Confessions of A Wedding Photographer

Like most jobs, we all have things that we wedding photographers love, and things that we hate. That’s only normal. For the most part we enjoy photographing weddings enough that it outweigh all the cons. Plus, we are grateful that we get to do something we love as a profession.

But we still get a little peeved sometimes. I apologize in advance if this might offend some people. I’m going to be completely transparent here.

1. We don’t like being fed last at the reception.

Wedding photographers and cinematographers, aside from wedding planners, are the only other vendors that spend the entire day with you on your wedding. Most coverage nowadays start when the bride gets ready up to the end of reception. We almost never get a break when we’re working because there’s always things happening. That’s why sometimes, most of us don’t really eat for the most part of the day. The only real break we get to have is later on at the reception where the guests are fed. Nobody wants photographs or footages of people eating anyway. That’s when we would take our break. And that’s when we would realise how much hungry we actually were.

The thing that really annoys us is that when our clients provide us meals (instead of us getting our own and taking an hour break), the wedding venue feeds us last. Now put yourselves in our shoes and imagine this. We’ve been working hard all day. We’re hungry. We see other people eating. We get even hungrier. By the time the food gets to us, the speeches are about to start. We have one minute, maybe two minutes max to shove everything in our mouths before getting back out there to work with a smile on our faces.

Can you see how that would annoy us? It’s not our clients fault that wedding venues treat us this way. That’s how they think it should be done. We would really appreciate it though if you kindly remind them to feed the vendors first as we do have important jobs to do for you.

2. Uncle Bob and Aunt Sally are not our friends.

In the wedding photography world, Uncle Bob is the universal term for a male guest at a wedding who has a camera/tablet/phone that gets in the way of our frames. Aunt Sally is his female counterpart. I already wrote a blog post not too long ago on why you should keep your wedding Unplugged especially for the wedding ceremony. Basically Uncle Bob and Aunt Sally make our jobs tougher as they raise the risk of us missing moments. Your important moments.

How, you ask? Let me list some ways.

– He (not to be sexist, but it’s usually men that do these things) jumps in front of us while you’re walking down the aisle.
– He’s in the opposite side from where we’re standing during your first kiss. So instead of a really great picture of just the two of you, you’ll look as if you’re both kissing a third wheel who’s holding a camera.
– We see a sweet moment happening between you two of while you’re completely unaware of us and Uncle Bob ruins it by telling you to look at him.
– He hangs around while we’re doing portraits and has to keep butting in so he can have his own shots. Which is okay if we have unlimited amount of time to spend. But we typically don’t have that luxury on a wedding day.
– He ruins our exposure at a decisive moment because they used a flash, making that image of your memory unusable. There’s only so much Photoshop can do.

I can go on and on. And on. I understand that people want their own photographs and that’s great. In the field, I can’t do anything about it because they’re your guests. I’ll just have to bear it  and work around them. But I just hate having my clients’ investment of having their memories captured ruined because of the Uncle Bobs and Aunt Sallys.

3. Pinterest is the bane of our existence.

Hate is probably a strong word for describing how we feel about Pinterest. But it’s up there. I mean, we get why it’s popular and useful for wedding planning. It’s awesome for that. It’s when brides send us a Pinterest board of all the photos they want replicated for their own wedding that, and I’m being completely honest here, we (photographers) all cringe in the inside. Not sending a board for their photographers to get a sense of what they like aesthetically speaking (that is completely okay), but a board of everything they want copied. Yes, copied. If they wanted that particular style or image, just hire the same photographer who did that. Because the image you want won’t be exactly the same. In fact, it’ll be worse than the original image because you’ll be asking your photographers to stop being creative. Wouldn’t it be much better if you trust your photographer to create something unique for you and not get a bad copy of the original?

And since we’re in the topic of Pinterest, let’s talk about bridesmaids who pull out their Pinterest boards and hijack the entire portrait session telling photographers to do this and that. One photo request is okay. They’re looking out for the bride and groom’s interest and that I understand. They think they’re helping. I’m talking about those who want to copy three and more. That’s really pushing it and they come across more as control freaks. Because of that they’re not our favourite people either. They stop our creative flow and just prolongs the session further.

4. We have a love and hate relationship with receiving lines.

My friend Erika Hammer wrote a great blog post on the pros and cons of receiving lines. Most photographers find receiving lines pointless, but I do like getting photographs of each guests with the bride and groom. That’s a better way for the couple to get photographs done with their guests instead of having them visit each table around at dinner time (because tables covered by partially eaten meals and chewing people in the background are highly unappealing.) As long as the bride and groom are aware of how long the whole ordeal entails. I photographed a wedding once where the couple did not plan on having a receiving line but their families insisted so instead of a 7pm dinner start, the head table didn’t get their dinner until 9 pm. You can imagine how hungry everyone was by the time their plates arrived.

5. Our Lifestyle is not as glamorous as you might think.

Most people think that we work for one day and have the rest of the week off. Easy money. Well, I wish that was true. For every hour of shooting we do, we spend two to three hours on post-processing. That’s why it takes that long to get your images done. And because we’re running a business, we do spend a lot of time on paperwork, communication, marketing etc. Most of my photographer friends find themselves burnt out and isolated from friends by October because of how busy wedding season can become. And when do finish everything by December/January, when we finally have time to hangout with other people outside of our immediate family , it’ll be winter. There’s not much you can do outside in the winter unless you do any winter sports. Photography can be a lonely lifestyle when you actually get to live it.

So there you go. I feel like this was a long rant but I hear these same issues among other photographers and if nobody puts them out there, then it will never be resolved.

Thank you for reading.