How difficult is it to be a qualified wedding photographer?

Wedding photography is a kind of "event photography", which is at the intersection of documentary photography and commercial photography, and its scope is biased towards documentary photography. And "recording" is one of the eternal themes of photography. What wedding photographers do is largely similar to photographers, basically similar to activity photographers and sports photographers. In other words, a wedding photographer must have the following skills in addition to professional equipment:

Fully understand the local wedding customs and processes ★★★★★★★

China is vast in territory and abundant in natural resources, with different customs. Take the small county where the author lives as an example. Different towns have different wedding customs, so it is very important to fully understand the local wedding customs and processes. This is very helpful for you to control the overall situation and be orderly during the shooting.

Mentality ★★★★★ ☆.

Once a friend bluntly said: shoot business, customers call you a teacher; At the wedding, people call you master! Although it is a spit, it largely reflects the social status of wedding photographers. The uneven market chaos has led many people to think that it is easy to shoot a wedding. In fact, they don't know that the real wedding photographer is a master! Having a good attitude will make it easier for you to finish the work.

But for the wedding photographer, as the recorder of the wedding process and the witness of the couple, it is very important to find the right "location".

Preparation ★★★★★☆☆☆

The so-called "know yourself and know yourself" is also applicable to wedding photography.

Knowing the information of the new couple's family members and main relatives and friends can help you find the "focus" in the shooting process. The wedding process is irreversible, and it will be a pity to miss the wonderful scene.

Communication. After all, most people get married once in their lives, and many newlyweds don't know how to cooperate with photographers in the wedding, so full communication with newlyweds before the wedding will help photographers take ideal shots.

Know the wedding venue. Wedding photography is different from other disciplines. From the time when the groom goes out to pick up the bride (our hometown is called "matchmaking", which means that the man goes to the woman's house to pick up the bride the night before the formal wedding and stays for one night) to the end of the wedding reception at noon the next day, the time span is more than 24 hours (the customs vary from place to place, and the time is definitely different), during which the ambient light is unpredictable (dark corridors, outdoor highlights, various hotel lights ...).

A body as strong as an ox.

If one word is used to describe wedding photography, it must be "tired"!

During the wedding, you can hardly rest, you are filming when others are chatting, you are filming when others are putting on makeup, and you are filming when others are eating! When shooting a wedding, basically my eyes never leave the viewfinder. A wedding is basically 3000 (wake up, it's 3000 photos! )。 So the next time you see someone showing off their shutter number, he may just be dragged to take a few weddings.

In addition to running around all day, my ass doesn't touch the stool, and there is oppression from equipment. Professional and capable photographers will try their best to buy a more powerful fuselage and its corresponding lens. High-speed continuous shooting, high sensitivity and large aperture, the more the better. But all these will increase your equipment.

Shameless and exquisite! ★★★★☆

The seven aunts and eight aunts at the wedding are not professional models, and some of them look like constipation, and they often don't cooperate and won't let you shoot, so it's time for you to show your superb social skills. Lest the bride and groom finally ask you, why don't you shoot me xxx? Do you think the guests won't let me take pictures? People pay you to take pictures, and you blame the guests for not taking them? Therefore, at this time, you can only have the cheek to persuade you to get a few good jobs.

Having said that, I have to mention a key point (the key point here is to be tested) → respect: respect for the wedding, respect for the couple, and respect for all subjects (people or things). As the recorder of the wedding, rather than the director of the wedding, if you make yourself the center of the wedding process, intervene in the wedding process like a director, and direct the couple (or other subjects) to shoot according to their own scenes or processes, then the wedding will become stale.

Solid basic skills ★★★★★★★

From a purely technical point of view, wedding photography may not be as difficult as many commercial photography, but the rapid and complicated environment and light changes will definitely test your on-site experience and adaptability, as well as your proficiency in equipment. At the same time, wedding photography, like many activities photography, is "now or never", and mistakes are absolutely not allowed. So the basic skills must be solid. If you shoot a couple's exchange ring wrong and you can't see any of them, will you have a bad conscience even if people don't blame you? !

In addition to the follow-up of the wedding scene, wedding photographers often have to shoot so-called wedding blockbusters. Wedding photography belongs to the category of commercial portraits. Since it is a business portrait, there are many things to consider. Make-up, modeling, clothing, posture, lighting, external environment and so on.

As mentioned above, a real wedding photographer is a master. That's because as a qualified wedding photographer, you need to master professional skills such as portrait photography, documentary photography and commercial photography. Finally, to sum up: you took tens of thousands of yuan of equipment, an artist's heart and a migrant worker's body, and filmed for a day. If you want to do the later stage, you have to stay up for a few nights. Finally, I took 500 yuan with red eyes and tears in my face. ...