How to become a Wedding Photographer

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(No Transcript)
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How to become a wedding photographer

• Hi, Im Jan.
• I am a professional photographer in the UK, with
  20 years experience in the photographic
  industry.
• The following PDF is short and to the point
  read it all, and you will understand how to
  become a professional wedding photographer and
  yes, this method will get you clients even if
  you are a Newbie, i.e. brand new to professional
  photography.
• The reason I created this PDF was to help

those who compete in
were either struggling to the very competitive
professional photography niche, or those looking
for a quick and easy way to get started.
The Benefits Im sure I dont need to go into
too much detail here the benefits of working as
a professional wedding photographer are huge. To
start with financially, as a photographer, you
should earn a minimum of 600 per wedding,
increasing to several thousand pounds as you
gain experience. We will cover pricing later in
this pdf. As well as financial gain, working as a
photographer has many other benefits. You can
choose your working hours, the only dates you
have to be available is
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when you are booked for weddings, all your other
work (editing, putting together albums etc) can
be organised as you wish. I personally work a lot
in the evenings, and spend my days relaxing with
friends, but that is just my thing. You also get
to use your creativity, have fun at weddings and
meet loads of great people. My favourite part of
the job is being able to give the bride and
groom some truly fantastic memories of their
special day, and being appreciated for what I
do. Its true job satisfaction!
OK, Lets get started. Just to be clear, I am
assuming you have an eye for photography and have
good photographic skills? If not please develop
these skills and come back to this pdf, as this
is about putting those skills to good use and
getting paid professionally to take photographs.
Professional Presentation To start you are going
to need a business name. Most people go with
their name followed by the word photography.
Alternatively, you can opt for something
different than your name, such as a romantic
concept or generic
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word (eg perfect click). It is best to have to
word photography or studio so people know
what you do. As a side note, if you are planning
on starting a large company, maybe hiring
several photographers, I would avoid using your
personal name. I used to work for a company that
was named after the founder, and clients were
permanently asking if I were her, and on
discovering I wasnt, being disappointed. You
want your clients to be happy with all your
photographers, not just you. A decent website is
a must, but I am not going to dwell too much here
on that as there are plenty of resources online
telling you how to build a website. I would
recommend Wix and Godaddy for hosting etc for
ease of use. More importantly, you are going to
need a portfolio of images, which is where most
inexperienced photographers come unstuck.
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Putting together your Professional portfolio It
is the age old dilemma, you need to show images
to get work, but you need to have photographed a
wedding to produce a portfolio of images. There
are a number of ways to overcome this
problem. The easiest way is to photograph a
friends wedding. Most people are delighted to
have their wedding photographed for free and
would be happy to help you build up your
portfolio. Even if they already have a
photographer, you can usually get the bride
and groom
alone loads shots
for a few minutes, and grab
guests the official with other
of bridesmaids, ushers,
etc whilst
photographer is busy people.
You can also offer your services for free at the
local registrar office. If you speak to the
registrar, they will usually be happy to pass on
your details to potential brides and grooms. You
will get plenty of couples willing to pose for
you. With a little advance preparation, you
could arrange to go with them to their reception
venue and take photographs there as well. Most
reception venues are nicer than registrar
offices, unless you are blessed with a
particularly pretty one. Make sure that you only
offer these free services to couples who are
getting married in the very near future. You
need to get your portfolio ready asap, and
certainly dont want to be committing yourself to
weddings months in advance for no pay. You
should be aiming to get paid work by then, and
you will not want to take up a Saturday with
unnecessary freebies.
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Another option is to approach a bridal dress
studio and offer to do a mock wedding shoot
featuring their designer dresses.
You can then call on a venue, suit hire company,
car hire etc. By offering these companies free
professional promotional photographs, they will
usually be happy to get together with you for
the shoot. These are best arranged early in the
week, when the venue etc is unlikely to be booked
for an actual wedding. If you have no-one
available to model as bride/groom yourself, ask
the dress or suit company to provide somebody.
Remember, there are loads of companies out
there, if you get a no, just move on to the next
one. Wedding Fayres are another opportunity to
take portfolio photographs, with the added
bonus of having loads of models in bridal gowns
available.
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Remember to try and take loads of photographs of
ALL the aspects of a wedding, (cake, flower
bouquets, rings, table decoration etc) not just
the bridal shots. Right, so now you have a load
of great images, we need to move onto the next
step.... Presentation and Pricing You will need
to decide how you would like to present your
portfolio, and what you will offer to your
potential wedding couples. The easiest way is to
research what other photographers are
offering. Heres a good example of a wedding
photographer package rate found online
Here you may need to be a bit sneaky, as not many
photographers advertise their rates online. It
is best to send an email, or phone the
photographer (posing as a potential customer)
and ask them to send you their details. You will
need to say that your wedding plans are not
finalised yet, otherwise the photographer may be
booked on your potential wedding date and not send
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you any information. When it came to the research
stage, I found it easier to ask a friend to
phone around my local photographers for me and
get all the leaflets sent to their address. This
prevents any future bad vibes when you set up in
competition to these other photographers. Even
when you are established, it is a good idea to
ask a friend to research your competition every
year or so in order for you to stay
competitive. Another thing that was very useful
to me was to actually set up an appointment
posing as a bride to be (you could be mum/dad of
the bride/groom if you prefer). This way you can
actually see the selling process and what
photographers offer. I went to another town which
was out of my area so that I was not setting up
in direct competition to the photographer I met.
The insight that you will gain will be
invaluable. Remember, you will be asked a lot of
questions about your wedding so either have
something in mind or keep it vague. Also, try
and ask the photographer plenty of questions
too, this will give you an idea of what
will be expected of you in the future. From the
information gathered, you should be able to
establish a price point that is in line with
your competition. The one thing I would warn
about is pricing low, thinking that you will get
more bookings. There are LOADS of photographers
out there and you want to stand out for your
quality and professionalism. If you price
yourself too low people will assume you are one
of the many, many amateur wedding photographers
out there and you will be competing with them.
By setting a fair price point, you are competing
with the
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few proper professionals, which drastically
reduces your competition, and provides you with
a better, more appreciative client. Win-win all
round!
Display Albums By doing your research, you
should have some idea of what albums and
packages you would like to offer. There are loads
of great professional album companys, and Im
sure a quick google search will show you some in
your country. Most albums are digitally created
and can be ordered/uploaded online. Visiting
some photography trade shows will help, again
just type in photography trade show to google
and find some near you. Once you contact the
companies you are interested in, they will send
out a rep or arrange an appointment to view
their albums. Remember to ask for a
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discount on the albums that you are going to use
for your portfolio, or display albums you
should get about 50 off. These should be the
same as the ones you will be offering as a final
product for your bride and groom.
I would suggest offering 3 or 4 wedding
photography packages, starting with digital
files only up to a large deluxe album. Your
portfolio/display should include one sample
album from each package. You may also be able to
get some colour swatches from your album
supplier so that you can show your prospective
couple different options available. So, to recap,
we now have our portfolio ready, professional
looking website and pricing for our wedding
packages. You should also have done a few
weddings for friends or free so you have an idea
of the structure of the day. We can now more on
to getting enquiries and paid work.
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Finding your Customers The most successful, and
free method I use to advertise my business is to
get my business cards into as many wedding
related places as possible. This includes local
wedding venues, bridal shops, flower shops, cake
shops, suit hire etc. I will take my portfolio
to venues and try and meet with the wedding co-
ordinator and show them my work. Networking is
key here. The wedding co- ordinator will likely
be asked for recommendations and if they like
you, they will certainly pass on your card. You
can also offer to take some promotional photos
in exchange for recommendations. When you are
visiting bridal shops, it may be a good idea to
go on a Saturday morning, when you may have the
added bonus of meeting a few brides and be able
to show your work to them too. Church notice
boards and Registrar Offices are a great source
of free advertising too. As for paid
advertising, I find that facebook offers the
best value for money when it comes to a targeted
audience. You can promote your business facebook
page to all the engaged couples in your local
area very easily. I would recommend starting with
a small budget (of say 5) and seeing the
response you get. Its amazing. I dont have
time to go into detail about facebook
advertising here, but I can highly recommend
The Facebook Advertising Guide as a brilliant
in-depth guide which I used to easily finding
customers on facebook. I know many people who
just use facebook for finding clients and are
inundated with work. gtgtClick Here to see the
Facebook Advertising Guideltlt
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There are other online methods that you may want
to consider, such as subscribing to a consumer
database for leads ( eg www.selectabase.co.uk )
google ads, advertising on large wedding sites
etc. As Ive said, I have found that in 20 years
experience, visiting local venues and more
recently Facebook advertising, are the best
methods for me. You should now be getting plenty
of leads, so if you are not getting bookings
(Id say about 1 in 3 enquiries should lead to a
booking) you need to ask for some honest
feedback on your promotional material, portfolio
and website. Sometimes we dont get it right
first time, but try again and you will eventually
succeed. This guide was written with the
intension of helping people get started in the
wedding photography industry, but as with any
other venture things may be slow at first. If
you would like to earn more money quickly as a
photographer, I can highly recommend
Photography Jobs Online.
This is a service that partners thousands of
large companies online (like shutterstock and
gettyimages) with photographers like us. Many
photographers prefer the freedom of working when
they please rather than being tied down to
wedding dates and client appointments. I
personally like both, but photography jobs
online is a fantastic resource for some easy
money whilst waiting for the wedding bookings to
come in. gtgtClick Here to visit Photography Jobs
Onlineltlt I wish you every success in your new
photography business! Copyright Jan Robertson.
All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be
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storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from the author.