Let’s pretend that you want to start showing horses. You go out and buy a hat, show outfit, saddle, bridle, show halter-all the accessories, equipment and tools necessary to show a horse. Next you find someone with a high quality show horse, a horse that is the culmination of their lifelong hopes and dreams. We’ll say the horse cost that person $15,000, with every dollar carefully planned and saved for this special, once in a lifetime horse. The horse owner asks about your experience showing horses, and you explain that you bought everything needed to show the horse. “But what about your actual horse show experience?” the pesky horse owner persists. You say that you have attended several horse shows with friends who show horses, you really like horses, and have a natural “love and affinity” for horses. How likely is the horse owner to hand over the reins to you?
Yet, this is what happens week after week. An individual enjoys taking photos and decides to buy a nice camera. The next thing you know, that same person is scheduled to photograph someone’s wedding! A WEDDING! You know, that once-in-a-lifetime day filled with treasured dreams and hopes, each expensive moment carefully planned to the smallest detail.
At an event held to help engaged couples plan their weddings, I had a question posed to me and I quote: “My daughter has always liked taking pictures and is spending her tax refund on an expensive camera. She is booked to photograph a wedding in August-what kind of things should she do to get ready?”
SERIOUSLY? I was nearly too stunned to reply. What should she do? Where do I begin? How about enrolling in a photography class? How about working as a long term apprentice with an experienced, professional wedding photographer? How about learning the fine points of lighting (ambient, flash, bounce, etc.), flattering posing (how to pose the bride to showcase her attributes, minimize her weaknesses), efficiently arranging groups, like the high strung families or the nervous wedding party in an eye-pleasing composition? What about learning the rules and traditions of the various churches, synagogues and temples? The list goes on and on.
In considering the comment, “…AN expensive camera…”, I wonder if the soon to be “professional” photographer has considered that she will be doing her client a huge disservice by arriving at the wedding with ONE camera. What happens if the adorable ringbearer picks it up and accidentally drops it on the floor? What happens if the camera malfunctions at an inopportune moment? Don’t even get me started thinking about whether or not this “professional photographer” has budgeted or even given a thought to extra camera batteries, and more than one memory card!
Lighting. Such a small word, yet so necessary. If you are in a room with overhead lighting, look around at the delightful “raccoon eyes” of those people near you, created by the eye socket and brow bone causing a shadow on the eye. If the “wanna-be-a-photographer” doesn’t have something to add or reflect a little light to illuminate the happy sparkle in the eyes of the bride on her wedding day, then you can count on looking at those shadowed, dull eyes in all of the wedding photos.
I haven’t even begun to discuss the specific camera lens best suited for specific moments throughout the wedding day. Does this “photographer” know what happens if a wide angle lens is used to photograph the bride and groom full length? You’ve seen those caricature-like photos of a person with a large head and tiny feet? Wide angle lens…can be deadly in the hands of an untrained (unprofessional) person.
After the wedding day, you will have gifts to return and a dress stored in a box. Photographs of your wedding last-the good, the bad, and the hideously ugly.
