A day in the life of a Wedding Photographer.
A day in the life of a Wedding Photographer on a non-shooting day. It's not what you'd expect!
Most people understandably think that a wedding photographer would have nothing to do in the week between weddings on a Saturday afternoon... Wrong! Oh so wrong! If only it were like that! By the way, Weddings also happen every day of the week now, not just on Saturdays. ( Of course, we are all waiting for Covid-19 to pass and we can all get back to shooting fabulous wedding days! )
I often say in conversation with people that actually shooting the wedding day is probably 1/10th of the work that goes on behind a wedding photography business like mine.
To explain what a day in the life of a wedding photographer is actually like, I tend to give the analogy of making a big blockbuster film. (I know I'm a stills photographer but the point remains the same). Let's get to it!
Life of A Wedding Photographer
To Start
There's the film's casting director (Or the Correspondence person)..... The one with the love of people. That answers all the emails and likes to get to know the amazing couples who are getting in touch from the off. Who arranges and has the meetings with the stars of the show (that's you!) Usually lots of coffee, biscuits and chat is involved at this point. I love this bit 🙂
Marketing
Marketing is a whole other job by itself, for any business, and takes a lot of time in the process of running this business. The marketing team are those who spark everyones interest in the film in the first place. They attract the stars and help them to realise that they to want to be in these epic productions.
Creative Director of Photography
Of course, there is the Creative Director of Photography. The one with all the technical skills. Who everyone knows about. The one who has all the experience of shooting a epic picture. They know the best light. The best places to shoot. The best kit to use. And they run around a lot during the making of the film! And don't forget, there are no retakes! No second chances! It's all shot and recorded on the 1st take! A huge responsibility! But I love this bit the most!!!
The procurement team
The Procurement Team researches the cameras and equipment that gets used on your big day. Making sure that I have the very best that I can get. Reliable gear is essential (plus spares of literally everything!)
The Software engineers
The Software Engineers. This could come under Research & Development I suppose. I use lots of Software to help run the business.
Shootproof is how I share the epic Big Day Production once it's all be edited and is finished (the password protected galleries) with you.
Photomechanic is a piece of software that I use to cull your images before I import them in to Lightroom.
Adobe Suite - LightRoom & Photoshop is where all the magic happens with the editing of your images.
Later is the software that I use to post images to Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest & Twitter and It helps me to keep everything in order.
17Hats is the software that I use to keep track of all my lovely weddings that are booked in. It deals with invoices and all of that gubbins.
The Editing Team
life of a Wedding Photographer continues with the Editing. This is where all of the magic happens! It involves the backing up of the images first to three separate places. (I have lots of hard drives!!) Next comes the culling of the 5000 or so images that we've taken. When I have the final images I get to work on the finer points of editing the images using the software mentioned above. They are then all saved again, in their final edited state, to various hard drives. Uploaded to the couples private online gallery and they present the password to the happy couple! Voila!
The Social Media Team
The social media team who cook up a storm around this little business. I do have a love / hate relationship with social media. Most people do don't they? It's amazing for the reason that it connects me with you lovely lot. But I spend (waste) so much time watching cat or panda videos and I really curse myself sometimes for it!! I need more will power...
The Producer
Every Big Production needs a Producer, obviously. The Producer (or the accounts division) pretty much deals with all the running costs that enable me to have a business in the first place.
The Web Site Design Team
The web site design team ( & throw in the old SEO too) & Blog writers. Like, I'm literally writing this blog now! :)) I love to design the website. I will lose hours on that! Usually during the early hours of the morning! I find I'm most productive at 3am 🙂
Research & Development
Research & Development (find all the best photographers across the world to train with and then do the training)
The list literally goes on and on!
Did you even imagine that a day in the life of a wedding photographer would look like this?
So we're never sitting at home waiting for the weekend to come around (or any day in the week for that matter) and do you know what? I absolutely love all of it!
So if you want to get in touch with me, I'll put on my correspondence hat and we can have a chat about what you need for your amazing film!
Images taken at the amazing Wedding Venue that is The Ashes Barns!
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