Wedding photographers - How many weddings do you do a year?

Is there an easy way to get into shooting weddings? I'm getting about 2-3 per year through friends (not advertising myself in any way so far) but I still feel like I'm learning. The last one I did I was a lot more confident in both my kit (a lot of changes since the last one) and my own abilities but honestly I don't want to be saying I'm a wedding photographer when I've only worked for friends.

Ideally I'd just like to be a second shooter most weekends to a pro but I know a lot of the time that's quite rare. Out of all the creative groups I've worked with recently photographers seem to be the most reluctant to "work" together (never had a problem with meets though!)
 
To answer the OP. I like 1 or 2 or month...I find things get too hectic otherwise.

An Exception said:
Hmm, you must really like your job Raymond considering it looks like you could probably go full time with your wedding photography...
Click to expand...

Well you say that, I seriously seriously considered it a while back but decided against it.

Too many photographers who have it as a passion they can earn from I have seen go full time then after a few years get sick of the sight of a camera.

I don't want that to ever happen :)
 
Raymond Lin said:
Soooo glad Canon didn't go Pixels crazy with the 5Diii ! Otherwise i would have HAD to buy a new computer.
Click to expand...

The difference in processing power is pretty minimal (e.g., instead of 4GB of Ram 6Gb would suffice), and by the same logic Canon went "Pixels crazy" in 2008 with the 5dMkII which required twice the processing power of the Nikon D3/D700 files, was that a concern for you when you purchased the 5dMKII?

4 Years since the 5DMKII as released the Nikon D800 files are 60% larger, while average home computers have increased in speed and memory 400-600%. So the average home PC will handle D800 files far better than the average home PC handled 5DMKII files when it was released, by several factors.

Besides which you can down-sample upon important if it bothers you at all,. I'll take the 2 stops DR any day, let a lone a DX crop that can compete in pixels-per-feather with crop cameras.
 
Last edited:
D.P. said:
4 Years since the 5DMKII as released the Nikon D800 files are 60% larger, while average home computers have increased in speed and memory 400-600%. So the average home PC will handle D800 files far better than the average home PC handled 5DMKII files when it was released, by several factors.
Click to expand...

Yup, in the space of a month I bought a 5Dii and new iMac.

Going from 30D (8mp) to 5D2 (22mp) was a big jump, too big for the old Pentium 4 with 2G of RAM to handle anyway.
 
^^^ that was a very large increase in file size, the difference between the 5dMKII and D800 is much smaller, so if a computer can handle a 5DMKIII file fine it will be ok with a D800 file.


The reason I will have to upgrade is because my PC only has 4GB RAM, which is fine for my 12MP files but will be overloaded with the D800 files, and for that matter even if the D800 was 24MP (like the rumored D600) I would sill need the upgrade.


Which is my point really, the file size difference compared to the increase in general computer technology and PC speeds in the last 5 years is relatively quite small.
 
a 5Dii produce an average 25-30mb file
D800 produces like 70mb files doesn't it? more than doubled.

On my 3 years old, Core 2 duo iMac, I would need to upgrade for the D800 i think.
 
A standard 14bit lossless compressed D800 RAW is 40MB. Only the entirely uncompressed 14bit RAWs are 75 MB, their only advantage is in slightly quicker processing speeds. 12 Bit loss-less RAWs are about 35Mb.

The D800 is 36MP, the 5dMKII is 22MP, that is really the only difference. I don't know about Canon but on Nikon you can choose different colour depths (12bit vs 14bit), uncompressed, loss-less compressed RAW, and slightly lossy compressed RAW. Depending on your settings the file size will change, with loss-less compressed RAW at the same bit depth there will be effectively no difference between a Canon file and a Nikon file at the same resolution.For wedding work etc 12bit is fine, the uncompressed is stupid when there is a loss-less compression. The lossy compression is surprisingly very close to the uncompressed in qualities (it is very weak, a bit like saving a jpg at 100% quality). However I wouldn't use the lossy compressed option.





Furthermore, once the file is loaded into memory then the internal representation of each pixel will be the same (nominally 8 or 16bits per color channel), and the only differences between a D800 and 5DMKIII will be the 36MP vs 22MP, so ~63% more memory and when processing to export at the most would take 63% more time. But things wont scale as linearly, there are lots of fixed memory usages and processing times, so a D800 file wont require 63% more processing in the end. E.g., just the OS and LR/PS will take a large part of your memory and CPU , the additional 14MP in the D800 files wont be so visible. Exporting 1000 photos will make a measurable difference but since a large expert is very slow anyway if it takes 2 hours 20 minutes instead of 2 hours I don't think there is a big issue.
 
Last edited:
The chap I've been second shooting for is also in full time employment, you only have to read the TP forums to see it isn't rare at all. We shoot from 10am to around 10pm, it then takes him most of the week to process the wedding around his other job commitments.
 
Very interesting thread, friend of mine is in the process of getting married and his exposure to wedding photographers and their charging rates meant I got a call from him which basically went "Andy you like photos and stuff so want your advice, well I'm thinking about a career change and becoming a wedding photographer, I've seen a 5 day course for £xxx so if I did that how much would I need to spend on camera gear afterwards to get going?". :p

It's amazing how many people think that wedding photography is quick easy money, I started to quote work needed (prep, post processing times) and kit costs (backup gear, insurance) and soon put him off the idea.

I enjoy photography but don't think I could ever do it, seems too stressful and you really do need to throw a lot of time at it to do it any justice.


Raymond Lin said:
So generally I only shoot weekends, one a week. And only once a year I have the luxury to take a midweek wedding (to have enough holidays left for my actual days off). I've turned down 3 weddings in July alone because they were all midweek. Turn down about 3 more because it's a day before or after an existing booking. I've also turned down a few because my trip to NYC in October. That's 9 just off the top of my head.
Click to expand...
Ray, are you planning on going full time? If not any reason why, as it obvious it's not your qualty/ability?

Also combining your full time job and wedding work do you get any free time?
 
Paul11 said:
I have a friend that said they were doing 50 a year at one point, and going out cheap in order to do so

i was trying to explain that they could double their prices and do half as much work and still make the same money
Click to expand...

I wish it worked like that!

Interestingly, we're only comparing number of weddings here, not turnover, which may give false indications about success/busyness.
 
Thread like these is what makes this forum interesting. There are no arrogant twits here who think they're extra special at wedding photography.

Its a good discussion to have an idea how other togs operate and like what GSXRMovistar said about his mate becoming a wedding tog. I believe you can't expect to pick up a camera, purchase some of the top end gear and instantly think they can start to operate a wedding photography business.

There are various ways to get started and everyone has a path they followed to get to where they are now.
 
Myself and my wife do 20 a year maximum at the moment and have done since we started, we're thinking about upping it to 25-30 but we're doing it slowly to make sure it works for us and our quality of service doesn't suffer in any way.
 
I forgot that you were on OcUK Henley! We worked together this year although I can't for the life of me (on a Friday night) remember which couple it was.

The thing I don't understand with a yearly limit is, is that you simplifying it down to an average per month? Because 20 weddings is only just under 2 a month, although of course it doesn't work out like that due to busy seasons. So is your actual limit 4 a month/one a weekend or similar?

Edit: Emily & Rob! Of course, that's probably why I can't remember because they weren't our usual "clients"!
 
Last edited:
Schizophonic said:
I believe you can't expect to pick up a camera, purchase some of the top end gear and instantly think they can start to operate a wedding photography business.
Click to expand...

Sadly though, there are a lot of people who are just that.

More than likely they are going to be on the cheaper side of things and doing loads of weddings.

My Cousin recently got married and they had a photographer who they only hired for the service and general photos just afterwards. She was so unbelievably amateur, yet had obviously shot hundreds of weddings. A few of the things I thought were poor:

- She hadn't switched the focus lock beep off on her 5D mkii, so the whole ceremony it was constantly beeping. Surely knowing how to work your camera is pretty important for somebody calling themselves a professional wedding photographer.

- She had made the wedding Registrar inform everyone before the ceremony that they weren't allowed to take photos (aside from one small slot). I suppose this was for one so she can sell more, but also so that the flashes don't intrude on her own photos. I just felt it was a bit rich when she didn't seem to even know how to work her camera!

- You need some people skills and authority. She did a terrible job of directing everyone to stand for group photos. When it came to the photos of the couple outside together, she tried to take them while everyone was stood right next to them enjoying a drink. She was clearly starting to get annoyed that everyone else was taking photos and eventually realised she should probably take them somewhere quiet to get shots for a few minutes.

- The finished photos on her website are pretty much every photo she took, but with 6 filters applied to them each:

- B&W
- B&W Blurred Vignette
- Sepia
- Sepia Vignette
- Standard Colour
- Standard Colour with Dreamy Vignette

There was absolutely no creative decisions or thought in it at all.

- My Mum ordered an unframed 8x10 from her. It was £30, but was supposed to be £45, but there was some supposed discount applied. The photo turned up in a standard envelope, not even a proper hard-backed one designed to protect it, unbelievable!


There must be so many people operating like that.

To contrast, some friends had a guy with a repertoire style do their wedding who was reasonable, but not super expensive. He also had another job and only did weddings every now and then, so it was also something he enjoyed, rather than something he needed to be doing every weekend. His work was brilliant.
 
It's swings and roundabouts, and it would be wrong to assume everyone who does it as a sideline job has more passion for it.

I guess I'm in quite an interesting position for this kind of thread because I work with a different photgrapher at every wedding I go to, and I'm the only person there who does have to work with them. And there are some awful photographers out there. A guy I was working "with" a couple of weeks ago was a sideline guy, he worked full-time at a college... in IT... and the kit wasn't even his, it was the colleges. And his second shooter was a landscape architect (?!). Makes you wonder how and why the couple even picked them in the first place.

The most hilarious I've ever seen is this guy: *** removed email ** . If you think his photos are bad you should've seen how him and his nephew worked on the day.
 
There are several things thats easy to spot the level of experience in a wedding tog.

1. Checking the samples on their website isn't of the same couple, lolz looking at ** link removed **, there were about 72 photos and only 3 couples featured.

2. The number of filters and presets that some togs use to 'add' to the photo. lol checking out peterjnicholls.co.uk he loves the 'zoom - blur' feature.

3. Selective coloring, I ** Please fully star out swear words ** hate it.

4. The creativity and the 'eye' of the photographer. Like people say out there its easy to put a camera on auto mode and push a button.

One other pet hate, some bride and grooms can't really tell whats a good photo and whats a bad one. Putting the entire blame on them is unfair but I do hope bride and grooms look and compare one photographer to another.

Anyway back to the subject, since starting 2 years ago I'm doing a dozen of weddings right now, but thats only going through recommendation of friends and family. I do not get many through 'randoms' but a lot of my wedding work comes through referrals and trust that I will give the upmost professional service to a client.

I myself do also have a full time job sometimes coming home and going through a set to process can get a bit tiresome as I might have other plans. Getting the photos taken is only one part of the job and there is the work behind it which very little people see.
 
Russinating said:
It's swings and roundabouts, and it would be wrong to assume everyone who does it as a sideline job has more passion for it.
Click to expand...

Yeah you are right.

I also watched a shocking wedding video from my cousins wedding a few weeks back. It was one of the most dire pieces of videographer I've ever seen, but apparently the family seemed to enjoy it enough. I think perhaps some people don't really look into things and don't know what to expect, or know what they could be getting.

I'll have to see if I can find the website of the guy again as it was pretty funny. Really poor website for a professional wedding photographer and guess what, he goes on about his blazing reviews and feedback... but he doesn't have a single example or showreel of his work! :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom