It’s NOT the Camera that Makes You a Great Wedding Photographer, you need something more important

To put it bluntly when I did my first ever wedding I was Shi**ing myself, the stress and the worry the night before kept me awake for hours.

750 Weddings later and ‘yes’ I've made a successful career from it and also helped many photographers go on to do the same. To be a wedding photographer you need to have certain qualities, I guess that’s why it’s not for everyone.
You don’t need to be award winning.

Now the first thing is, you don’t have to be an award winning photographer to make a lot of money from wedding photography. In fact I have worked with a lot of award winning photographers (as their marketing mentor) who are not making a lot of money from their photography and that’s why they have come to me for help with their marketing.

However, I do know a lot of average to good photographers who correctly market their skills to the people who love their products and services and are making a lot of money from their photography.

Remember, wedding photography is all about capturing emotion, it’s about how people view your images and what they think of your photographs when they look at them. Your clients will look at your images completely differently to how you will. You look at them as a photographer would and are probably very critical of the work that you do. More often than not these days people just want photographs of their day, the way the day happened. I’m always asked “can we have the natural, un-posed ones?” by brides booking my services.

They want natural and fun images capturing all the romance and the intimate moments of their wedding day as it unfolds, without a lot of posed photographs and a lot of interference from a photographer. People don’t want to look like they just stepped out a copy of Vogue magazine. People want natural, enjoyable, fun photographs of their wedding day that they can treasure for years to come – it’s as simple as that.

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So, you see you don’t have to be an award winning photographer to get it right. All you have to do is provide your client with the type of photographs they love. They will book your services if the emotional connection is there for them when viewing your work and you come across as the type of person they can get along with.

Even better for you is they will pay a lot of money to book your services if, and only if, you are the type of photographer they’re looking for within their chosen budget. You need to market your services to the people who have the money to pay the prices you are wanting to charge.