Thursday 30 October 2014

Weddings: Round Two.

After almost a year of being away from it, I've decided to resurrect this blog as a way of keeping my photographic spirit going. I'm no longer at TAFE, but that doesn't mean I should abandon this. It could become a great source of inspiration. 

Skip back to this entry from June of last year. Specifically to this line:
So if this wedding taught me anything, it's that I don't want to shoot weddings at all - I just want to shoot portraits.
I always seem to go back on my I don't want to shoot weddings word, and 2014 is no exception. By February I had already promised two people that I would shoot theirs - an old friend from high school, and my cousin.

The friend from high school... Well, she asked me via my best friend. Meaning, she had my best friend ask me on her behalf. Which maybe should have been my first warning sign to say no. I was told that the wedding was in April. And then it was like she didn't know how to communicate. I told her to message me on Facebook whenever she wanted to discuss it (unprofessional maybe, but I didn't want to give her my number for personal reasons and I like the idea of having everything in writing), but she just kept sending messages through my best friend instead.

I ended up doing a portrait session for her, of her wearing her white wedding gown and a traditional Indian dress. Free of charge, just for fun. But she kept making comments like, "Wow, if you're this good I might actually have to pay you!" 

And I hated that. I hated that this attitude was being directed at me, and that I had let it get to that point. So I told her I couldn't shoot her wedding. 

To which I got the response, "Why?! It isn't even until next year!" 

The whole thing just ended up being a nightmare. What happened to April, right? Then she kept begging me, and I ended up snapping and saying something like, "Why don't you pick a date first before you start asking me to be your photographer?" I mean, come on. How can I commit without a date? 

So no. It didn't happen. 

Then there was my cousin. He had his wedding in October, and I got a lot more communication out of this one. My mum basically told me to leave the pricing up to her, and she ended up charging my cousin $1,500. And I spent months dreading the fact that I was going to be shooting this wedding. 

Until about three months before the wedding, when he called and said, "We found a cheaper option." 

Fantastic! Now I can take my camera to this wedding without the pressure of having to get all those shots!

And I did. I got some shots that I was quite happy with, like this one of the groom with his best man, his twin brother: 


I was much happier for it. And on a personal note, I ended up laughing at their "cheaper option" - a photographer who charged them $750 for two hours, when I was there for almost six and would have been the cheaper option in the grand scheme of things. 

Regardless, I am pleased - and never shooting a wedding again!

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