Following my previous post about how to improve as a photographer, I would like now to be more specific and look at the different aspects to improve as wedding day photographer.
How can I become a better wedding photographer? If you ask yourself this question then it’s already a good start: where there’s a will there’s a way!
There are thousands of wedding photographers out there, I have never wanted to be average, I want to be the best! This pushes me to always look out for ways to improve my skills and my photos.
There are a few things you need to have in the first place: you need to have the will to improve and you must be a people’s person people, if you don’t then look at landscape or product photography…
Then you need to be fast, real fast
I have never been so impressed by posed shots, I do literally thousands of them every month as part of my job for western design, one of the top wedding company in Taiwan ( www.westgown.blogspot.com) and even then I still keep it natural and try to show the love of my customers. The idea is that a posed shot can be repeated, we need them, but what I’m looking for is candid photography, a photo that tells a story shows an emotion, this is what I look for.
The way is see it: anybody with a minimum of training can take a good posed shot of the bride and groom, but coming up with great candids on a regular basis takes much more than chance, it takes skills, the kind that are not taught in photography schools.
And for this you need to be ready at all times, full of energy and keep your eyes open.
Don’t count to three!!! Just take a couple of shots and be ready to take some more as soon as the people believe it’s over, that’s when you catch the best expression.
Every wedding is a challenge, it drives and pushes me to be better.
Great photography does not mean great commercial success, it’s a sad fact, may feel unfair sometimes as we see poor quality photographers enjoying great commercial success, but those photographers have something to teach, if not about photography, about marketing yourself!
Because in this business photography is our product and the quality of the product is not proportional to the price of that very same product.
I will talk about this in another post, maybe in a couple of weeks as I’m going to be quite busy for a while as I travel to Europe for some assignments.
Good luck, never stop learning!
Nico
