Wedding Event Photography

(c) 2008 Tom Jackson

Many professional photographers started their careers by photographing weddings. It can be a lot of fun, and also very rewarding. Established professional weddings photographers can earn six figure incomes every year. And if you really enjoy the photographic process, and are looking for a way to make some money, either full time or part time, than my photography course can help.

Wedding photography can be a very lucrative part time of full time option. In money terms, the market for wedding photography is approx. $5billion. You can make some good money with photography if you want. $5 Billion per year. That’s a sizable market. A good DSLR, a good flash and a couple of good lenses will enable you to begin a career in photography, But most important is your enjoyment in taking photos. The course I have designed is what I call a Studio in a Box, and includes everything you need to start you own photography business including all the business forms you will need. You can see more information and order at www.howtoshootweddings.net.

One of the first questions I am asked when shooting with a digital camera (after the “which camera do you use, question), is, what format should I shoot? Tiff, High Res JPEG, RAW etc. And the answer is very simple. RAW! There is NO other option. And you need to make sure that you are using the highest resolution (megapixels) available on your camera.

You should only be using a digital SLR (DSLR) camera, with the most powerful (expensive) flash available for your system. When you shoot a wedding, you will need to use flash for basically every shot you take. Both indoors and out and even in bright sunlight. Flash is important for lighting subjects indoors but it is also very important outside in bright light as it help to provide even lighting on the subjects.

The bride has usually spent a good deal of money buying her dress and you need to ensure that you get some good photos of the dress. You need to be careful and make sure there is lots of detail in the dress. Digital camera sensors are still unable to record as wide a gamut of light compared with traditional film. Digital cameras have a very narrow capability to record the full range from light to dark. This is where you need to be able to balance the flash with the available light to get acceptable results. Otherwise, you may have some angry people calling you after the event. You cannot afford to mess up a wedding, you only get one shot. So, make sure you do lots of practice before your first real, paying event. A good way to practice is to have you wife/girlfriend/kids dress up in white clothes and take lots of shots and note the settings you need to get detail in the dress, and good skin tones on the brides face.

Whenever possible, set up the kids in the bridal party by themselves. These kinds of photos will sell to the parents, the bride and groom and many other family members, especially the grandparents. Part of your job is to not just take good photos, but to take photos that will sell and keep you in a job and allow you to buy more equipment as you need it. You should always take individual shots of each kid and have the parents help to get them comfortable so you can get some good shots. Always try to choose an interesting background where possible. In order to focus attention on the kids and not the background, I have made a selection around the kids in Adobe Photoshop, and darkened the background a little, so the kids will stand out and be the attention of the photo.



By: Tom Jackson

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