My name is Sal Cincotta. I am a wedding and portrait photographer. Been doing this for 16 years now, and in this video I want to help you, if you’re considering wedding photography, by learning from my mistakes. So here are six things I wish I knew before I got started in wedding photography.
#1: How inexperienced I really was
Image © Salvatore Cincotta Photography
It’s very easy to underestimate how much work and knowledge goes into wedding photography. It’s not as simple as just kind of going with the flow. And so, one of the things I wish I would’ve done was mentor under someone for a lot longer just to learn the nuances of how to run a wedding day. Just to have someone that I could lean on to say, “Well, if this happens, what do I do in this scenario?” And it took me a couple of years to kind of figure all that out. And I would say, you’re probably never really ready.
Like I said, as a wedding photographer for 16 years, I’m still learning as I go, but for the most part, I feel confident that whatever a wedding day throws at me, I can react and get what I need to get for my client. But in the beginning, I truly do wish I had a mentor to help me navigate a wedding day. Because depending on the culture, depending on if there’s a first look or it’s a church ceremony, or if it’s an outdoor ceremony or if it’s a beach ceremony, they’re all different. Different things are going on. It’s very nuanced, and that’s one of the things as I look back on my career, I wish I would’ve maybe checked that ego a little bit and accepted it.
#2: How important bridal shows really are
When you talk to wedding photographers, depending on who you talk to, they either love bridal shows or they hate bridal shows. But I’m here to tell you, after doing this for the amount of time I have, if I want to fill my calendar, I have to go to bridal shows. You can rely on referrals, you can rely on planners to send you business and networking. That will work. You will get business that way. But there is no better way than showing up to a bridal show. Why? That’s where your clients are. Hundreds of potential brides are showing up to your local bridal show. Why would you not want to be in a room where all your clients are? If you’re an up and coming photographer or considering becoming a full-time wedding photographer, I would question any photographer who looked at you and said, “Bridal shows aren’t worth it.” To me, that is the first sign that they have no idea how to market their business.
When we go to a bridal show, we show up with a full-blown display. Why? There’s no doubt there are a lot of photographers at bridal shows. So it becomes incredibly important for you to stand out from your competitors and grab that potential bride’s attention as they walk by.
So, how do you do that? Well, by having a bridal show display that is going to showcase your business and your work. Your booth is your storefront. So as you look at a picture above of what my booth looks like at bridal shows, you’ll see there’s a lot of large prints in there, a lot of branding, a lot of display that signals to people this is a high-quality photographer. The other thing you’re going to want to do is consider having sample wedding albums and only showcase your best products. So I can’t emphasize this enough. This is another thing it took me years to figure out.
need a display for your next bridal show?
As far as timing, you want to look for shows that are in January because the number one month for engagements is December, historically speaking.
Another underrated benefit of bridal shows is the ability to meet and connect with other vendors. Think about something for a second. You want referral business from wedding planners, from catering halls, from churches – why would they refer you if they have no relationship with you? What better way to forge a relationship with other vendors than to be at the same show they’re at? So the time that you spend there is priceless. As you’re setting up your booth and taking a break, you should be walking around that bridal show, handing out your business card and trying to set up side meetings and even collaboration shoots with these other vendors. It will go a long way to helping you grow your business.
#3: How important it is to have the right gear
Image © Salvatore Cincotta Photography
When you’re first starting out as a wedding photographer, it’s easy to be a little bit penny wise, pound foolish. What do I mean by that? Look, wedding photographers are typically working in very low light situations. So having fast glass, f/1.2, f/1.4 is critical to you being able to pull off shots that are crisp, clean and not noisy. Sure, today’s cameras, they can go to ISO 2 million, but that’s not where you want to operate. I will rarely push my camera past ISO 3200. Can I get a usable image at ISO 6400? Sure. But I’d much rather be shooting in a low lit church at f/1.2 ISO 800, f/1.2 ISO 1600 so that I can get a usable image.
What happens in the beginning when you’re a photographer is that you’ll buy a slower lens. And it’s every brand, it doesn’t matter whether you’re Canon, Nikon, Sony, it’ll happen to you – but in a year or two, you’re going to realize you need that extra speed on the lenses, and then you’ll go out and buy it again. Again, I wish someone would’ve told me this. Save your money, invest in the right glass, so that you only have to buy it once. That’s the beautiful part of almost every camera manufacturer’s lens lineup is that most of it will last 5, 6, 7, 8 years. Yes, you may upgrade your camera body, but you’re rarely going to upgrade your lenses. It’s an investment that will stand the test of time.
#4: The importance of your second shooter
Image © Salvatore Cincotta Photography
Look, you should charge your client for this to have a second shooter on the job. You shouldn’t just include that because you have to pay your second shooters. To go shoot a wedding solo is really setting yourself up for failure. There is so much going on during a wedding day that it is almost impossible for a single shooter to capture everything. And so what ended up starting happening is as I continued to grow my business, I realized how important it was for me to have a second shooter just for what I would call PJ or pickup shots. PJ, photojournalism.
Think about something. If you’re a wedding photographer and you’re taking family pictures, family pictures are not photojournalistic in nature, right? The family didn’t just decide to stand up in front of the altar while you lit them with flash, and everybody was looking at the camera saying, “Cheese.” They don’t do that. Please don’t have them do that. But there’s stuff going on, just in this example, while you are shooting family photos. Well, who’s getting that? That’s where your second shooter comes into play.
So anytime I’m directing during the day telling people what to do, working with the bridal party, my second shooter is always looking for pickup shots, photojournalistic shots that I can’t possibly get. What about during cocktail hour, right? As soon as your camera comes up, everybody wants to get the shots where they’re just looking at the camera. You want your second shooter with a longer lens off in a corner, picking up more candid-style shots. Same goes for dancing and the rest of the day. I think if you want to present a solid portfolio to your clients, it is so important to have two photographers covering any single event. Now, granted, if a client doesn’t want to pay for it, or if it’s a couple of hours of coverage for your wedding day, maybe there’s no need for a second shooter. But if you want to charge more money and you want to expand the type of services that your studio is offering, having a second shooter became critical to success. And today, we don’t offer any wedding coverage without two photographers.
#5: The importance of selling physical products
This is another area that it took me time to figure out. So many times photographers just want to cut corners either offering their clients digital-only solutions, which I think is an incomplete service to our clients. What are they going to do with that? I think back to when digital started really first getting delivered, we were delivering images on CDs, and then CDs disappeared, then it was DVDs, those disappeared, then it was USB thumb drives, those are disappearing. Now, it’s USB-C. In ten years, who knows?
If you’re giving your clients just digital files and nothing tangible, you are offering them an incomplete service. Not only that, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table, but herein lies the problem. If you’re only offering your clients products that they can get online for a fraction of the price, they’re not going to spend that money with you because they don’t see the value. And so by offering high-quality products like acrylic blocks, like framed canvas, like wedding albums with Italian leather in a custom box with types of leather that they can’t get anywhere else, that is what will allow you to charge more money and stand out from the crowd. And again, once I figured that out, my wedding business exploded.
#6: Wedding day shape is real
I don’t know how many of you guys feel the way I do, but man, when I haven’t photographed a wedding for a while, or I’m kind of in my off season, maybe I’m eating a little too much (but we don’t want to talk about that) But when I get back to shooting my first wedding, I am so sore the next day. When my feet hit the ground, when I wake up that next morning, it just feels like I’m stepping on pins and needles. I don’t know if you guys feel that way, but wedding day shape is a real thing. And I remember when I started out as a wedding photographer, photographers would talk about this, how their Sundays were just a wash. Their legs, their backs, everything was hurting. And I was like, that’s not going to be me. Well, it is me.
