The Online Photographer

Thanks for the comment Ryan - great suggestion. I have put a paragraph into page 1 reflecting your feedback on the article.

I live this history many times, my friends ask me to be the photographer of their wedding time after time. The first time I say NO I feel bad, but now I prefer to joke with them, I say: "I don't want to take pictures because I want to drink champagne until be completely drunk and dance with the priest, do you want a drunk photographer?" Usually this is enough. The B plan is put a very high fee, when they say that my pictures are better than the local wedding photographers I say: "Ok, my fee are 3X local wedding photographer's." End of the problem.

Salva

Boy does this sound familiar. I've been doing family gatherings i.e. birthdays, holidays, weddings for over twenty years. I'm a retired Postal Worker -- 36 years. Sorry for being boastful about my years of service. It’s all the average person takes away from the Post Office.
I thought that after my many years of service I would take a stab at Wedding Photography to supplement my income. I was fortunate enough to get employed by a local Pro Wedding Photographer. He is well established in the high-end wedding arena. I was exposed to the upper crust of our fair city.
I was so surprised by the amount of real work involved. Sometimes the day would start at noon and go well into the next morning. My job was to just walk around and take candid and group shots of guests and family. I was surprised to find these people very receptive to being photographed. I was surprised to find that I could actually do it. Most surprising of all was that I learned I did not want to do it no matter how much money I made. The work was hard. Nothing went smoothly. The plan was more like a guide. You constantly had to change and go with the flow. After 36 years as a Postal Worker, this was hard to accept. I spent all those years moving at a snails pace (no pun intended). We were taught not to think – just do!
It was a nice fantasy. I think I'll keep it just that. I'll probably continue to do family stuff. It was fun -- not work at all.

Jim

A great article - not quite finished it but it's made my bookmarks.
I think I'll print it off and hand to anyone who ever asks me to do their wedding.
Why is it that anyone is does little more than family snapshots assumes serious photographers are good at all forms of photography? While (I think) my landscape stuff is decent, I'm rubbish at people stuff and would make a lousy wedding photog.

Now you know why it is so expensive to hire a good wedding photographer!

At my own wedding, there were several friends whose photography I love, slinging cameras just for fun. This allowed me to be completely emotionally detached regarding the activities of the pro who, in fairness, had been hired by my bride's mother. My only request was that he take a large group photograph of all of my friends and my wife's friends posed together. After all, these folks live all over the world and I don't want to even contemplate the only other event I can imagine causing them to gather in one place at one time. Despite being admonished that we wanted a "photojournalistic" approach to the day, the photographer wrangled my wife and me into various groups and poses (at this point, I was going with the flow and, what the hell, the guy's got to make a living . . .). I put my foot down at the feeding-each-other-cake picture, though. Our deal with the pro was a fixed price for an album with 10 photographs; he shot several rolls in color and several in black and white. Unfortunately, he used the same indexing nomenclature for both categories of and, when we placed our order, switched the B&W pics that we requested for color pix from other rolls -- hence an otherwise inexplicably quizzical table-shot of a set of distant friends of my in-laws. My wife was in Japan for a year on a grant when the album finally arrived (a whole other magilla . . .) and I never bothered correcting the mistake. What a day. Not surprisingly when I want to show pictures to our kids, I show them the candid photos taken by my friends -- hey, we even look like we're having a good time!

Having photographed several friends' weddings as a gift, I can echo -- it's hard work. Now I never take on the primary responsibility -- I tell friends that I'll be the back-up guy, that I'll stay out of the pro's way and that six weeks after their wedding my edited selections will arrive in a tasteful presentation box and on a CD-ROM.

Thanks for the link, Mike. And my hat's off to anyone who can do that job with grace and style.

Ben Marks

You don't have to be a mere amateur to screw up wedding photos. My, to be Brother-in-law was requested to photograph our wedding. A budding professional, with 3 years of photo school, he still managed to screw up the photos. He showed up after the wedding, put the wrong type of film in and set the mood for the rest of the too long marriage.
On the other hand, the photos were so bad there were no regrets leaving them behind with my ex!

I have done a couple for relatives and friends......but never again.

First one went well and I got some really great shots. Everyone was happy. I edited everything, ordered the prints etc....

Second one I did not want to do but got roped into it. They did not want to buy more than 5 rolls of film.......I should have stopped there! We finally got an acceptable number of rolls of film. I shot it. Worked hard spent the day hustling and had no fun at a great wedding. Afterwards they told me they could not afford processing. I gave them the film and the name of a couple of labs. 5 years later and the film was not developed!

Why did I waste my time? The film was not even refrigerated in that time. Probably never got developed.

I am too good a guy I guess.....Never again!!