How do I get started by Justin020

A class in a junior college if time permits. All the contact you can make with pros, both in clubs and on line. if you try to make money with photography for a while, you might get disappointed, it’s extremely competitive.

Read a lot and try everything. Break the rules!

Good luck

The lenses will depend on what body u have. The length will basically be dictated by the sensor size.

A crop sensor, you will find the 17-55 is range fairly useful for most shots and for a full frame sensor, you’ll need something around 24-70. This would be your primary do it all lens. Outside of this, you’ll definately need a candid longer lens, which most wedding togs use is the 70-200 2.8.

For low light (church and reception) and DOF shots, a 50 and 85 is very important as well.

That’s pretty much all you need in terms of lenses. You will also need two flashes and two bodies. Two of everything just in case one fails. The ‘backup’ as it’s called doesn’t have to be an awesome camera, just something to use in the event that the primary body fails.

There’s also the other approach wedding togs use, and that’s two identical bodies so that all the buttons are in the same place, and you can use them hand in hand with different lenses on each. Very handy for quick switching and less dust on the sensor, but the obvious drawback is price. I use this approach as I find it really handy to have a 24-70 on one body and a 70-200 on the other. It covers the entire range without having to swap lenses at all.

..and this might be a personal thing but I think filters are a waste of time. UV doesnt affect digital and makes no difference. It also increases flaring dramatically as well. Lotsa ppl use it to protect the lens tho :)

A CP filter might be handy during the day but u don’t have time to turn the CP around for each shot…

ND and GND aren’t for wedding togs (more landscape) so that’s not necessary as well.

What might be important is buying gels to balance the flash colour with the ambient colour. I don’t do that as I can do it in post editing (but don’t bother anyway).

Other important essentials is enough batteries to last the entire day plus at least 50% more. Same goes for rechargables for flashes. Good quality CF cards is a must and if your camera has only one slot, then don’t buy huge cards as you stand to lose a lot of photos if the card fails. Before my dual CF card slot on my camera, I used to use only 2 gig cards and lots of them. If any cards were to fail, I wouldnt be missing that many photos (there’s also the other camera too, so I would still have the scene albeit on a different lens).

Pre shoot, make sure everything is charged and all cards are formatted. Make sure WB, EV, ISO and all other settings are back to normal too! Back when I didn’t use auto ISO I forgot to change the ISO back from 800 once, and the pics were all grainy. Lucky it was an events shoot and not a wedding! I learnt my lesson pretty quick and started changing ISO every shot.

Thats fantastic advice thank you soooooooooooooooo much for taking the time to write that!!!!

A couple of thoughts, when your doing weddings its a balancing act between giving what the bridal couple want (they’re the ones paying), what experience tells you will work and what won’t and finally directing the shoot the way you want it to go. One of the most common failings in wedding photography is when the photographer is led by the couple/parents/guests, to start off have your checklist of shots you know you have to take and get them in the bag, then, you can begin to experiment with different poses etc.

Oh, and double up on all the essential equipment, you don’t want to be left with a red face because your batteries have failed you, lens has decided to die on you, camera has decided to give up the ghost!

All the best Justin.. now to develop ur own style and market it. As a wedding photographer, it is really essential that you can assiciate yourself with a particular style that’s hopefully unique to yourself. After a while, you’ll replicate similar photos in the style you like, and this becomes your signature, I guess.