Upcoming Wedding Jitters

Saturday is the big day…for the couple…and for this photographer. The Wright-Young Wedding is this Saturday at 5. After shooting the couples engagement photos they asked to hire me on as a secondary photographer for the wedding. I was told this was only because there was a non refundable deposit that was secured by the primary photographer when they decided to go with him last spring. Either way this is fine with me. I have never shot a wedding before and I figure this will be a way for me to beef up my portfolio, and really get some good experience while still making it monetarily worth my while. I plan to shoot as if I was the primary on everything except the wedding party posed shots (I know those are hard enough for the Primary photographer, I don’t need to make his job any harder…) that way I will get a full range of experience and images.

So to try and calm my nerves I began researching wedding photography. I have come across some notoriously bad wedding photography such as danielphotography.com, pictures out of focus, strange looking poses…The only keeper shots appear to have been luck of the draw shots, you know the one or two you get when you shoot like 500 images! Then there are those that although fabulous instantmemories.com are extremely pricey ($2150.00 minimum package)…It seems that if someone with an eye for pleasing photos, combined with a good working knowledge of how to use their equipment there is quite a bit of money to be made in this arena.
Stay tuned as I plan to document within this blog the entire experience from the preparation of the bride, the the couples last dance, post processing and beyond!

I will leave you all with some photos that I came across in my research that knocked my socks off

Photo by Eric Robinson

Photo by 'Uncle Frank'

Projects

Projects:
I wonder if other photographers find that suddenly overnight your gift for any occasion is now a photo...birthdays, weddings, christmas. It all revolves around your craft. I am currently working on three projects that I thought it might be fun to showcase here.

Project 1: Mia

My editors daughter is turning 1 in less than a month. I was parusing an antique store in the next town when I came across some delightful antique wooden blocks and some rather interesting frames. Picking out the letters to spell her name it was then I decided on giving the parents a portrait of little MIA for her birthday. Now you have to realize I am NOT a portrait photographer. I actually have extremem trouble with portraits, but I am determined to persist and conquer! For this project I have chosen the following portrait.

Project 2: David and Becky

During a recent engagement photo shoot I asked the couple to kiss so I could snap some shots. The following is my favorite of those shots. I negated to include this in the photos I gave them from the shoot so that I could use it to make them a wedding gift. I decided to model this gift after a photo frame and mat from pottery barn. I hand wrote their names across the top and the year across the bottom.

Project 3: JJ calendar

My husbands mom is just wild about her dog JJ. She would love nothing more than to be able to plaster her cubicle at work with photos of him. I thought it might be nice to make her a calendar of images but wanted to give it a twist. I decided to assign each month a theme and dress her little dog up for a theme photo. This proved to be very challenging however being so hilarious it is completely worth it. Pictured here is June's theme: GRADUATION.

A HIstory Lesson

I thought it might be a good idea to recount how exactly I got 'into' photography and what it is that I do with it currently.

It all started about 2 years ago. I was working in corporate America and had just married the man of my dreams. This man happened to be a journalist and got an amazing opportunity to be an editor at a paper about 3 hours away from where we were living. Not being able to pass it up we packed our bags and I kissed my high paying, grownup job goodbye.

Moving to a small town hit me like a ton of bricks. There were no business jobs, only trade jobs, manual labor jobs. Jobs that paid minimum wage to people who were happy to have it. I took on an at home quality assurance job and just kept my eyes on the classifieds daily. It was then that my husbands newspaper increased their local sports coverage and started to find their staff photographer being double booked. Knowing the sports editors wife was out of work and very creative they asked me if I would like to try shooting some examples and if they liked what they saw they might throw some work my way. I had a Kodak P&S 5mp camera. I shot pictures of an antique jail, photos at a rodeo, photos of a soccer game. Turned them into the editor who thought I had an eye. We negotiated an amount per photo and there is was my first paying steady gig.

My first photo...taken with a P&S and given to the editor...

Now I had always felt inferior on the sidelines of sporting events with my little point and shoot. But it was night time football that brought me to the realization I needed to save my pennies and dimes for some real gear. I bought my current DSLR a Nikon D70 used online for about $600.00. I borrowed an ANTIQUE flash from the staff photographer and read anything I could get my hands on.

As I realized some success with sports photos the paper began to send me to bigger events, state tournaments and on the road with teams. While covering a playoff football game I recieved correspondance from another publication asking how much I charged for my photos. From that point on I finally realized that working freelance meant I could cover a single event for multiple papers and see my paycheck doubled, or even tripled.

I started looking for other avenues of making money off my photography. I tried stock photography which just seemed like so much work for such little return. That is when I came into contact with MW Photography's Martyn Warwick. Martyn was the owner of an event photography company that mostly photographed soccer tournaments. He was in a real pickle and needed an action photographer for a tournament in the next city. Even though I did not have the proper equipment (a telephoto lens) he took a chance on me and asked me to shoot for him over the weekend. It was entirely outside and 10 hour days. Time flew by I had a blast and was once again sure that photography was it for me. This grew into a very prosporous relationship and I now shoot for him on a regular basis throughout the summer. The company pays for my lodging, and fuel on top of a very pretty penny for my services.

Once people I knew started seeing my body of work I started to get requests to shoot things. Parties, portraits etc...I stumbled on my latest challenge when I agreed to take some engagement shots for a dear friend. I was hooked. I felt such pride in my images and the couple loved them. Wasn't long before I was shooting for another couple...and not long before THAT couple asked me to be a secondary photographer at their upcoming wedding.

This brings us up to current here. Still freelancing for the paper. Very steady work although just to be sure I have a GAURANTEED paycheck bi-weekly I do keep my at home job on the side. I take weekend jaunts to other cities for MW Photography and once again I find myself in unfamiliar territory this time branching out in wedding photography.

One thing that I am very proud of as a photographer is my drive, my hunger. I refuse to be pigeonholed, to settle, to transform this love into just something to pay the bills with. I have high hopes for this 'hobby'...

I am starting this blog today to capture my journey, struggles and eventual triumph as a photographer. I am constantly learning things about and constantly challenged by my one true love - PHOTOGRAPHY. There is a saying about being a photojournalist "What other profession is so fun people practice it while on vacation?" This is how I feel. 12 hour days melt away while my finger is on that dear shutter release. I get to capture a moment, steal time.

I am new to the world of photography. I do however have quite a bit more experience than your average pupil. This is only because of my hunger, passion and drive to become better...I always know that I can do better. It's like a game, a challenge, the way I live my life.

I am just starting to spread my wings past photojournalism and into the other areas of the medium. Galleries, Weddings, Portraits, Event Photography - I will try them all. And I will write about it all here on myphotogblog.