Everyone makes mistakes and that's totally fine. But we can learn from each other as well, so here are 7 mistakes you can easily avoid.
1. Bad communication with the couple
Emails are not enough! It is about a meeting, either in person or online. We all know the struggle of misunderstanding short text messages so you really want to focus on a personal relationship with the couple! Also it saves you a lot of time to have pre-planned tasks and emails so you don't have to write a lot of emails yourself and probably forget something.
2. Not setting expectations
This is something you should do directly in the beginning, not 3 days before the wedding!
You discuss all the topics like:
- how you edit
- what you offer and what not
- what your style is and if you are the right fit for the couple
Just make sure that you are on the same page and that they trust you and what you do.
3. Not using a contract
This is easily forgotten but so important! Do not rely on things you only talked about verbally.
This contract doesn’t need to be a lawyers masterpiece but it should contain what you will do and that the customer accepts and pays for it.
4. Being too hands-off
Guys, moments don't just happen. They are created.
So for what reason should you as the capturer of those moments not take part in creating them?
You're not there to let chaos happen, that's not how you get all of the shots you wanted.
You are there to let people know how to stand for the best lighting and how to pose but also letting them be in the moment and enjoy it.
The goal is to capture them having fun and making it look beautiful at the same time. This does not happen automatically.
5. Shooting wide open
If you shoot with e.g. a 16mm or 24mm lens and stand far away from your couple or the people you want to shoot… it needs to be sharp!
Setting your camera to wide open is not necessary and it will decrease sharpness.
You have enough light, so unless it’s dark and you really need some more light, you don’t need wide open!
You simply need to understand your gear and the purpose of why you are shooting something.
6. Too low of shutter speed
Especially in the evening when it’s getting dark and you want to capture light… have in mind that your photos could end up being blurry because of motion blur if you’re shooting with under 1/160 shutter speed. We don’t want that!
Just have the triangle of exposure in mind and decide how much light you actually need. But make sure the photo stays nice and sharp. Don’t go too low on shutter speed! If you're experienced blurry photos before, maybe try shooting in 1/200 or 1/250 shutter speed.
7. Not having a backup process
Imagine spending the whole day shooting beautiful pictures at a wedding and then the next day something happens and you lose all the photos. What do you do now? You can obviously not ask to repeat the day so in this case you’re pretty much done and have to give them their money back.
To prevent that, make sure to backup everything you have, for example in the cloud. Having a bunch of external back drives is probably not good enough to be honest.
I guess we can say that it is good to have some things in mind when shooting a wedding. It will increase your quality of work and hopefully prevent your business from disaster. You really don’t have to learn all this the hard way!