How I Started My Wedding Photography Business
In The Beginning
Although, I dabbled in photography since my early teens, I can’t say I was in to photography. Just for one simple reason, well actually two reasons. 1) Even back then film photography and photography in general was fairly expensive in Macedonia and 2) I was taking snaps, not really thinking about light, composition…
Baby Steps
I picked up a camera with intent, when I actually wanted to do something more then just taking snaps, in 2007/08. I was living in Prague and needed an outlet of sorts. And photography was the right meditation for me.
Roaming around the city. Looking for the perfect moment, light or just trying to find an interesting subject had a really profound effect on me.
It connected me to fellow photographers and opened my eyes to see the world a bit differently.
Soon after a friend of mine asked if I’d like to join him to work on stock photography. I said yes. Why not. I don’t know what stock photography is, but what the hell. It turns out it is a nice and relatively easy way of making money with the camera.
I mean, just the idea to work, earn and live from photography was very far fetched 15-20 years ago. And this stock thing was a God send. I could continue living in Prague, shoot there, post on stock sites and earn money. Why I stopped stock and turned to weddings is a different story altogether.
First Wedding
And then – out of the blue, back in early 2009 my friend asked me if I’d like to join him to shoot the wedding of a mutual acquaintance. After a brief (2 seconds) pause, I said yes. Arguably best decision ever. A decision that flipped my life upside down.
But wedding photography? It was considered the lowest of the low in the photography world. Maybe on the same level as cruise ship photographers. It was for people that don’t have anything better to do over the weekends or someone to fill in gaps in the family budget. Back in the day the sentiment of most photographers I knew (in Macedonia and around the World) was: Weddings? Yuck!
Probably that would be my reaction if someone asked me if I’d evet like to shoot weddings for a living if it wasn’t for Flickr and a bloke named Edward Olive. Hardly anybody knows him now, but back in the day he was truly a breath of fresh air in the wedding photography. Highly documentary style of shooting. If memory serves me correctly, mostly done on film. Harsh contrasty edits. I loved it.
So June 2009. Wedding No. 1.
My gear: 5D and 50mm/1.8 lens. The plastic fantastic. No flashes.
My knowledge: Less then gear used. Literally zero. I think I went to only a handful of weddings in my entire life. And I am not a wedding fan by any means.
But here we are, trying our best. When I look the photos now, I love the edginess and ruggedness of the images. Pure unadulterated documentary photography. Zero posing. Zero interference. The edit of the images, when I look at them now, is shit. But hey, sepia and split tone editing was acceptable in 2009.
The photos were posted online, just for fun and people started calling.
Next Episode
We needed to think fast and adapt. In the 2010 we had three weddings, in 2011 that number jumped to 16, and in 2012 it skyrocketed to 45 weddings that year. And I don’t think that we went below 45 till 2016 when I decided to go on my own.
But, that is a whole different story.
Most Important Lesson Learned
Timing is everything. I will talk more about this in one of the next blogs.