Camera Labs

Open to any thoughts or suggestions, so please done hold back.

I am in the I.T. industry and unless there was a better way of earning enough money to pay the mortgage, bills, food etc, I intend to stay in it.

However I love photography and would like to expand my hobby to working with it, so it seemed sensible to look into Wedding Photography as most are at weekends, although I would not mind taking a day off and I can work in the evenings doing post processing, making albums, burning discs etc

My plan is as follows:

1) Go on a course, traing up as much as I can in this area
2) Buy a cheaper second camera to my current setup as backup, probably stick with Nikon as I know them well.
3) Build a website (although this is difficult as I have no examples I can put up there as I have not done a wedding yet
4) possibly see if I can shadow a wedding photographer and see how it is done
5) advertise my services, start cheap (should I be honest and say, you are my first ever wedding?)

I have a reasonable setup and plan to add one other lens and a Nikon D90 or something. I have all the I.T equipment I need and software.

Nikon D300S DSLR
Nikon 18-200MM F3.5-5.6G IF-ED AF-S VR DX Lens
Tokina ATX 116 PRO DX AF11-16mm F/2.8 Nikon Lens
Nikon SB-800 Speedlight Flash
Manfrotto 055XPROB Tripod
Manfrotto 804RC2 Basic Pan & Tilt Head with Quick Release Plate

Thoughts?

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Nikon D300S
My Photography Website
My Flickr

Not here with advise- I think what you've planed sounds great..
But regarding “3) Build a website (although this is difficult as I have no examples I can put up there as I have not done a wedding yet”
Funny enough, I got my first wedding gig just by posting a couple of cool pics on facebook. A friend of my sisters saw them, loved them- told her friend who was about to get married to check them out. And my first wedding gig came to light, even though she had been seing other weeding photographers work. I did a great shoot and the married couples loved the pics.-> everything, in terms of wedding jobs, has pretty much been snowballing from there.

So my point is or where hope is due, I don’t think it’s a MUST to have wedding pics to get the job.

Kindest Regards
msrock

Now- on with some better suggestions than this one.

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Canon 5D2, 7D, 50D & Canon s95 | Canon Lenses: 28-135mm, 17-55mm, 10-22mm, 15-85mm, 100mm 2.8 USM Macro and the 50mm 1.4 | Speedlite 580EX II and 430EX II |

Great plan, mine is pretty much identical, and I'm stuck at stage 4. Some say he recession is over, but it's really tough for business photogs right now (what I heard from some), so NEVER quit your IT job, it's still responsible for 80% of my income.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

i have been asked to do 2 wedding purely by the pics i keep posting up on Facebook, people like them. ive said no because i havent got the kit i think i would need, mainly im wanting 50mm 1.4 before i do any pics of people, only have the kit 18-55mm at mo.

i have a wedding in september that im shooting for my best friend, and going to a wedding this saturday (2 days from today) which im going to practice at.

I'd be intrested in other peoples views on this post.

I've made a website with other photos on which people can take a look at, no wedding pics on there but plenty of others.

take a look if you want (link is in my sig)

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Amateur, always learning!

My website:- www.neildavison.co.uk

Thanks for the replies.

I was thinking, and this may sound mad, but advertising myself as a free wedding photographer in the local paper, but this would still be after my training etc.

So if someone out there is really struggling to make ends meet but wants to have the best wedding they can, I will photograph it for free on the understanding that if they are not happy with the results there is no come back on me. Perhaps do a couple of weddings to cut my teeth with and find my confidence.

Thoughts?

_________________
Nikon D300S
My Photography Website
My Flickr

Could work. That way you will get them wedding shots for further use.

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Canon 5D2, 7D, 50D & Canon s95 | Canon Lenses: 28-135mm, 17-55mm, 10-22mm, 15-85mm, 100mm 2.8 USM Macro and the 50mm 1.4 | Speedlite 580EX II and 430EX II |

It's a tough one, because if you advertise as free, you'll either get people using you because you'll still want to do the best you can which means the people getting wedded could get greats shots and save themselves £1500!
Or as you said, they might not be able to afford a photographer so you'd be ideal.

Maybe for first wedding ask a paid photographer to shaddow them free, that way there is no pressure on you getting all the shots, then ask the photographer if he/she'd use any of the pictures you've taken?

could you start with parties or family events?

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Amateur, always learning!

My website:- www.neildavison.co.uk

Hi,
your plan sounds really good and it probably is a good idea to keep your old job, at least until you can see some serious financial results. From your explanation it sounds like you are not fully aware of how much work there is behind a weekend wedding. It is a mistake many people make, the one to underestimate the workload of a wedding; even professional photographers often get overbooked, simply because they tend to think that it's only a weekend.
Well, there is much more to it, beginning with the fact that all of these pictures need a lot of attention and in my experience a wedding easily keeps a person busy for about 70 hours all included.
Editing the images in photoshop takes time and if you don't do any editing... something is not going to look right.
I am never able to deliver the final work before a month after the wedding, some time even longer, so make sure you understand it is NOT just a Saturday. You can read more about it in this article I wrote on the issue: http://www.misposo.com/How-to-Choose/Ch ... ographers/

Hope this help and wish you all the best in this fascinating career.

Michael

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Mike Valeriani from
http://www.MiSposo.com
Passion for Photography

Thanks Michael

Since posting this back in July I have done quite a bit of research into this and completely agree with your comments!

I spoke to a couple of wedding photographers and did not consider all the pre-wedding meetings with clients and whist I had considered the post processing I did not consider it would be quite as much as they described to me.

So unfortunately I will not be doing this in my spare time... I think its one of those careers you either start in or like me later in life you get some sort of redundancy payment from your current career and have the spare money to carry you whilst you try and get your wedding business off the ground.

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Nikon D300S
My Photography Website
My Flickr