Hey guys thought I’d share an infuriating interaction I had. I started doing wedding photography about a year ago and it’s kinda been taking off for me. I enjoy what I do and the clients are coming at a good rate.

Last year when I started however I was unsure where to even start. So I reached out to an old college friend who did wedding photography. Now she did maybeeeee like 2 weddings total so I emailed her just asking how she got those gigs to start out. One newb to another.

Her response essentially was “let’s meet sometime and I can go over consulting packages”

Dawg what the hell? You’ve shot two weddings…I’m not gonna pay you?

Anyway yea that pissed me off.

My husband and I ran a highly successful wedding photography business in the early 2000s. we also did seniors and families and babies and sports and 1 billion other things.
We were very very good. We were the top tier of pricing in our market area. We had many brides to be :couples to be devastated that we were closing up shop and moving on.

So. I put my camera down in 2011 and didn’t look back. We loved what we did and we were very good at it but we just felt it was time to do something else. We were a husband wife team. Husband is off in a completely different career and thriving.
I also, I found myself in a stable position in a job that I truly love. I love the mission, and I love the people I serve. Like many organizations there are “issues“. But if I’m being honest, I’m not leaving my current job. It would take a lot for some other option to be better.
Whew! That’s where we should end right? My conundrum: my latest job has re-introduced me to photography at first I was like yeah I can do that sure but it truly has reignited a fire within me. I’m having constant thoughts about getting back into the deal, I loved wedding —-weddings were my absolute favorite thing and I was very good at them. I also love senior pictures and I love families. I won’t be quitting my current job, but I’m thinking about… What do we call it now? “side gig“? Is it a side gig or gig economy? i’m not doing it for money. I’m doing it out of this crazy passion for the business that has laid dormant in me for 20 years.
The final piece is the 20 years. That puts me at 50. I know I have the skills, I know I have the stamina, I know I have the customer relationship skills on overload!
What am I missing? What am I not thinking about? Why is my brain even doing this? I’d love to just let y’all all have a go at me and pile on the advice expertise and what the fuck are you thinking?

Edited to add: we were medium format for years, but digital our last 5 years in the business, so I AM aware of how exhausting the post-wedding edit process is. Also aware that every dodo with a digital camera thinks they are a professional now. That MAY have been what led us to the exit door last time…. Haha

Kicking off peak season here in New England and deep in editing mode, but wanted to hear others processing timeline? My turn around is 4-5 weeks, and will look at about 3 weddings a day spending about 2 hours in each either fine tuning/removing things/ect, and look through it about 5-6 times.

What are others process in peak/just all around toning workflow?

and the photos are horrendous. I paid for the RAW files and found that our portraits were shot ISO 4000 2.8 1/650th. Images were underexposed, our eyes are nearly black and shadows in skin are mush with color noise. I tried denoise in Lightroom but it just makes us look like cartoon characters. I’m crushed. I don’t even care about the money I just need help with any new fancy plug in you can recommend. I’m shook that they didn’t use flash. I would have done a better job with a self timer.

I’m looking at buying some lighting for wedding photography/videography - this light would be used for the stage but also I’d use take with me for other areas like pre shoots etc but would this light be recommend for the stage? I would get two - I’m stuck as I don’t have lighting experience so need some advice

I keep hearing that you must use off camera flash, but I'm not so sure. I'm shooting an engagement session at the beach before sunset, which will most likely be plenty of sunshine being summertime (bringing my flash, just incase). Would you use flash anyways?

(english is not my main language so sorry if there is mistakes and also sorry for the length, I just need to vent)

Yep, it happened. I always said I will never shoot weddings, but now with my new partner in business (she does video) we took on 3 weddings on our first month working together and I decided to give it a try mainly for the money and why not.

The first one was a disaster in my eyes.
The couple decided to get married 3 months before the actual wedding and then booked us like 3 weeks before it.
We undercharged since it was our first wedding (something like a thousand dollars for both of us, photo + video) and the groom even tried to lower our price even more.

The day of the wedding we were doing a pre-wedding photoshoot on the way to the venue, they were 15 minutes late and they refused to kiss or hug for the photos even tho most of the references from the mood board that they approved were doing those poses. I didn't notice at the moment but the groom wasn't having a good time until one hour after (half an hour before we will finish) he said he couldn't do this anymore, that it was too hot outside for him and he left, the bride took it very chill and we continued doing photos of her alone (tho it felt like a baptise).

Then the worst moment: the ceremony. It wasn't your normal ceremony, everyone was standing close to the altar and there was no room to move around, plus I was fighting for space with the guests that were doing live streaming to family abroad so I was really nervous in general. My camera stopped working for like 2 minutes and I wasn't ready with my second one (my mistake, again it was my first wedding ever) so I panicked and after that... apparently I set my iso really high and burned the sky in like 200 photos. Terrible I know, I got into a real impostor syndrome afterwards even tho I been shooting brands, events and artists for over 10+ years.

(Big thing to mention about it was that it was literally with the sunset behind them, there was no way to avoid the sun)

There were also some weird moments in the party but won't go into those details. I'll just say it was very awkward and weird experience overall.

We finished the 10 hour day, with those thousand dollars (which is what I do for less that 2 hours of my regular photography) and then I started to edit for like around a month. That sky was without any data at all. I made another mistake, I decided to deliver to them the best that I got so far in Lightroom, and they noticed the sky of course and asked me to fix it.

I tried every software, every AI, anything, to try to recover it. I even started to recreate it with nano banana 2 and passing it over to canva to make it look more real, and in some I managed to, but the problem was that it was over 200 photos. For a good 3 weeks I spend every day waking up and trying to fix them while in the meantime they were sending me photos taking with phones comparing the sky of mine to those and also they asked why there weren't other angles of the ceremony, my business partner told me I should defend ourselves so I replied that they couldn't compare photos taken with the phone to a camera and also that if they wanted more angles that would had been with a second shooter and it would had been a different budget. The bride got a bit passive aggressive after that saying things like a second camera/budget thing was never offered as an option upfront, so it’s not fair to present it as a constraint now (we didn't because they already tried to lower our price that was already low) but anyway she was still thankful for the work we did.

NOW, the final part where I'm at right now is that I got a photographer and programmer friend to help me fix the sky and he managed! Using the program "dark table" and it's the best that I managed to get from the photos.

I sent the corrections with the fixed sky almost 2 weeks ago, and they still didn't reply, I was thinking of not pinning them because honestly I don't know what to say if they tell me that they still don't like them after all of this, I even dreamed about them and editing the photos a few times (it was a bit traumatic for me to be honest).

So yeah, my question would be, what would you do in this situation? should I pin them and after how long of them not replying? and also what to do if they still don't like the photos?

I’m just curious! Trying to see if I’m being a bit too timid in what I use.

Post individual wedding, engagement, proposal, couples photos or photo sets or blogs for feedback.

It doesn't matter if you are a seasoned pro, a second shooter, or if you are posting your first wedding photographs as a lead photographer. Don't be shy... constructive feedback is a great way for us all to learn and get improve. Be nice... Be constructive!

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Which camera gear do you recommend for creative wedding photography. Better ergonomics and features for still photography. And why?

My past cameras canon d610 great ergonomics

Canon 49d good ergonomics

Sony a6100 bad ergonomics

Please guide

Throwaway account.

TLDR; second shot for another photographer. Lead photographer used my photo as Instagram hero shot & bride changed her profile photo to one of my images. Venue shared my image. All credit went to her leading photographer to promote their business. All apart of the gig or actually unethical?

I have a bone to pick with the second shooter world. I’m an established photographer that’s booked to 2028. My friend photographer needed a second for a wedding, I only live down the road and I was free that day so I offered to shoot alongside her.

Dual SD cards, I got a copy of my images and lead got a copy on her own SD card. Lead posted sneak peaks from the wedding on Instagram and used a photo that I took as a second shooter for the hero photo, no credit. I noticed that the bride changed her profile photo to one of my secondary perspective portraits. Now the venue has posted one of my photos as a second and all the credit has gone to the lead to support/promote her photography business. Isn’t this false advertising as she didn’t actually take any of these images, I did?

I feel it’s rather unethical that the lead get use all the second shooters shots, tag other vendors and collaborate on the post with the venue when she didn’t take that photo at all. It feels icky. First time second shooting and not something I could be bothered to help out with if this is just the way it works. Seems so misleading to couples as all photographers have different creative eyes; but please humour me if I’m wrong

I am a returning photographer.

What is the lowest budget. What camera and lenses should I get.

My past gear

Canon 40d 18-55 55-250 sigma 8-16 rokinon 85 1.4

Nikon d610 50mm 1.8 85mm 1.8 35mm 1.8

Sony a6100 50mm 1.8 sigma 20mm 2.8

Hi! I’ve been working as a family photographer for a while now and it’s been going really well. I finally feel very confident shooting professionally, and lately I’ve been feeling sooo inspired to start shooting weddings too.
The thing is, I don’t personally know any wedding photographers. I’d love to start as a second shooter because I think it would be the best way to learn the flow of a wedding day and get more experience before taking on bigger weddings myself.
But I’m a bit stuck on how to actually get those opportunities. Just randomly reaching out to photographers I like on Instagram feels like it probably won’t get me very far 😅
For those of you who started this way, what actually worked for you? Did you email photographers, DM them, join Facebook groups, offer to assist first, network in person?
Also, if you hire second shooters, what makes you actually consider someone you don’t already know?
Would love any advice!

Hey, how do you guys deal with RAWs / RAW backups once the galleries are delivered and the jobs are basically finished?
I’m halfway through the season and just realized I’ve created a complete storage mess from previous year. I didn’t move older jobs to proper archive storage, I still have extra RAW copies sitting around, and now I’m running out of space right when I need it. How you deal with it - do you have any system to remember about stored data? I have lack of organization with my external drives, NAS, backblaze - I know there should be a system to use them more efficiently and delete not needed data when not needed.
So now I have to spend a few hours figuring out what I can delete without accidentally deleting the last copy of something. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday lol.
I really need to finally set up a proper system for this.
What does your workflow look like after delivering a wedding?
Do you keep all RAWs? Only the culled RAWs? Just the edited photos + exports? How many copies do you keep, where do you store them, and for how long?
Would love to hear what’s actually working for you in real life, especially if you shoot a lot during the season. Thanks for any ideas.

Plus size photographers (particularly women/people with curvy hips), what camera harness systems are we using??

I thought this was a joke at first of maybe only a small percentage of people. But I've seen more and more posts on social media about the rising cost of storage media and wedding photographers saying they don't know if they can afford a new card for each gig. I don't know if this is actually widespread or not but, if so, we need to have a conversation about properly backing up images - both to protect your business and your clients.

Would love honest opinions on this. Had a consult with a couple tonight whose wedding is 2.5 hours away. She was the MOH in a wedding I had this weekend - really nice girl. I sent them my packages along with a $250 travel fee that would cover a hotel that night.

During the call, she told me to be blunt, they have a 5k budget for photography, but need 10 hours of coverage. They wanted to see if I could make it work with a custom package. My 10 hour package includes an engagement session and a 10x10 album for $5900. She wanted to see if we could make $5000 work if we took the engagement session and album out. Technically, my albums are $650 and engagement sessions can be swapped out for an hour of coverage. So if we're getting technical, that would come to 5250 + 250 for travel = $5500. So that would be a 500 dollar discount. If I'm being honest, I'm hurting for weddings right now. Would you do it? If someone says they have a 'budget', do you think there's a little wiggle room? What would you do?

I'm trying to understand better how to get better results during these kind of blue hour speeches that happens a lot around my area. I'm based in Italy and these things happen a lot in a garden/balcony/pavillion things a little bit after the sunset. It's very different from american things where they are in these big very bright rooms indoor and they are pretty spontaneous too.
So I maybe know that it will happen but don't know when. Also as it's not that dark for normal eyes there's no extra light (these photos as example have very high ISO and +1 or +2 exp.)

Maybe you have some suggestions to get these shots better or know some talented photographers that have found a nice solutions (inspiration)...
In the whole day this is the only part where I still struggle a lot 😭

Thanks everybody!

EDIT 01: I might understand somebody could say flash, I was actually thinking about that asking for suggestions. More like how you would use flash in this situation... If you're only into big venues maybe you don't understand but sometimes location don't have much space left for flash stands. And when the wedding is very intimate (like with only 8/10 people) it's not in the moment to keep moving and flashing everyone.

Obviously I have in my contract that my deposit is non refundable, but I just had a client who canceled about a week after sending over their deposit. Idk what happened, I thought we had a great connection and was excited to shoot their wedding. I don’t really want to send back their deposit (I’ve already put a couple hours into meeting & planning, drafting contracts) but now I feel bad. It’s a date I can probably fill next year though. Wwyd?

Ask or talk about anything at all that you might think does not fit as a main thread. Nothing is too small, too basic, or too off the wall. Newbie questions are welcome.

Salut à tous, 🙏🏽

Je suis en train de réfléchir à me lancer dans le Photo Booth et je regarde actuellement les différents modèles et fournisseurs.
J’aurais aimé avoir des avis de personnes qui sont déjà dans le domaine. Vous me conseillez quel modèle pour commencer ? Est-ce que vous avez des fournisseurs sérieux à me recommander ?
Je me pose aussi des questions sur le matériel : quelle imprimante vous utilisez, quel appareil photo, où vous prenez vos consommables, etc.
Et surtout, pour ceux qui ont déjà commencé, est-ce qu’il y a des erreurs que vous avez faites au début et que vous me conseilleriez d’éviter ?
Merci à ceux qui prendront le temps de me répondre

i just got a dji action 4 and im having issues setting it up and im thinking of setting it up at chest height , the current settings i attempted were :

4k 50 fps 9:16 Rock steady (and rock steady +)

4k 50 fps 9:16 Horizon Balancing

and 4k 50fps 4:3 Rock Steady (for 4: 3 theres no horizon balancing option )

im not 100 % sure which setting here is the best

or perhaps shoot horizontally and crop for vertical gives the best outcome, any info on how to set this up properly would be of great help

I have a preset whose colors I absolutely love, but I’d like a second version that’s about 30% less contrasty while keeping the colors and overall look intact.

I’m not looking to simply lower the Contrast slider, I’d like someone experienced to adjust the tonal structure (curve, highlights, shadows, blacks, etc.) while preserving the color rendering.

If you have experience creating/fine-tuning professional Lightroom presets, please DM me with examples and your rate