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!

Self-Publishing: Photo Books.

Photo books are great for use as both an advertising tool and as a product, and there are many websites out there which allow you to easily create your own with a range of options to suit any project that you might be working on. They can even be used as a way to show your portfolio. 

Photo books come in a range of sizes and formats, with different types of paper and cover options. They are great as part of wedding packages - bigger copies for the newly-weds and smaller copies for their families - and families will love them as a part of their family portrait sessions. 

Today our aim is to look at some different sites, see what options they have available, compare prices and the like. 

Momento

Momento are a well-known site for creating photo books. They offer books in three different sizes (small, regular and grand) and three different formats (landscape, square and portrait). They offer three different paper types (Satin 170g, Art 140g and Kodak Digital 220g) and also offer a range of professionally finished boxes as housing for your new book. 

Their prices start as low as $50 (small classic book with the first ten pages included). For photo books, their standard delivery time is fourteen working days. Priority shipping (seven working days) is available, but it doubles the cost of your order. 

Blurb

Blurb are another well-known company. They offer five different sized books: small square, standard portrait, standard landscape, large landscape, and large square. They offer four different paper types: standard paper, premium paper (lustre or matte), proline uncoated, and proline pearl photo. 

Their prices start as low as $15 (softcover book with twenty pages). Their delivery, including printing time, is seven to eleven working days, but they can also ship faster if required. 

AsukaBook

AsukaBook are a company that I had never heard of before today. They offer the widest range of sizes that I have seen so far and also appear to be a company solely dedicated to photo books, which is making them look more professional than the already researched Momento and Blurb. They offer many different ways of binding your book, and even offer "DVD Presentation Books". 

To get their price list, you first have to register to their site. When clicking on their prices page, this is the first thing that comes up: "AsukaBook products are available to professional photographers and designers creating books for resale or promotions. Please register as a professional user and you will be able to review our price list and place your AsukaBook order." 

I find this a turn-off. I would rather see prices before I register for anything, knowing that websites could take my email address and continuously send me emails to try and gain me as a customer. A sad fact, because this looks like a great site. 

Mixbook

I did a Google search of "compare photo book websites" and came up with a list of twelve compares sites (of which Blurb came last!) and Mixbook came as the best rated. They offer seven different sizes (mini 6x4, pocket landscape, classic square, classic portrait, classic landscape, deluxe square, and coffee table landscape). The only thing I can find on their paper is this: "Mixbook uses only the highest quality, heavy-weight papers that are ethically sourced from sustainable forests and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and the Rainforest Alliance." 

Their prices supposedly start at $7 (mini softcover book with twenty pages), but when I click to start making a book the lowest price I can get is $20. They print their books in four days, and standard delivery takes twelve to sixteen days for international shipping. 

In Conclusion... 

Having researched these four websites, for my own business I would likely go with Momento. Whatever the price of the book ordered, I would then charge an extra 50% (including the shipping cost to myself). So if the entire order came to $50 for me, I would charge the client $75. 

Weddings.

I've been off TAFE sick for the past two weeks and haven't yet had the time to jump into our next movement of study, so I thought I might talk a little about the wedding that I second shot on Saturday with one of my classmates. 

This was my second time shooting a wedding. My first time was a complete disaster - it was the beginning of 2011, I wasn't highly experienced with people or with my camera, and I was the only shooter there! As hard as I tried, I went in far too unprepared and made rookie mistakes that I look back and laugh on now. Back then I said I would never do another wedding again, so this one was a challenge to me. It was a way of seeing if I could do it. It was a way of seeing if I wanted to. 

I was definitely less stressed than what I had been the first time around, likely because I wasn't the one who had to worry about getting all of those important shots. And that, in itself, is what should have tipped me off straight away - if I can't handle that stress, why would I want to be a wedding photographer? 

My reasoning for it was always that I wanted to capture those moments, to take pictures that people would want to take out and look at all the time and hang on their walls. But I can do all of that without having to shoot weddings. 

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. Things where I can be in control and there's not a long list of shots that I must get.

I feel lighter for having made this decision.