Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
If you are fortunate enough to be able to continue to work by making your home a place for work, this guide is for you.
I know how hard it can be to transition to making the home a productive work environment. I haven’t always been a wedding photographer. Over the last 3 years I’ve learnt a lot about making working from home ‘work’.
The coronavirus outbreak has affected our industry in a number of ways. One of them is pretty weird and probably frustrating for many new couples and their photographers. As you might know, the number of people who can be in closed spaces has been limited in the majority of countries. In Australia, it’s currently five, which also severely limits the number of guests at weddings. In other words – if you want the photographer to attend, he or she will have to act as one of the witnesses.
So, you take great photos, especially of people and events. Friends keep asking you if you’ve thought of shooting weddings. Perhaps you’re closer and closer to jumping into the waters of professional wedding photography. Well, then this may surprise you. A recent survey from Your Perfect Wedding Photographer shows that professional wedding photographers actually spend most of their time not taking photos.
While many photographers struggle to pick up clients, some photographers have no shortage, but struggle to deliver. And some intentionally don’t deliver, as seems to be the case with Arkansas photography company Jonathan Funk Photography, LLC.
After failing to deliver photographs to clients who had paid upfront for his services, circuit court judge Tim Fox ordered Jonathan Funk Photography, LLC to pay $96,625 in restitution, $100,000 in civil penalties, and $1,135 in filing fees and service costs.
I’m sure that many of us have been asked to work for free in all sorts of annoying ways. One cheeky couple recently sent an email to a photographer asking for a coverage of their 10-hour wedding. In return, they offered exposure to the incredible number of 300 guests, 117 of them unmarried. What a tempting offer, right?
I’m lucky with my photography. It’s almost all on location, but I mostly get to choose the location myself. They’re places I’m familiar with, that I’ve scouted regularly for several years. So I know what to expect when I show up, where the light’s going to fall at different times of day or year. For a lot of photographers shooting on location, though, you’re often in locations you’re only just seeing for the first time.
Photographer and YouTuber, Rob Hall, recently shot a wedding at a venue in another state he’d never been to before. But the first thing he did when he arrived at the location was to go and location scout the area. In the 8-minute video, Rob talks about how to do that and why it’s so important.
I have warned people multiple times to do their research before hiring a wedding photographer. However, it seems that sometimes even that isn’t enough. A UK couple reportedly hired a photographer based on her portfolio only to discover that she had used stock photos in it. Their wedding photos apparently turned out so awful, that they had to restage the wedding for another shoot.
A wedding photographer in Australia is suing a wedding venue and styling company after she slipped on a piece of fabric and broke her knee. She claims that the injury has affected both the personal and business aspects of her life. So, she’s suing the venue and the company for more than $570,000 AUD.
This is one of those stories that just seems so outrageous, it has to be fake. Or it happened in Florida. I have no evidence of the latter, although I did discover this story via an Orlando “news” website. It begins with a post on Reddit, by user Breathofthemild420 who had a very unusual tale to tell. He spoke of a bride’s proposition: “You pay us $50 and then start taking photos that you can sell at the wedding to people who want them.”.
Naturally, he said no, before she turned into a bridezilla and he finally agreed to make her go just go away with no plan of actually turning up. On the day of the wedding, when he didn’t arrive, he says the bride and her father harassed him to the point of showing up at his house and beating on his door. But there’s so much more to this story.
Wedding photographers sometimes rant about guests who stand in the way with their phones. But at a recent wedding in Minnesota, this got a whole new dimension. It wasn’t guests who got in the way of the photographer (and everyone else) – but someone who appears to be a stranger.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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