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5 Ways to Prepare for Your First year of Wedding Photography

photographer teaching beginner photographers

Today we are talking about 5 ways to prepare for your first year of wedding photography. If you are thinking about starting your first season, this video is for you! We are going to talk about the ways to get you ready to rumble AND make sure you thrive in the long run. Number 1 […]

Today we are talking about 5 ways to prepare for your first year of wedding photography. If you are thinking about starting your first season, this video is for you! We are going to talk about the ways to get you ready to rumble AND make sure you thrive in the long run.

Number 1 – Invest in Education

The first tip for way to prepare for your first year of wedding photography is to invest in education. If there is any part of the process that you are feeling unsure about, invest in education. Whether that is timeline, your client experience, email templates, posing, ANYTHING that feels daunting on a wedding day.

Yes, you could probably figure it out from a lot of free YouTube videos like this or from tutorials on tiktok. The fastest and most concise way to figure something out is to learn it from someone who has done it before you. There are ton of amazing photography educators that are going to lay out a step by step plan to get you from point A to point B in the fastest way possible. 

So again, there are tons of Youtube tutorials. They might take you from point A, to over here, to over here, and at the end of the day, they might not get you to point B. Versus an educator who’s been down the road before you, they are going to show you exactly what you need to do. 

If you are looking for any posing education, we have an amazing posing course called Posing for Purpose. It will up level your posing game and get you so prepared for your first year of wedding photography. I’m going to drop it here for you – it is always open for purchase and we would love to have you join us! 

Number 2 – Get Your Client Experience Ready to Rumble

There’s a lot of backend work that comes with putting together a client experience and having a workflow with them. The workflow starts from point A, which is when they inquire with you, to point B, which is alllll the way down the road when you deliver their gallery and ask for a review from them. 

Putting together an entire client experience is one that has guidance all the way through. That’s helping them, that answers questions before they even have them, that makes them feel taken care of takes a lot of work. It takes aligning your workflow in a way that makes sense and doesn’t involve a lot of extra work from them. Also, it takes having a scheduling calendar so that they can schedule their engagement session. It takes sending them a guide! We have a ton of resources located in our shop that will help you with this, but sometimes it’s going to take some time for you to roll up your sleeves and get to work. 

Number 3 – Adequate Gear to Get. It. Done.

Wedding photography requires a lot more gear than regular sessions because you’re going to be faced with every type of portrait and every type of lighting situation. 

You’ll never quite know what you’re walking into. You’ll need to be ready to rumble with flashes, all kinds of different lenses that allow you to be far away during the ceremony or during toasts, or that allow you to get crisp portraits during the wedding party portrait time. It really tests you and requires you to have a variety of gear. 

If you have any questions about gear, I’m going to link our gear playlist here. It’ll have a ton of answers including a wedding starter kit – what we would need if we were shooting a wedding for the first time.

Number 4 – Practice, Practice, Practice

The next way to prepare for your first year of wedding photography is practice! That might look like a lot of different things. Many people who go into their first wedding season will have tons of experience with portrait sessions, and that’s amazing. However, most of that experience will be outdoors, an hour and a half from sunset in a beautiful golden hour. 

We recommend practicing a lot of different scenarios. That could include in the basement in the almost dark with your child or pet or portraits indoors. Scheduling a studio session so that you can practice portraits indoors because that might not be your forte. That might be something that would make sense to shoot for free as a portfolio builder. 

We have a video called when to shoot for free and I’m going to link it here for you so that you can go check that out. In that video, we’ll go through a couple different scenarios and one of them will be how can I build up my portfolio in certain cases. In this case, I think it makes sense for you to shoot for free to get practice, practice, practice, so you can walk into a wedding day feeling confident.

Number 5 – Second Shooting

There is nothing like in-person experience to be able to see how the lead shooter handles an entire day. From how they handle lighting throughout the day, and every single person they meet like planners, other vendors, to the family, to random guests at cocktail hour. 

There is really nothing that can beat that in-person experience, so we recommend second shooting as much as possible. 

So, if you’re thinking about going into your first wedding season, we are so pumped for you! If you are already booked and ready to rumble, let’s get goin’!

We recommend taking all 5 of these steps so you can get ready to rumble. If you have any questions, as always drop them down below and be sure to subscribe to our channel! Until next time, BYE!

© Cameron & Tia 

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