A Bit of Warning Before You DIY

I mentioned this earlier, but wedding shooting is hard—arguably harder than most kinds of shooting. A professional colleague of mine likes to say that shooting weddings is “every kind of shooting at the same time.” By that he means a wedding shooter will be dealing with bright light, low light, action, emotion, candids, formals, portraits, interviews—all while carrying a lot of gear, handing Kleenex to the mother of the bride, scribbling notes on a shot list, trying to learn the bridesmaids’ names, and attempting to figure out where grandma went. (See Figure I.3.)

Although I know professional wedding shooting is expensive, I won’t argue for a minute that wedding photographers are overpaid. A good vendor combines skill, creativity, gear, energy, and complete attentiveness to capture the couple’s whole day in images. It is quite a lot to ask! Furthermore, their reputation rests on it, which means all precautions will be taken to make sure that nothing from equipment failure to natural disaster gets in the way of delivering the final product. (If you think I am exaggerating, I’m not; I keep raw media in a fireproof safe in my office until the moment a project is complete and handed over to the client.)