I’m often asked by new camera owners for tips on how to photograph a wedding. In this day and age lots of people who own cameras are asked to photograph a wedding. I’m not saying don’t ask a friend to photograph a wedding.. in fact I encourage it. It’s probably the best thing anyone could do for my business. The majority of my work comes from people who know people who have had awful wedding photos and have recommended their friends hire a pro! Also notice I am calling them new camera owners and not photographers! I do not call someone that buys a scalpel a surgeon.

Thought i’d add a random photo just for fun from Lashaye & Mark’s wedding for those of you that are here to see pretty pictures

Here are 10 mistakes that new camera owners make regularly!

1. Not having back up. Find out if your new camera owner has back up for all their gear. 99.9% of new camera owners won’t have this. It’s not a matter of it something goes wrong, it’s when.

2. Not having back up. But I already said that? I’m talking about different back up now. I’m talking about making multiple copies of the images in different locations in case of some sort of incident. Once again, it’s not if, but when.

3. Not having the correct insurance. It could ruin your photographer friend if something happens and they get sued. They also may not be legally allowed to photograph in some locations!

4. Not understanding light. Without light there is no photo. With a good understanding of light, you can do pretty much anything!

5. Not setting expectations or setting expectations beyond what they can reasonably do. If these people really think they can do what they have promised, then why am I getting these emails asking for help every day?

6. Not presenting images properly. One of the things that an experienced professional photographer can do for you is present your images in a way that will help you appreciate the images. A disc of unedited photos with no clear story is not ideal! Imagine going to the movies and having to watch Tom Hanks say “Life is like a box of chocolates” over and over again until he gets it right. You want to see it once, done properly, followed by the next scene that complements the story.

7. Not knowing how to set people at ease. This also applies to many professional photographers. They get so caught up in the technical aspects and fiddling with their cameras that they lose all connection with the people in the images.

8. Learning how to use your camera when you are photographing a wedding. This isn’t the time to experiment with what this button might do etc… format?… I wonder what the format button does!

9. Missing out on images that people expect. This comes back to setting expectations and exceeding them. The best way to avoid this is just to ask lots of questions and find out what they want & write them down!

10. Wasting peoples time. Generally an inexperienced new camera owner will take a long time to do what a pro can do in a split second.

For the new camera owners wanting to read more about photographing a wedding, I suggest reading the following article that my friend Antony Hands wrote on how to photograph a wedding!

James Day.
www.3words.com.au

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 at 12:29 pm and is filed under promotional. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.