More benefits of the professional photographer

More benefits of the professional photographer – NON Professionals beware!

As I think more and more on the subject, I become more aware of what sets me apart from the Aunts, Uncles, and friends out there running around with a camera, thinking “I can do that”.
Some of the key factors are Equipment, experience, knowledge, and attitude.

With equipment this item is often over looked from people know don’t know what they are looking at. Allow me to explain.

When you walk into Best Buy, Wal-Mart, or Target, I’m sure you’ve seen the cameras on display and think “damn $700 is a lot of money for a camera” it might be a Canon Rebel or a Nikon D40, but I’m here to tell you, it’s not a lot of money.

My main camera cost me $3000 easy and that’s not including the lens, flashes, batteries, and other equipment. And that’s just my main camera, I also carry a back up camera worth $1500 and an extra camera worth about $1200. You may think, “What! Why!” I’m serious about my job and my passion, and I’m serious about taking the very best photo I can, and whether it’s for your wedding day or a family beach portrait, I want to make it the best I can.

I carry around backups, because equipment fails. Batteries fail, lenses malfunction, flashes break, on the that one special magical wedding day, you can’t announce to the crowd, “Hold on, I’ll be right back, I have to buy something”. And you can’t just leave either, you will miss everything you were hired to capture.

I like to bring along multiple lenses because different lenses do different things, which also ties into Education. I like my standard low light lens, F2.8, to capture as much as I can in low light situations. Its considered a mid range so I can’t be too far and I can’t be too close either. Another Lens that is fun to use is my 85mm prime lens, it’s really cool and artsy, to take a photo of the cake all in focus and have the couple in the background all blurred out. Or what if I want to take a really detailed close up image of the rings in the flowers, then I have my macro lens for that. Rather than switch lens on to camera body and back and forth, which means you might have dust enter the camera or you might miss a shot because you are messing with your camera or lens, I have several lenses on multiple camera bodies.

Does your amateur photographer do all that?

Experience

What does shooting hundreds of weddings and thousands of portraits give you?
Ding Ding Ding DING!
You guessed it, Mad Experience.

Well you come to rely on that experience at various weddings, events, portrait sessions, whatever has happened to you and you learned something from you, makes you a better photographer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a church photographing a wedding and I see the bubbles ready for the bride and groom to walk out through, and time and time again, based on experience I know a lot of times it doesn’t work without the proper planning. So with me, I know from the past to help organize the people, get more people on one side or the other based on how strong the wind is blowing. Helping those family members and friends with cameras, to come down by me so they can get the better shot.

Experience wins out more often than not and that’s why I go to events, even when I’m not the photographer, sometimes I’ll help out a DJ friend, or maybe video tape a minister friend, every event I can go to brings me more and more experience.

And you don’t want an Inexperience amateur photographer at your wedding do you?

Knowledge

Where experience will only get you so far, it’s the knowledge that will carry you further. Its why I got to professional photographer classes, why I read books, subscribe to photographer magazines, attend big photographer conventions, and why I never stop learning. I often consider myself a “White Belt” (To use some martial arts terms) in photography but my definition might different as we all know a black belt is way higher than a white, I think of myself as constantly learning. I don’t want to enter into a conversation or class and think of myself as more knowledgeable then the rest, I’d rather go there with an open mind and clean slate to learn with. Because even though you may have years of photography knowledge, you may miss something the new beginner might have picked up. And then you can add that to your knowledge base.

A lot of classes and seminars I attend cost a couple of hundred dollars a pop, but its paid for itself time and time again from what I learned. And you’d be surprised with all the free education online that you can learn, and the biggest difference is that I take the time to learn it. Some people might say “I don’t have the time”. I’ll let you in on a trick that will help. MAKE THE TIME! It’s that easy. But that’s for a whole other article.

Does your photographer friend find the time to learn more about their hobby?

Attitude

If you thought Experience and Knowledge will take you places, I’m here to tell you, Attitude will take you places you never thought possible. And not any attitude will do, it has to be a positive one. When I show up to an event, be it wedding, senior shoot, or beach portrait, I bring on the Fun and I bring on the FUNK. I think of myself as the eternal optimist and it pays to do so. One of my classic, I know, cheezy sayings “where there is a WILL (me) there IS A WAY”. I don’t like to take “it’s impossible” or “I can’t do it” to heart, I think all the time when I encounter opposition or a difficulty, there has got to be a way around this. So many a times I’ll show up on location with the attitude “this is going to be fun” “and nothing is going to stop this from being great”.

I’ve interacted with people not in the very best of moods, but I’ve been able to turn it around by being positive and fun. I am all the time reading people, their tones, body language, and their attitude, and when I need to, I’ll kick my attitude up a bit to make it an Awesome event.
It’s no fun having a silent, burnt out photographer showing up to your wedding, there to capture smiles and all they do is bring the place down.

Check to make sure your guy is at least a little fun or has a pulse.
And well that’s all I have to say on the subject.
Nuff said.

“Thinking about having my friend photograph my wedding.”

“Thinking about having my friend photograph my wedding.”

I tend to hear that from time to time and when I do hear it, it always makes me laugh a little inside and worry at the same time. I think to myself that some brides may not want beautiful images of their wedding or they may not care too much about it, because if they did they wouldn't trust their friend who, chances are, they are not a professional photographer. More than likely they bought a $600 camera and took a few photos of their trip to where ever and they have never photographed a wedding.

There is a lot that goes into being a photographer at a person's wedding, there is experience you need to keep you ahead of the game and makes you ready for the awesome shot. There are skills that you acquire from continuous shooting and classes that you attend to keep that skill up. A pro wouldn't have a camera you'd buy in Wal-Mart or Best buy, they would have spent a couple of thousand I'm sure.

Even though I consider myself mechanically inclined, when I have car issues, I take it straight to the dealer or a qualified mechanic. Same thing applies if I wanted the roof on my house repaired, I would contact a licensed carpenter so I can have to job done right the first time. With the wedding supposed to be once in a lifetime event for you, magical and memorable, how will you look back on the memories, by looking at your photos. To me that seems important, not something I would just trust anyone with. Another good way of thinking about it, If your friend watches a lot of Discovery Health on TV and owns "some" surgical tools, would you let that person operate on you?

Oh god I hope not, I'd go find me a doctor with education and years of experience.
Having been to one too many weddings, I can see that a wedding is like an orchestra. Every professional is there to do their part and without each one, your wedding could be out of sync.
To have a reception you should have a Disc Jockey, you can't really have a good party without one. I've seen weddings without them and I've seen those receptions suffer.

You can't get married without a wedding minister or officiant, they are pretty important and hard to get married without one.

Wedding planners, personally I would go with one of these all the time. They help run the show so you don't have to. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the bride or groom running around trying to put out fires or do things they shouldn't be doing because they don't have anyone else to do it for them. It's the couples celebration and they should be relaxing and having fun.

Photographers and Videographers, these are your record keepers. These are the people the capture all the memories of this most important day. As I have touch on photographers, Videographers are just as equally important that get over looked. Can you imagine going to a movie to see, Spider Man for example. What if you sit down in your seat with your popcorn and you look up at the screen and you see images of spider-man. For an entire hour, you see cool image, after cool photo of spider man and all the cool things he is doing. After an hour or so, it's over, and you leave, but all you saw were images and photos, not a movie. Video brings you into the story in a way that photos can't. You can look at a photo and you can get a flash of a memory that is brought on by that image, but when you watch a movie it allows you to relive that memory and you began to see things you might have missed or might have forgotten.

I could go on listing various wedding professionals and their key roles they play, but I'm sure you will have gotten the point by now.

Allow the professionals to do what they do best so that you don't have to worry and enjoy that celebration of love.

Center Stage Photographer

I have found there are two types of wedding photographers out there:

The good ones, who are seldom seen, doing their job well, un obtrusive, and moves with the flow of the wedding.

And The bad ones, those who are right up in your face the entire wedding, and what ends up happening is your guests end up seeing the back of this photographer more than they get to see you, the couple.

I'm currently editing some video I have taken at a wedding for a friend and its bringing back a flood of bad memories of that day. And I'm not one for photographer bashing, but it really irks me that it happened like this at all. With any luck this experience could help others when choosing their photographer for an upcoming event.

Now I classify myself as an unseen photographer, I watch the flow of the event from the side lines, I end up trying to blend in with the wall as much as possible. I will spring into action when something is going down that might need to be captured by my camera. I like to wear darker colors to that i might blend in to the shadows if at all possible. To me there are certain boundaries you shouldn’t cross while at a wedding and some photographers know this, and others don’t care.

I have noticed at various events when I’m not the photographer but maybe a spectator, that some photographers are very possessive of all the photography going on all around the wedding couple. I’ve seen photographers blocking other people deliberately who are trying to snap a shot or asking the guest to “not take the photo” with their personal point and shoot camera.
Now me on the other hand, I like to treat others as I would like to be treated. So as soon as i grab my shot, I step back and allow others to grab the shot as well. There have been times when I’d take the camera from the guest and say “get in there” as I can see they were a group and I would snap the photo with their own personal camera. I’ve enjoyed helping out grandmothers working their camera as they are trying to capture an image of their precious loved ones.

If nothing else is taken away from this little rant, when you meet with your photographer, see what kind of person he or she is, and maybe bring up the question: “How will you handle our wedding day?”.

With any luck you will have a photographer that will become your friend and will be a joy to be around on your special day.