7 MISTAKES Not to Make as a Wedding Photographer
– Wedding photography is a very beautiful and fulfilling line of work, but make sure you're not
making these mistakes. (upbeat music) So, I've been in the wedding industry for about eight years now. And trust me, I have made my fair share of totally stupid mistakes. So, I wanna save you all from
making those same mistakes by going over seven mistakes
you should never make as a wedding photographer. Also, shout out to this
video's sponsor, Squarespace. We'll be talking about
that later on in the video.
Mistake number one is no
communication with your couple. And now, you may be thinking, "Well, John, I email my couple." But a lot of times, that is not enough. When I talk about communication, it first starts with the
first meeting you have with your couple, which will either be an
in-person or over Zoom meeting. And this is before you book. Don't let any photographers tell you that, "Oh, don't meet with your
couples 'cause it wastes time." You want to establish a great
relationship with your couple. You're gonna be taking photos
of their most important day. You want to have a relationship with them, not just be some person
with a camera who shows up.
After you've booked your couple, you also wanna make sure
you have clean automation to get emails out to
them quickly and easily without even wasting your own time. The way I do this is with HoneyBook. And basically, I can set up workflows for emails to go out for their engagement, pre-engagement,
post-engagement, pre-wedding, and to set up any meetings that way. Generally, couples book about
a year before their wedding, so this gives you a chance to keep communicating with them
up until their wedding day, rather than just disappearing
off the face of the earth and your couple being like, "Uh… What's happening?" (John laughs) Make sure you have a CRM that
can do this for you as well. Because, again,
communication is going to be the most important part
of wedding photography. When someone gets in contact with you about a wedding inquiry, you wanna be in touch with them in five to 10 minutes if possible. If not, somewhere on your website should tell them how long
it generally takes you to get back in touch with couples.
Also, when couples hit
you up with any questions, make sure you're getting back
to them as soon as possible, but make sure to never just send emails at any time of the day, like midnight or something of that sort. You also wanna set
expectations and boundaries, which is actually the second mistake that photographers make. Mistake number two is
not setting expectations. This is something you should be doing the moment you start
talking with your couples, which, again, is why I say
to meet with your couples, so you can chat in person and let them know about you, yourself, and your photography approach. This means talking to your couples about things like how you edit and what you do and do not do. One big thing that I always
talk to my couples about is the fact that I don't do extra, super-auto crazy edits on my photos. And what I mean by that is like magazine, totally retouched photo editing.
And I get this out of the way early on, so I don't have my couples
asking me things like, "Hey, can you make me lose
15 pounds?" (John laughs) You know, I don't wanna deal with that and I also don't do it, so I let them know upfront,
"This is how I edit." "This is how much I do edit." "If I'm gonna do any crazy edits, I'm gonna charge you for it." That way, if it ever comes up, no one feels blindsided
by anything that happens. Also, this is the great way to determine if I'm the right
photographer for this couple. If they want a photographer who's gonna retouch all
the photos extremely heavy and do extra magazine edits and just make them lose
pounds and all kinds of stuff, that's not me, and I will tell them that,
and they'll find someone else, and that is okay.
Setting expectations is huge. Like, honestly, this is
the most important thing you can do with your couple. Make sure that you all are on
the same page about everything so that the wedding day goes smooth, no one has issues with anything, and if issues come up, you can talk about them in
a nice adult mannerly way. Mistake number three is a huge one and that is not using a contract. Y'all. Always have a contract. Always have a contract. I cannot say it enough. No matter what you're shooting, you should always have
some type of contract. Contracts protect you
and also your couple, and you should never be shooting weddings, especially a wedding, without a contract. I mean, even if I'm working
with a model for free, there should be some type of contract, like a model release form or something.
I generally handle all my
contracts through HoneyBook. Again, it's my CRM of choice and it's absolutely amazing. If you have questions about it, let me know in the comments below. But this way, I can send my
models, my couples contracts and they can sign that stuff digitally. Super awesome. But again, you want some kind
of contractual form that says, "I am doing X and you agree
that you're accepting X," so that when you have
issues with your couple, there's no he-said-she-said
or whatever of that sort.
It's very much like,
"Well, this is what it is. This is what I did." And now, they have no claims against you. And trust me, it is huge. I've had a couple in the past who basically stole back 50%
of everything they paid me because they were not
happy with their photos. And I did have a contract and I could have taken them
to court because of it. I ended up not doing it. It's a long story, I don't
even wanna talk about it, but if I didn't have a contract at all, they probably would've done
chargebacks on everything. And then I would've
literally been out of money for no reason. So, seriously, please. Please make sure that
you're using contracts. And a bonus mistake I see way
too many photographers doing is not having a website, which you need to go ahead and build with this video's sponsor, Squarespace. If you're specifically trying
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be a wedding photographer without a website, just don't do it. Sign up for Squarespace right now. Mistake number four is
being too hands-off. This is something I
hear about all the time. And honestly, a lot of photographers give me slack about it as well. They believe that wedding days
are supposed to be so candid, and you're not supposed to touch anything, and just let the day happen
the way it's supposed to.
But let me tell you,
moments don't just happen. You do have to guide
them into these moments and that does not take away from the feeling of what's happening. If you're curious about that, definitely check out my
video up above on that. But with being hands off, you just don't get the
amazing photos that you want. Trust me, all the
photographers that I look up to guide their couples into photos. Now, it doesn't mean that
you're heavily posing everything and making everything fake. You're giving guidance. You're giving direction.
Everything is still
happening like it should be, but you're giving direction to get exactly what it is that you want. That is our job as photographers. We're not just sitting back and be like, "Oh, I'm gonna take photos." There is a time and place for that. But also you should be trying
to make these moments happen a little bit unorganically,
and it is okay. That's the only way you're gonna get amazing
photos like these. So, seriously. If you feel like you're
bothering the wedding day, or you're getting in the way, or something like that, drop that mentality. And trust me, it's something I
personally dealt with myself, but my my wedding photography didn't get amazing the way it is now until I started being very
hands-on with my couples, letting them know where they should stand, letting them know where the good light is, letting them know where they
should be for the photo, but also letting them live the moment out.
I'm just making it and curating it nicely. I'm not running their whole day, so that they don't even have a fun time. So, seriously. Stop being so hands-off. Now that we've talked about
all the customer service and psychological side of things, let's get more into the actual gear and taking photo side of things
with mistake number five, which is shooting wide open. Now, I know a bunch of
photographers are immediately like, "What, John? All I do is shoot
wide open." (John laughs) And I, myself, am also guilty of shooting wide open all the time. However, I do shoot with
the Fujifilm f/2 lenses, so wide open is actually not so bad. But what I mean by not shooting wide open is understanding your gear and understanding the purpose of why you're shooting something. One thing I see all the time, and again, I'm guilty of this myself is when you're shooting with a wide lens, like a 16mm or a 24mm
and you're wide open. Why? Unless you need the
light because it's dark, why are you wide open? You're not getting any Bokeh
at all from a 16mm camera unless you're, like, all up in it.
You know what I mean? So stop down. You're shooting a wide shot from far away. You need it to be sharp
all the way through. I used to do this all the time. And my mentor was like, "Bro,
why don't you just stop down?" And I was like, "Hmm, that
actually does make sense because I'm standing, like, 50 feet away from my
couple anyway." It just… (John laughs) So seriously, stop shooting
wide open all the time. Also, for all you full-frame
photographers out there or myself shooting on medium format, you have to stop down. A sharper image will always
give you better results in wedding photography than mad Bokeh. Bokeh is always like the
entry-level amateur like, "Woo! The background is blur!" It just… That's great, like, did
you take a great photo? Do you know the meaning of this photo? Can I feel this photo? Is it nice, and sharp, and beautiful? That stuff matters first.
Depth of field in Bokeh is like, it's secondary, it's like a
cherry on the top, it's nice, but it's not gonna make
you an amazing photo. So, seriously, if you
have the available light, you understand your camera, and you know the look you want,
stop down just a little bit. You know, if you're shooting at f/1.2, stop down to f/1.8 or 2. It's not gonna hurt you. The background's still gonna
be blurry. (John laughs) Stop shooting wide open. Mistake number six is shooting with too
low of a shutter speed. Now, this is something that
happens to photographers, especially once it starts getting dark, they're just trying to get
more light any way they can and they don't remember that there's gonna be
motion blur on their photos if they're under like 1/160.
This is always the biggest thing, "How do you get your photos so sharp?" Because I'm shooting at a
high enough shutter speed that it stops motion. So, for anyone who doesn't shoot in manual or still may be learning about
the exposure triangle, which, I do have a video about
that right up above. The biggest thing with shutter speed is, I like to understand the
attributes of my exposure triangle. So, with shutter speed, low
shutter speed equals more light, but also equals motion blur. Meaning, if anyone moves at all, you're gonna get some kind of motion blur. And sometimes, that's a look
that you want on a photo, and that's okay. But if you're doing it just for the light and people are moving around, realize your shots are gonna be blurry.
So, the biggest thing here is I know everyone's always like, "Oh, shoot at ISO 100 so you
get the best image quality." But, like… (John breathing heavily) we want an overall amazing photo. And sometimes, you have to
raise your ISO to do that. It is okay, it will not hurt you. All you pixel people out
there like, just calm down. It's okay. (John laughs) Raise your ISO a little bit so that your shutters speed can stay at a nice consistent place. And then also, shoot wide
open if it's that dark and you should be fine. But just remember, if you drop
your shutter speed too low even a little bit under 1/200, and you're definitely going to start seeing that in your photos. If you're getting a lot
of blurry photos now and you're not sure why, raise your shutter speed some. Shoot at 1/200, 1/250, and you should be good to go. And mistake number seven is the biggest mistake that you can make, which is not having an
amazing backup process. I just made a video recently where I updated my backup process, which you definitely, definitely need to check
out right up above.
But if you don't have a backup process, are you even a wedding photographer? Like, for real. Your backup process doesn't
need to be totally bulletproof, but you need some type of backup system because if you lose a
couple's wedding photos, you're basically done. Or you're either paying
back a lot of money 'cause you can't just come
back to a couple, like, "Oops, sorry I lost your photos." You can't do that. One of the biggest things
I do for my backups is having a cloud backup as well of everything I have backed up. So, my external hard drives,
my network-attached servers, all of that stuff gets
backed up in the cloud, which I do with it Backblaze. Definitely make sure to check them out in
the description below. But Backblaze is amazing
at backing up your stuff and it's like seven bucks a month. I talked about that in
my backup video as well. But this way, if my
whole house burns down, at least I have something
saved to the cloud as well.
So definitely, definitely make sure you have some type of backup process that also includes cloud backups. Just having a bunch of
external hard drives is not good enough, trust me. I don't want it to
happen to any of you all. Actually, you know what, story time. ♪ Story time with John ♪ (John laughs) Seriously, story time. Let's talk about a
videographer that I knew that at one point had a hard drive failure and lost a bunch of couples' weddings. And I mean… It was super unfortunate and they had to deal with a lot of stuff when it comes to money
and possibly being sued. So, again, you don't want that. You don't want it. And this is someone I personally know. It is like the saddest story. So, cloud backups, please do it. And let's go ahead and
throw in a bonus mistake that photographers tend to do, which is not furthering their education.
Making sure that you're
always learning more about your camera, your camera system, and just being a photographer in general is extremely important. One way you can further your
wedding photography education is by checking out my
playlist right over here of all the videos I have about my journey as a
wedding photographer. I really do hope it helps you out. Sit down, watch this playlist, learn more about being
a wedding photographer, and make this year absolutely
amazing for your couples..
