Weddings
September 4, 2007
A few of you have talked to me lately about shooting weddings, and the various difficulties that creates. As a student I always had a tormented relationship with shooting weddings: I loved the money they created, but I hated shooting them. A big obstacle was the fact that I had to use lights which was an almost entirely foreign concept for me until the very end of school. As photojournalists, however, you have a great marketing advantage as the “photojournalism” style wedding is very much in style right now and will probably stay that way for some time. These days I really enjoy shooting weddings, beyond the fact that they pay well. Weddings are a great tool through which you can experiment with lights, “models”, portraits, etc., – and the knowledge which you gain from these experiments will go a long way to helping you move into more freelance work, magazine work, agency work and the like.
To help you along you way here are a few photojournalism style wedding photographers who do very well for themselves, and produce some really amazing work. One of my biggest obstacles when I was a student, in addition to lights, was having a list of ideas for how to shoot a weddings. Having to come up with 15 different bride and groom portraits on the fly is a bit intimidating, but by studying the work of these photographers you can go into your next wedding with a plan for what you’ll shoot and how you’ll do it. This will kill off a lot of the stress and at the same time allow you to focus on making really great images.
Check out: John and Joseph Photography – Based out of the West coast, this duo creates some unbelievable photography.
Joseph Victor Stefanchik – While in college Stafanchik was runner up for the Pulitzer Prize, but lost to the Berlin Wall coming down. Since then he has been primarily a wedding photographer in addition to working for a period at the Dallas Morning News.
Docuvitae – Docuvitae is a group of photographers based out of Los Angles who do everything from film work, weddings, commercial work and magazines.
Brain Wagner – One of my favorite people of all time, Brain Wagner is one of the most talented and committed photojournalists I have ever known. Wagner is now based out of Knoxville, Tenn., shooting weddings in addition to his own personal projects.
For wedding work, check out Matt Adcock and his wife, Sol Tamargo:
http://www.mattadcock.com/newSite.html
http://www.soltamargo.com/
They do some really cool portraits for the high-end weddings they shoot. It doesn’t hurt that they’re based out of Mexico, so their weddings tend to be on the beaches of private islands and other such exotic locales.
Matt also has a blog for photographers where he talks about his techniques:
http://www.flashflavor.com/
There’s a lot of cool ideas on there for using lights, both for portraits and as a part of “candid” shots. He’s also faced some interesting situations; there are a few posts from a month or so ago where a wedding was canceled because the government evacuated the island where the ceremony was supposed to happen. Not exactly the kind of situation they teach you about in school.
Jim,
If you want to see how profitable you can make shooting weddings the way you want check out the husband and wife teams at Lacour, http://www.lacourphoto.com. They are both Missouri grads, rachel and andrew, who are amazing pj’s who have found out to run a successful business doing what they love. They now have another pair of pj’s in the business and it is crazy what they are doing. Great people to boot.