How to make good money being a Wedding Photographer / Videograper

Ok, I'm not going to give you all my secrets here today, but I plan to do just that in the weeks and months ahead. Why would I do that, and create more competition for myself? Hmmm, Why Indeed!

In fact, at this moment I don't really have time to do this subject justice, but I thought if I at least got the ball rolling, I'll make plans to come back later and fill in more useful details.

For now, let me start at the begining...

I used to work as a computer tech, at a computer store. A lady I worked with had a daughter getting married, and she wanted me to do the video for her. I had an early model miniDV camera, but hadn't done much with it yet. This was back in 1999 I guess, the dark ages so to speak. At that time, doing video editing on computers was happening, but not as easy as it is today. I had about enough hard drive space on my computer to do maybe 30 minutes of video at a time. In fact, I didn't even have a FireWire card yet, I was still doing analog capture...

To be honest, I really didn't want to do her wedding video. I didn't want to screw it up I guess. After finally saying that I'd do it for free, if no one else would, just for practice, I had the gig. So then I started doing research. I got signed up on some video email lists to learn as much as I could. I did web searches for anything I should know. I started to realize I would need to buy a few more things.

Now keep in mind, even though I had a decent job at the time, I wasn't exactly rolling in the money. So it wasn't like I could just go out and buy a bunch of stuff. But by the time of the wedding, I had picked up a decent shotgun microphone for the MiniDV camera, I had a MiniDisc recorder walkman and a lapel mic for the groom, and I even had a back up Hi8 Handycam.

I think it was probably at least 3 or 4 months after the wedding by the time I got the video edited. None of the things I tried would work. I was on Windows PCs, which had some very good programs, but they were all pretty expensive. None of the cheap programs that I could get my hands on would work. My computers were just not fast enough. I had 2 or 3 pieces of hardware that I thought would work that I later found out were not really good enough. It was a rough start!

However, I did learn something. Some times the client, in this case the mother of the bride, could care less about absolute perfection. This is a good point, actually. I went into this planning on creating an absolute perfect wedding video, but I really didn't have the gear, the skills, or the experience to pull it off. Actually in the end, I did get it together. My basic video was good, it just took a lot of work to edit it together.

So, lets talk about you now. Maybe you've done one or two weddings. Or you're thinking about it, maybe your friends are asking you if you can do their wedding. What should you do? What gear should you have, what software, ... so many questions!

Start off with the basics. You really should try to have 2 video cameras, at least for the wedding ceremony. Make one a basic simple camera, it can be fairly cheap. That is your "Safety" camera. You could put it in the Balcony, or even at the front of the church, facing down the aisle toward the people. Anywhere that you'll get a good shot for at least most of the service. This is a good reason that I like to attend the rehearsal, it gives me a chance to watch where people are supposed to stand. They don't always hit their marks!

Ok, you have your safety camera rolling, now you can actually operate the main camera. Where you stand really depends on the situation at the church or where the wedding is at. I often stand at the back of the church, next to the center aisle, then I can do the long zoom shot and get the close up shot of the bride and groom, or I can pull wide and get the whole wedding party, etc. The back isn't as good of a place to be for the Processional, but if you're careful you can at least get some faces as people walk in. You're in a great place for the Recessional, as they're all coming right at you then!

To be fair, I always wish I had about 7 cameras for a ceremony, but that would probably take a few hours to set up! So you do what you can, with what you have.That is really my point for today, before you get all crazy and go buying wireless microphones and HD video cameras and Lights and 20 hours worth of batteries, go shoot a couple of weddings with what you have. Maybe even shoot them for free, just for the experience. Of the first 5 weddings that I shot, 4 were for free. I sent the couples a single copy of the finished project, and if they wanted more I sold it to them for something like $10 each. 2 of the 4 bought more copies, so I almost broke even on them. But I also had 5 weddings experience going into my second season!

And here's another good thing to understand. Its a really good idea to just tell someone that you're just starting out. Sure, you may not get that job, but trust me, you don't want THAT job anyway! It took me a couple years to figure out that some jobs just weren't worth what I was charging then.

Ok, this is a good place to stop for now. I'll plan on coming back and writing more later. If you are actually getting started, feel free to drop me a line. My contact info is on the right side toward the top of the page there.

Good luck, and have fun! Weddings are a blast!
Carlin