![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/daweon-toban\/DaWeon-Toban_0121.jpg\")
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An interesting conversation I had with another photographer a few years back, had a surprisingly energizing effect on him. At a get-together at one of the photo conventions we struck up a conversation, and he told me how as a newer photographer, he was completely intimidated by the magnificent images he sees on the best photographers’ websites and on their FB pages. He felt he would never be able to match those.<\/p>\n
My comment was that he doesn’t have to match those at every wedding. What we are seeing are the cherry-picked “hero” shots. We won’t be trekking up the Himalayas with every couple we photograph. We won’t have grand vistas of mountain ranges as a backdrop at every wedding. We won’t have gorgeous destination wedding scenery for every wedding either. For the vast majority of the time we will be photographing people at more modest venues. Simpler ceremonies and parties. Backyard weddings.<\/p>\n
So it is unfair to compare your work to those cherry-picked images that win awards at the international photography conventions.<\/p>\n
My advice to him was simple – create solid work, and aim for those moments of \u00a0brilliance.<\/p>\n
That’s it. Be a good photographer and create good images. Consistently. Don’t mess it up. Just do work you can be proud of, and make your clients happy. Don’t compare yourself with the very pinnacle of the best wedding photographs you see.<\/p>\n
Create solid work, and aim for those moments of brilliance. Aim for those images which you’d love to post on your blog and on your FB page. They are there!<\/p>\n
In our follow-up conversation years later, he explained that this advice helped him calm down and focus. Just be solid. That’s a realistically attainable goal at every wedding.<\/p>\n
Simple advice really. There’s no blindingly bright spark\u00a0that will magically transform you. However, I do think that if you feel intimidated and anxious and less pleased with your own work – even if you are good at what you do – then this advice will help you realize you have a base platform to work from. Just create good work … and then keep an eye out for those moments and opportunities where you can shine. You can do this. Breathe.<\/p>\n
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This advice – to consistently create solid work – is of course dependent on you having to know your basic photography techniques. You have to know your gear. \u00a0There are no short-cuts.<\/p>\n
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Contrary to the feel-good advice you hear at conventions and seminars, you can’t “fast track’ your way to this. You also need much much more than just a passion for photography<\/a>. You also need to get serious about what you do. You can’t follow vacuous advice such as\u00a0one of the “rock star” photographers who had a “System” where he suggested\u00a0you don’t even need your own camera – that you could borrow a camera from a friend. Yeah – I still don’t quite know how to reply to that.<\/p>\n This cartoon\u00a0is full of some serious truth. All of you who have achieved some level of success will know this already. For those of you on your way up, this is it.<\/p>\n Your competition is better equipped than you are, and attend more workshops, and read more voraciously than you do. Your competition shoots more often, is more imaginative, and tries more things. So you’re up for some serious hard work to be successful.<\/p>\n Yet … you also know you can do it with\u00a0diligent work. That goal of being able to deliver really good work, is attainable. You can do it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don’t put unnecessary pressure on yourself by comparing your work with the hand-picked and carefully massaged photos by the top photographers. That’s just not realistic.<\/p>\n That’s it really, in its most simple form. Be solid, and then aim for those spectacular moments. \u00a0Or if you want it in my real voice – Don’t fuck it up!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n More photos of DaWeon & Toban’s wedding can be seen on my wedding photography blog \u2013\u00a0Philadelphia wedding at Boathouse Row<\/a>. Here’s the techie info for a few of the images.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/640 \u00a0@ \u00a0f\/3.5 \u00a0@ \u00a01600 ISO \u00a0… available light only With the soft evening light, there was no reason to use additional lighting. I allowed them space to interact with one another – aiming for a natural feel to these portraits, even though I did want a few images where either DaWeon or Toban is camera-aware. Here I used the lens at the maximum focal length to compress the perspective. I purposely zoom to 200mm, and then step back to get the composition I want.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/250 \u00a0@ \u00a0f\/4 \u00a0@ \u00a0200 ISO \u00a0…. off-camera flash with the Profoto B1 flash<\/a> and 1×3 stripbox<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>) To balance the exposure against the evening sky, I had to use off-camera flash<\/a>. There’s no way around that. That’s the techie stuff, but the real magic comes in directing a couple – not posing, but directing them – in such a way that the photo has a near -spontaneous natural feel to it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/800 @ f\/4 @ 100 ISO \u00a0…. off-camera flash with the\u00a0Profoto B1 flash<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a01×3 stripbox<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>) I zoomed close to the maximum focal length here so that I could really compress the perspective, and make the city appear larger behind them. Off-camera flash was necessary to balance the exposure for them with the background. It helped tremendously that I used the\u00a0\u00a0Profoto B1 flash<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>)\u00a0\u00a0– it allowed me to go to high-speed flash sync for shallow depth of field, while still using a softbox for softer light.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/160 \u00a0@ \u00a0f\/5.6\u00a0 @ \u00a0100 ISO \u00a0…. off-camera flash with the\u00a0Profoto B1 flash<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a01×3 stripbox<\/a>\u00a0(affiliate<\/em>) I really love this photo that was also shown at the top – a bridal portrait of DaWeon on the steps behind the Museum of Art. There’s intentionally a dash of sexiness to the photo – just as it should be.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My best advice for wedding photographers An interesting conversation I had with another photographer a few years back, had a surprisingly energizing effect on him. At a get-together at one of the photo conventions we struck up a conversation, and he told me how as a newer photographer, he was completely intimidated by the magnificent Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[253,846],"yst_prominent_words":[10301,10306,10304,10299,10286,10294,10282,10303,10292,10296,10285,10308,10290,10305,1580,10288,1086,10280,10309,10307],"class_list":{"0":"post-31463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wedding-photography","8":"tag-wedding-photography-tips","9":"tag-wedding-photography-tutorials","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31463"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48942,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31463\/revisions\/48942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31463"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=31463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/humour\/be-an-artist.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nSummary<\/h2>\n
More\u00a0photos from their wedding<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/daweon-toban\/DaWeon-Toban_0567.jpg\")
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\n70-200mm f\/2.8 \u00a0@ 200mm<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/daweon-toban\/DaWeon-Toban_0470.jpg\")
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\n70-200mm f\/2.8 \u00a0@ 100mm<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/daweon-toban\/DaWeon-Toban_0041.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n70-200mm f\/2.8 @ 190mm<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n24-70mm f\/2.8 \u00a0@ \u00a040mm<\/p>\nRelated articles<\/h2>\n
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