1200 for a wedding, at least in our network. Often times you hear them wanting to pay $500 or 300,a nd that's just discouraging, with all the abundant cheap cameras out there everyone can claim they can take a picture. We have decided to not shoot any weddings under $1k with our investment, time, service, insurance etc., and then the bookings all sudden stop. So I think our passion side job pretty much stopped there, as we can easily make more from our day jobs.<br>

How you market yourself, network , brand and knows how to run a good business has a lot more weight in becoming how successful you are. Where you start, with what equipment to start, has little to do with it. How good you are at the craft definitely helps, but if you dont know business you will still starve. In southern California where I am at, if you throw a rock 5/10 you will hit a photographer or a general contractor. If the bride is paying under $1000, what we found from experience is that they can't really tell the difference between good and bad photographers anyway.<br>

My little sad story :)</p>

[William Michael]

<p>Athena has completed the first of three Weddings and has a new thread here:<br>

<a href="/wedding-photography-forum/00capi">http://www.photo.net/wedding-photography-forum/00capi</a></p>