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Archive 2014 · What makes good wedding photography

  
 
nswelton
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · What makes good wedding photography


I just wrote a huge blog post about my experience judging a wedding photography contest. Would love some eyes on it, as I talk a lot about what images really stood out and what made images boring.

I know it's about a contest, but in a way, every wedding photographer out there is competing with other photographers to capture the eyes of a bride. So much of this is relevant.

http://www.dreamtimeimages.com/blog/how-to-win-wedding-photography-competitions/

Hopefully someone out there will find it helpful somehow.



Sep 10, 2014 at 11:55 PM
dhp_sf
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · What makes good wedding photography


I read this post when it was shared in another thread here on Fearless. In my opinion it really emphasizes a lot of what I hope to achieve in my own work and feel it is an incredible guide on how to think and what to look for as you're shooting as well as culling.

Thanks for the write-up. At least for me, it is incredibly valuable and fairly reaffirming my current philosophies around what constitutes a powerful photograph.... now if I can only execute it on a regular basis...



Sep 11, 2014 at 12:11 AM
myam203
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · What makes good wedding photography


Great post. It makes me think a lot about trying to improve and puts into words my feelings about what I call "who cares?" images. And by that I mean images that simply execute a technique or effect without any substance, no matter how well executed they are.


Sep 11, 2014 at 01:15 AM
glort
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · What makes good wedding photography



According to certain photography forum conventions, Good wedding photography constitutes the taking of 5 to 10 Thousand shots and then culling them down to maybe as little as 10% of what was originally shot and delivering only those to the clients.



Sep 11, 2014 at 03:31 AM
D. Diggler
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · What makes good wedding photography


VCSO?


Sep 11, 2014 at 04:17 AM
Mark_L
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · What makes good wedding photography


glort wrote:
According to certain photography forum conventions, Good wedding photography constitutes the taking of 5 to 10 Thousand shots and then culling them down to maybe as little as 10% of what was originally shot and delivering only those to the clients.


That doesn't change the end product ie. the actual pictures.



Sep 11, 2014 at 06:45 AM
D. Diggler
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · What makes good wedding photography


Mark_L wrote:
That doesn't change the end product ie. the actual pictures.


VCSO changes the actual pictures.




Sep 11, 2014 at 07:30 AM
LeeSimms
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · What makes good wedding photography


back fat


Sep 11, 2014 at 07:41 AM
D. Diggler
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · What makes good wedding photography


LeeSimms wrote:
back fat


ewwwwww




Sep 11, 2014 at 07:46 AM
MRomine
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · What makes good wedding photography


nswelton wrote:
Hopefully someone out there will find it helpful somehow.


Great piece!

I wanted o to ask you about something that you wrote. It has nothing to do with the photography aspect of Fearless but rather the structure of the judging process. You wore, "Our small team from the Colorado Wedding Photojournalist association selected 149 images, while another team selected a few different images, and the final tally of award winners topped out around 250." So you and your associates from CWPJ judged as a team and there were other groups that worked as a team in other locations? I was always under the impression and apparently wrongly so, that the judges worked independently and not as a group or team. Can you elaborate?



Sep 11, 2014 at 08:04 AM
hardlyboring
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · What makes good wedding photography


Nathan
Nice write up. I suck at writing so I can appreciate a well put together post that makes sense.

What gets me about this whole "competing for couples attention" is that I really don't see how it does our couples any actual good. I realize that competitions sometimes help people grow and stretch and become better but my question is, at who's expense are we doing this?
I see a lot of people get really really hung up on taking the next award winning photo or whatever and I wonder if that gets in the way of seeing other things or interacting with other people at weddings.

Winning awards has almost become a "brand" of its own.
I have won these awards therefore I will be shooting this way to try to win more.
Of course no one comes out and says it that way but a LOT of people start out by saying how many times they have been recognized for this or that and check out all my avatars from "best of knot", "SMP black book", "green wedding shoes", etc.

I am not sure if any of that actually means anything to 99% of brides or if it makes us provide a better finished product to brides.

Perhaps I am just hung up on some peoples over the top need to win awards or to be recognized. I would be interested to here brides perspectives on these matters.
Brides who have hired these award winners and if they think those awards actually made a difference with the overall experience and not just with pictures.

From my limited experience in wedding photography it seems like the experience people have away from the camera is just as important is the actual creative photos one takes.
Where are recognitions for "best brand", "best client experience", "best initial consult experience", "best after wedding experience", etc.
Those things seem dumb like "who would give an award for that" but in reality, at least to me, they are the things that matter even more than the photos.

Lets face it sometimes our photos are just normal, not every couple has a rockstar wedding, and not every set we produce is home run. That doesn't mean the client experience and business side of things has to fall short in anyway and for most people they are going to remember how they were taken care of just as much as how the photos were.

Do we focus on the non photo stuff too. Yes of course we do. No one ever talks about it though.
Todd Reichmann used to spend quite a bit of time here and was the authority on branding (still is). He never really got into talking about the actual photos because quite frankly as long as the photos were passable they didn't matter as much as everything else business wise.

Where are the "Sexy Business" awards to go along with our Fearless Awards?

Anyway great write up, very useful and well put together. You are going to be teaching me some climbing skills in CO soon hopefully



Sep 11, 2014 at 10:40 AM
TRReichman
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · What makes good wedding photography


hardlyboring wrote:
Do we focus on the non photo stuff too. Yes of course we do. No one ever talks about it though.
Todd Reichmann used to spend quite a bit of time here and was the authority on branding (still is). He never really got into talking about the actual photos because quite frankly as long as the photos were passable they didn't matter as much as everything else business wise.

Where are the "Sexy Business" awards to go along with our Fearless Awards?


Sounds like an amazing way for me to make money off my colleagues!

- trr



Sep 11, 2014 at 10:49 AM
hardlyboring
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · What makes good wedding photography


TRReichman wrote:
Sounds like an amazing way for me to make money off my colleagues!

- trr


haha



Sep 11, 2014 at 11:13 AM
dhp_sf
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · What makes good wedding photography


hardlyboring wrote:
Winning awards has almost become a "brand" of its own.
I have won these awards therefore I will be shooting this way to try to win more.
Of course no one comes out and says it that way but a LOT of people start out by saying how many times they have been recognized for this or that and check out all my avatars from "best of knot", "SMP black book", "green wedding shoes", etc.

I am not sure if any of that actually means anything to 99% of brides or if it makes us provide a better finished product
...Show more

I'm not Nathan obviously but I thought I'd chime in with my perspective as someone who does go after awards. I think that they do mean something to my clients and potential clients as well. They may not know exactly what it entails when they see a "Best of Weddings" award from The Knot, and it's something that I actually have around where I meet my clients though not something I explicitly talk about with them. Several people have seen it and said "omg congratulations! that's amazing!" or something to that effect. It builds confidence for the clients knowing that I've won awards for my photographs or my services (which best of the knot is more service oriented since it is based on quality reviews). I think any time I am aspiring to gain recognition it is because I am trying to do something well and that serves to help the client in a manner that builds additional trust and therefore possibly help me gain access and freedom to look for genuinely great moments that are not built from a list or whatever.

I do think what you say is true that there is much less emphasis out there on the actual service/client experience side. I think it's incredibly important too, so going after awards and wanting to serve the client well isn't really mutually exclusive.



Sep 11, 2014 at 12:22 PM
JakAHearts
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · What makes good wedding photography


I listened to Brian Callaway talk about this sort of thing a while back. He mentioned that he and whomever he is shooting with (normally his wife, I believe) will trade on and off with taking "safe" shots vs. overly creative shots during the wedding day. This way, they can offer and show "normal" images along with their really creative stuff.


Sep 11, 2014 at 12:48 PM
hardlyboring
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · What makes good wedding photography


dhp_sf wrote:
I'm not Nathan obviously but I thought I'd chime in with my perspective as someone who does go after awards. I think that they do mean something to my clients and potential clients as well. They may not know exactly what it entails when they see a "Best of Weddings" award from The Knot, and it's something that I actually have around where I meet my clients though not something I explicitly talk about with them. Several people have seen it and said "omg congratulations! that's amazing!" or something to that effect. It builds confidence for the clients knowing that
...Show more

I would agree that having recognition for your work does build confidence in clients. A huge plus. My thing is just the emphasis we as photographers put on it.



Sep 11, 2014 at 12:48 PM
MRomine
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · What makes good wedding photography


hardlyboring wrote:
I would agree that having recognition for your work does build confidence in clients.


Maybe younger clients but the older they/we humans become the more skeptical people in general will become. I know when I go to a car garage, a doctor's office or any other business and see award plaques hanging not the wall it doesn't impress me until I know more about how the award was won. There are too many WeddingWire types of organizations that award 'Best of" something to just about anyone.



Sep 11, 2014 at 01:03 PM
dhp_sf
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · What makes good wedding photography


hardlyboring wrote:
My thing is just the emphasis we as photographers put on it.


Agree 100%. As an industry, it is probably the most in your face aspect of the business. However, as subjective as it is, photography awards are also the easiest to judge from a qualitative standpoint. I'm not sure how you'd measure 'best service' or whatever. In a way that's what sites like the knot and wedding wire or whatever are for. Client reviews--but yet as an industry we scoff at that as well, even though it's potentially far more directly connected to the end-clients and weighs satisfaction of the product in addition to much of the "non-photography" aspects of the business.

I know there aren't many fans of The Knot here but I've been on there for a couple of years now, and have received the "Best of Weddings" as a photographer -- simply put, it is won by achieving a high number of quality reviews. So if you do a good enough job that people are compelled to write positive reviews consistently in a given season, you get recognized. Can "anyone" get it? Yeah pretty much, if you provide a good enough service and people write reviews (I tell my clients that as well). I don't see anything wrong with that.



Sep 11, 2014 at 01:29 PM
dmacmillan
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · What makes good wedding photography


I looked at the blog. I think all the photos posted in the blog are excellent.

But, will it play in Peoria? I'd like to see the same group of photos judged by newlyweds and prospective brides and compare their scores to those given by fellow photographers. The results may be close to the same, I don't know.

I have a nagging concern that sometimes photographers are shooting to impress other photographers and not necessarily to meet the needs of the customer. I wonder if some photos are well regarded by peers because they incorporate the trends of the day. Think tilted camera. When I was a professional photographer, I saw a number of trends come and go. Back when twinkie filters were the rage, almost every print at a state PPofA convention was taken with a twinkie filter. I guess the question is whether the brides and grooms of the day wanted their available light shots made with one.

I really don't have and answer. I'm just hoping that when framing an image, no one is thinking "the guys at FM (or WPPI) are gonna love this!" instead of "I hope the bride and groom really love this and will treasure it in the years to come".



Sep 11, 2014 at 01:37 PM
johnrg
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · What makes good wedding photography


If accolades come from an entity that a prospective client knows and trusts it will likely carry some weight. Even if they aren't familiar with the entity it might still be positive, at least showing that your work has been recognized by someone other than your mom. Awards can also show that your business has roots and is not fly by night. If the accolade is nebulous, though, like a restaurant that claims "voted best ____ cuisine" without anything to back it up, well then who cares. Anyhow, I think it's more important that a client is comfortable with you and your work and that you'll deliver exactly what you promise. After all they are placing a lot of trust in you by handing over a big chunk of cash.


Sep 11, 2014 at 01:41 PM
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