I had a moment over the weekend. And before visions of Barry White and me in a Snuggie holding a glass of champagne start dancing in your heads, it was actually a much different kind of a moment. If youre a new photographer, especially a new wedding photographer, youre going to be inundated with the shoot to get published mantra that prances around gleefully in our industry. Thousands of photographers, shooting to hopefully impress the elite few that perch themselves on top of the massive dung heap of vintage, lace, burlap, and faded yellow broken dreams that so many try to climb. Always remember this one thing - shoot from your heart. Turn off the background noise, turn off the blogs, the wedding websites, the magazines you want to be in (PS, no one reads those anymore), and remember why youre a photographer in the first place. If you shoot for you, and create from your heart what it is that you see, not what some intoxicated intern behind a desk at a wedding blog tells you you should see, youll be light years ahead of everyone else trying to get noticed. If you create good, solid work, blogs and website will contact you and ask for your work. This I promise. Theres a whole entire industry begging you to be fabulous. Shoot vintage. Shoot flowers. Shoot details. Shoot this. Shoot that. And theres a place for those things, really. But when a bride calls you around midnight a few days after her wedding crying and asking for any photos you have of a family member that was at the wedding that unexpectedly passed away that day, or you get letters of thanks for the random photo you took of the groom and his dad laughing because that was the last photo they had together, or the crazy reception photos you have of the bride and her sister were some of the last ones they had together, all of the lace, burlap, vintage, and details you took photos of dont mean jack. People. Relationships. Love. Those things are why we do what we do. 20 years from now, no one will stare longingly at an artistic sunflare shot of the table setting you took in hopes to impress a wedding blog or magazine. People will look at the laughter, the smiles, the memories of loved ones no longer around. Im not saying dont take pretty details shots. Im just saying always remember that grandpa kissing the bride on the cheek, even if its a poorly lit, nasty background, no sunflare to be found, no chance in hell of ever being published shot, will be way more important to the bride than that pretty picture you took of the bouquet on the table. Shoot for your clients. Happy clients are so much cooler than a happy wedding blog.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 16:22:35 +0000
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