Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Every bride is beautiful. It’s like newborn babies or puppies. They can’t help it.” ― Emme Rollins
“I don’t like working with crazy people under pressure”—The late Leon Kennamer on wedding photography
And this is it…
Based on the anecdotal evidence I was hearing from friends and colleagues about the state of the business of wedding photography and how the pandemic affected it, I Googled “business of wedding photography” and got 386,000,000 hits.
But instead of getting updates of the state of the wedding photography business, all I saw was dozens of pages on how to start a wedding photography business. I already know how easy entry to this field can be. In 1982 Mary and I started our own (at the time, mostly) wedding photography business in the spare bedroom of our condo with just a couple of cameras and $75 in the bank. Were we successful in wedding photography? Not so you could tell.
It’s been a long time since I photographed a wedding, although my new accountant is encouraging me to do it again. “People pay crazy money for wedding photography,” he told me. I haven’t taken him up on his suggestion maybe because I didn’t know what his definition of “crazy” is. I’ve seen ads posted on bulletin boards in supermarkets saying, “I’ll shoot your wedding for $200 and give you all of the pictures on a flash drive.” I’m not sure who the crazy one is in that deal. It reminds of an encounter between noted photographer, Charles Lewis and someone who attended one of his seminars. The gentleman told Mr. Lewis, “I’m loosing $50 for every wedding that I shoot.” Mr. Lewis looks him in the eye and replies, “Then you know what you need to do, don’t you?” Excitedly, the man replies, “Yes, I need to do more of them.” True story.
In recent years, I have, however, photographed, if not brides, then models wearing wedding dresses in my studio. That includes today’s featured image along with one I made of Pam Simpson wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress that ended up on the cover of Shutterbug (back when it was a print magazine.)
How I made this portrait: This featured photograph of Courtney was the first bridal portrait I’d made in a while. She had already been married for a few years when I made this shot, which was during a time when I asked married models to bring their wedding dresses to shoots. (You didn’t think that I was just asking them to bring corsets did you? Well, that too…)
The lighting setup consisted of a 300 Watt-second Adorama monolight with a 36 x 36-inch softbox attached that was placed at camera right as the main light and a second 300 Watt-second Adorama monolight at camera left with a 64-inch umbrella that was set at a lower power setting mainly to provide lighting for her veil, that truthfully could have used a little more power. The camera was a Canon EOS 50D with EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens (at 60mm) with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/9 and ISO 125. The background was one of Savage’s useful two-sided Monsoon collapsible backdrops.
I’d still like to know how well wedding photographers out there are doing business-wise. If you would like to share—you don’t have to give me details and can be anonymous—how’re you’re doing click CONTACT and let me know. I’ll do a follow-up post and be sure to include that information.
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My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new copies available from Amazon for $33.56, as I write this. Used copies start around twenty-three bucks. The Kindle version available at $19.99 for those who prefer a digital format.