EP05 Book, Shoot and Edit Your First Wedding - Complete Guide!

[00:00:00] Speaker A: We might. We might not even get to it. Oh, we're live. [00:00:04] Speaker B: We're live. [00:00:05] Speaker A: We're late, but we are live. Sorry, team. [00:00:08] Speaker B: We're on Castle's tunnel. [00:00:10] Speaker A: No, no, no. We're here. We are here. And we're good to go. We've got a fun show today. We were going to tell you how not to f up your first wedding shoot. It's. It's been a while since our first wedding shoots. Like, ten years. [00:00:29] Speaker B: Ten. Yeah. That's actually the thing. And I was like, it's ten years. [00:00:33] Speaker A: Ten years. It's one of those things. It's the first wedding you shoot often comes out of nowhere. It's usually a friend or, you know, family member, friend of a friend, something like that. Pops up and you have this choice to make. It's like, do I want to do this? Usually they ask you because you've been taking photos as a hobby, or maybe you've been doing another style of photography, and then they ask, will you shoot my wedding? And then you get excited, and then you get terrified, and you have to decide, should I shoot this wedding or not? What do you. Do you remember your first wedding shoot because you had shot one before we met? I think I had. [00:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Just the one. [00:01:19] Speaker A: Um, just one. [00:01:20] Speaker B: And I still remember how nervous I was beforehand. I remember thinking the morning of, I was, like, thinking of all these excuses of, like, why I couldn't go. And obviously. Obviously I went. It was not going to go, you know? [00:01:33] Speaker A: You didn't bail out. [00:01:34] Speaker B: No, no, but I was. Yeah, I was super nervous about it. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That's, um. I mean, I still get nervous before weddings, but. Yeah, the first ones. Pretty crazy. What? How did that first one you shot come about? [00:01:50] Speaker B: I don't even remember. The lady just got in touch with me. She knew that I was working at the newspaper as a photographer. I don't know if it was, like, a friend of a friend or something, but, yeah, she got in touch. I, like, gave her a price, and then that was it. Like, no, none of the things that we would do now, you know, like booking them informally. [00:02:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:11] Speaker B: Or anything like that. It was just. Yeah, sort of word of your word. [00:02:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:20] Speaker B: You would do the job and that you would charge this much, that you'd show up. [00:02:24] Speaker A: So you just kind of had a chat with them and agreed, and then that was the end of it. There was no formal kind of. Yeah. [00:02:31] Speaker B: No. [00:02:33] Speaker A: Is there anything else thinking back to that day that you wish you had known? Is there. Is this stuff you look back and you think, man, I shouldn't have done that, or, I wish I had known that you were supposed to do this. [00:02:48] Speaker B: I used a lot. A lot like these, a lot of lighting. [00:02:52] Speaker A: Yeah. You had those skills from, because you were working as a full time photographer, but you'd never shot a wedding. You had the lighting skills. So did you feel like you needed to use those because it was, you know. [00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, um, like, we did this shot with them in sort of the mid afternoon, um, on a dam with, like, a big flash in it, and I'd end up photoshopping it out. And back then, that took me ages. Now I could probably do it in lightroom, but, yeah, it was definitely, definitely learned a lot from that day. [00:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's. I feel the same way. It's like, it. I mean, it worked out. I did a lot of preparation and stuff when I, when I shot my first wedding, but there's still a million things that. That I would like to tell myself if I could go back in time and say, hey, don't do this, do that, that kind of thing. [00:03:49] Speaker B: So how was your first wedding? Was just sisters. Is that right? [00:03:53] Speaker A: Well, that was. Yeah, that was, that was a cool one. So my sister was getting married, and I had gotten pretty heavily into photography, and I got her to reach out to her photographer. She'd booked a professional, so that was all safe. It was all, you know, it was all gonna be taken care of, but I got her to reach out to this professional photographer and say, hey, my brother's gonna be at the wedding. Do you mind if he takes photos? He won't get in your way. And he just wants to take some photos to learn more about wedding photography. And they were like, yep, cool. No stress. So I. [00:04:28] Speaker B: That's actually pretty cool because a lot. A lot of people these days wouldn't do that. [00:04:32] Speaker A: A lot of photographers. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Well, I mean, there's not a lot they can do. Like, you're. I was essentially a guest with a great camera. It's like she, you know, this is, this is where it gets funny, because it's like, if they had have said no, my sister would have been like, why? Okay, okay. I changed my mind. My brother will be bringing his camera, just like people's uncle or whoever brings their camera. There's literally nothing the wedding photographer can do about it. So she, so she made the best choice where she embraced it. She was like, yeah, actually, I'm pretty sure her business was called embrace photography or something like that. Embrace images? Yeah. So she embraced it. And was just like, yeah, cool, bring him along. No stress at all. Sounds great. So then I was like, oh, this person's awesome. And we, yeah, we had a, we had a good day. I actually got to get some really cool shots. That was the first lesson I learned, is that second shooting, you can often get cooler shots than the photographer, some not. Obviously, her photos were way better than mine, don't get me wrong. But I got to take some interesting angles because she was busy doing the real work, and I was just kind of cruising around the outskirts of a scene. I'm like, oh, that looks cool. So that's when there was no, no pressure, no pressure. I didn't have to do anything. You know, she was taking care of all the family photos, making sure she got all of the critical shots, and I was just looking for interesting angles. So that kind of, it actually almost gave me a false sense of security because I was like, oh, I got some really cool shots. But, you know, I didn't get any. [00:05:59] Speaker B: Of the important stuff. [00:06:00] Speaker A: I didn't have to do any of the hard work. And when your brain's working on that, that hard stuff, the important stuff, you don't have as much capacity to find creative angles and things like that. It's just how it is. But, yeah, fun times. Shall we, shall we dig into this? [00:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah, let's jump in. [00:06:21] Speaker A: Yeah. All of you live viewers, ask questions in the chat. Talk to us. Right, I prepared some things back to the beginning. This is my first time using slides. Live. First wedding. Don't ruin their day. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Don't do it. [00:06:45] Speaker A: Don't do it. There are so many other types of photography where you can just jump in and give it a go when a friend asks you to take photos of their dog or something like that. And if it sucks, it doesn't matter. [00:06:58] Speaker B: Just raise it or whatever you need to do. [00:07:00] Speaker A: Exactly. But do not ruin their dog day. Yelena wants to know what would ruin their day. Lots of things. Many, many things. Everything from being annoying and trying to take too many photos and making the day all about photography. Don't do that. All the way through to, I don't know, something simple like losing all of their images by not backing up afterwards. So there is, there is a lot of stuff that could ruin their day. And that's basically what this entire podcast is about. And we'll jump into it. [00:07:39] Speaker B: Let's go. [00:07:40] Speaker A: Let's go. Why? Listen to us, Justin, Jim, we've been shooting for a while. We've shot some weddings. [00:07:51] Speaker B: That photo was a long time ago. [00:07:52] Speaker A: That photo was a long time ago, but we were also, we were well into things when we, when we took that. [00:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:57] Speaker A: Is that a d? That's probably halfway d five that I'm using. [00:08:00] Speaker B: I think it is d five. So you got 20 late 2017. No, no. Yes, because we were still at, that's Haviland street. So we'll still at that office. [00:08:09] Speaker A: Yep. That's looks like a crummy D 750 or something you're shooting with. Yeah. Ten years, hundreds of weddings, lots of happy customers. I'd say all happy customers, I mean, that we know of anyway. [00:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:30] Speaker A: And look, we are by no means experts, but I think, you know, we've put our hours in, we've refined our processes, and I think we have some pretty good perspectives on how to, how to get through your first wedding day as successfully as possible. So that's why you should listen to us. If you want to check out our stuff at Justin and Jim. Www.justinagym.com dot au. Check us out. [00:09:00] Speaker B: Have a look. [00:09:01] Speaker A: Have a look. Any words of why people should listen to you, Jim? [00:09:07] Speaker B: Oh, feel like you put me on the spot. I don't know. Done a lot of weddings, been learned, learnt a lot of things that are even unrelated to weddings, unrelated to photography, but definitely adds value to the wedding day. [00:09:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Which, look, you know, we might do another podcast in the future about how to, how to go from, I guess, you know, a handful of weddings to a lot of weddings and the things that we've learned to really accelerate the business and make customers really stoked about with the outcome of their day. But today is more about. Yeah. Just, just the simple things for that first wedding to not muck it up. [00:09:51] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [00:09:52] Speaker A: And hopefully have a good time. So are you ready to shoot a wedding? And why do you even want to? [00:09:59] Speaker B: I'm ready. [00:10:00] Speaker A: You're ready. We. It's so tempting when someone asks you to just to want to do it, but I think you need to be honest with yourself about are you ready? Like how much experience do you have? You know, everyone's in different situation when they get asked to shoot a wedding. Some people are really experienced, similar to how you were, where you had a lot of experience in different situations, photographing in indoor, outdoor, flash, no flash, lots. [00:10:32] Speaker B: Of people and stuff. [00:10:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Big groups, moving subjects, all that kind of stuff. You had experience, you just didn't know as much about the wedding itself. But the photo side, you were probably pretty confident. [00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, probably too confident. [00:10:49] Speaker A: And that is a thing too. That is definitely a thing. And then some people are, you know, maybe experienced in one thing. You know, maybe they're. They're great with one style of photography. They've done portraits or headshots or something like that, but they don't have a broad range of skills. Maybe they've only shot natural light and never used a flash. Who knows? But there can be holes in your skills. And it's being. Being honest with yourself about whether you are ready to shoot a wedding or are you better to maybe leave this opportunity and wait for the next one after upscaling a little bit? And the other thing is. Yeah, why do you even want to shoot a wedding in the first place? So should you book this wedding or should you wait for another one? Maybe for a wedding that's less, you know, if this is a full day and it's people, you know, maybe you should leave it and wait for a wedding where they only want you to shoot the ceremony and some family photos and it only takes a couple of hours and the pressure's right off. I don't know. What thoughts do you have about, like, how do you figure out whether you should actually just the wedding or not even worry about it? [00:12:04] Speaker B: I would, yeah. It's. You really got to be ready. There's a lot of pressure that like, there is. There isn't a lot of pressure, but there is because you need to get it right. [00:12:15] Speaker A: What do you, what do you mean by that? Like, there isn't, but there is. What do you mean? [00:12:18] Speaker B: Like, there's not a lot of pressure. No one's putting pressure on you, but it's one of those things that doesn't. Isn't repeatable. Someone can't not going to get married again. And there's obviously a lot of variables that aren't in your control. Weather is probably the biggest one. There's obviously a lot of days where it is just nice, but it could be pretty sucky, too. So you've got to be ready for those variables. [00:12:48] Speaker A: Some of these questions I'll put up on the screen here, ways that you could ask yourself questions to try and figure out if you're trying to decide whether you should do this or not. And one of the big ones, I think, is why do you want to shoot a wedding in the first place? Sometimes the prospect is just tempting. But, you know, if I personally think that if you aren't looking to maybe shoot more weddings in the future, or at least thinking about that, whether it's as a sort of a hobby to semi pro kind of part time thing, or maybe you want to think that a full time wedding photography career could be something you want. You know, that's a good reason to shoot that first wedding. But if you're. If you have no interest in shooting weddings ever again in the future, I think doing one is probably not worth the effort unless you really enjoy putting a little bit of pressure on yourself and learning new skills. But, you know, I think it's really a step towards doing another wedding. And look, you might shoot the first one and hate it and never do another one, and that's fine. At least now you know. But, yeah, if you have no interest in shooting more weddings in the future, it's probably not worth doing one. And then some other questions are, you know, do you have enough experience with the camera in varied situations, whether it's paid work or even just for fun, you know, indoors, outdoors, nights, all that sort of stuff, do you have enough experience and, and can you get enough experience between now and the date of the wedding? [00:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I think being able to troubleshoot things on your camera, like knowing, not just knowing where your buttons are, but like really knowing where everything is that you're not. It's not slowing you down. [00:14:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:40] Speaker B: Or you're not slowing yourself down. [00:14:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And under pressure, when something stops working, can you figure out what has. Has stopped working and trying to get it to work again and, yeah, obviously the question down the bottom, you know, is your gear good enough? We're going to talk more about gear, but, you know, how big is the gap between what you've got and what you really need to have by the wedding day? And can you feel that gap? Because there is a point where, you know, gear isn't everything, but there is a point where you're kind of doing the couple of disservice if you're showing up with, with really crappy camera gear, that that is not going to do a good job in a range of situations. [00:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think you definitely need. I'm big on having two cameras, regardless of if you're shooting with two, but having two. [00:15:32] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll dig into that a little bit more, but, yeah, that. That is a big one. You can't just rock up with, with one thing that might fail and then leave them or, you know, if that is going to be the case, the couple need to know that that's a possibility. [00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:52] Speaker A: Don't just do it for the money. Someone might offer you $1,000 to shoot their wedding or something like that. And if you haven't done a lot of paid photography work that might sound like a good amount of money. You could buy some gear with it. Don't just do it for that reason. Make sure that you have other reasons that you're shooting this wedding. Just doing it for the money isn't worth it. [00:16:19] Speaker B: Did you get paid for your first wedding? [00:16:21] Speaker A: Yes, I did. [00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:23] Speaker A: Not for myself. $500 for the first wedding that I shot by myself. [00:16:29] Speaker B: I reckon I got 1100. [00:16:31] Speaker A: Mm. Well, you probably had more experience than me. Plus also my first official paid wedding was a friends and family kind of a deal. So I was very new to photography. I wasn't working as a photographer like you were. And also I'm a big one on if you price yourself really low, this is my own personal opinion, price yourself really low and be really clear with people. They. It reduces pressure and expectations on the outcome. You know, some people, yeah. I think charging too much for your first one can put undue pressure and set yourself up for failure. [00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:19] Speaker A: Speaking of that, booking the couple in. So you've decided, you've decided to book the couple, you've thought about it, you've decided that shooting a wedding is a good choice for you. Now you have to book them in and set expectations. Be honest, be honest. Do not, do not fake it until you make it. Is the big one here. Have a meeting with a couple. Do you usually have meetings with everyone you book in, Jim? [00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much everyone. They'll either meet early. Some people do just choose to book in, but they don't, I guess. Yeah, they sometimes. I don't mean it, but most people we do, we have a meeting and that's usually where you get a bit of a feel that you're a good match for each other. [00:18:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I think having, having a meeting, especially, you know, shooting your 1st. 1st ever wedding, having a meeting in person with a couple and telling them who you are and what experience you have. Look, sometimes they'll already know if it's a friend or a family member, they'll know where you're at. But I think it's still. They don't always understand photography, so they might see you with a camera and see you shooting a lot, but maybe you know better than they know what where you're at. And you need to maybe communicate with that, with them. So, you know, they know whether they're taking a risk by booking you or not. And it's fine if they are. It's totally fine to shoot a wedding at whatever level you're at, if the couple is aware. And again, you match your fee to the level that you're at at the time. So don't charge whatever the going rate is from a ten year veteran wedding photographer in your town. Don't just match their fee because you want the money. Like, if you're not as skilled as them, don't charge as much as them. You. You're going to set yourself up for failure. Yeah, that, that stuff comes later. Once you've got some experience, then you can start increasing your fees and charging what you're worth. But for that first one, it's not worth it. Yelena wants to know what to be really clear about. That's it. This experience level. Experience level where you're at and what they need to know about, you know, you and your gear and that kind of thing. [00:19:54] Speaker B: I think also maybe what you expect to deliver as well. Yes. [00:19:59] Speaker A: Yes. [00:20:01] Speaker B: So they get a bit of an idea of what maybe to expect on the other end. [00:20:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Random question from Jeremy. Sounds. Sounds fake. I've got a wedding. I've got a wedding in the bush at 03:00 p.m. any suggestions on aperture? Yeah, that's. That's a broad question. Look, generally, and you're probably very similar to me, Jim. We'll shoot close to wide open on whatever lens are at, depending on what the shot is usually. Yeah, most of the time with weddings, you want to focus on the people, the subject, and not as much on the background. But, you know, obviously, sometimes, especially in the bush. Especially in the bush. [00:20:44] Speaker B: Trees and sticks and stuff. [00:20:46] Speaker A: You don't want sticks. Really sharp sticks. And I don't mean pointy sharp, I mean sharp as in clear sticking out of the couple's head. So you shoot wide open, whatever lens that is. It might be a 1.4 prime, it might be a 2.870 to 200. But shoot wide open. Try and make that background nice and creamy and focus in on the people. [00:21:07] Speaker B: You might. You might shoot wide open, but I'll have to shoot at 2.2. [00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's because. Yeah, your lenses aren't sharp enough. All right, moving on to one of the things. One of the things we've always stealing flowers from the couple. Yeah. That's me running away under promise, over deliver. So set expectations and don't oversell your abilities. Don't oversell what the couple's going to get. Undersell it and then give them more than what they're expecting. So whether that's a number of images they expect to get, how long you're going to stay there, never shortchange them. Go the other way and surprise them. With what you can do, that is the way to make people happy. And then quickly booking things in. You've got a pretty dialed in booking process now. Gym, everything's very not automated, but, like, you've got it. You've got a process that you follow so that you don't double book yourself, so that you know, all that. All that kind of stuff. Obviously, first wedding, you don't need to go that. That intense, but I think it's important to make it. Make it professional. [00:22:24] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. One thing I didn't do with my first wedding, I didn't get deposit, which I think made the couple maybe nervous. Yeah. You know, because for them that everyone else that we would have been booking in would have been asking for a deposit and I wasn't, which at the time, to me, didn't seem like a big deal, but looking back. Yeah. [00:22:46] Speaker A: So you would get. Yeah, you get. Get a deposit of some sort. [00:22:49] Speaker B: Yes. [00:22:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I'd make it small, you know, like, it depends on what your total fee is, but a few hundred dollars, something like that. Don't. Yeah, yeah. Don't. It doesn't have to be a huge amount, but get a deposit. They feel like they've locked you in. Then. Do not spend the deposit. [00:23:08] Speaker B: No, never spend the deposit, ever. [00:23:10] Speaker A: Don't spend the deposit. There is for some. There's some instances where you may have to give it back. Maybe you get sick, maybe something happens. You might have to give their deposit back. Do not spend it. It's not your money until the wedding is done and you've given them their files. [00:23:30] Speaker B: I see this with people that are ten or 15 years in and they're spending the deposits and then. So I don't have it anymore. [00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Treat it like it's. Yeah. It's not your money until the wedding's done, the jobs done. Look, I think making a basic agreement or contract, even for a first wedding, is a good idea. Obviously, you're not going to have a contract. That's, you know, going to stand up in a court of law or something like that. That's. That's not the point of it. You can find a basic contract online for your country, in your area. You know, if you just Google wedding photography, contract Australia or wherever you are, you'll be able to find some sort of template that you might be able to borrow. If it looks too legally, maybe. Don't worry about it. The most important thing is that it outlines what you're going to do for them on what day and how much it costs. This can just eliminate any uncertainty from both parties. Make sure you get paid. It'll make sure that you show up on the right day, to the right place, that kind of thing. You can also use it as a reason to get more details. You know, their address, phone number, that kind of stuff. Just have something formal in place so that there isn't ambiguity about pricing or anything like that. Yeah. Like you or contracts. Now, they're all online. You know, they can sign it online. Yeah. Which. There's pretty easy ways to do that, but that. That's nothing critical. You can just do it as a word document and sign it in person or something or whatever you want, but, yeah, I think that's a good idea. Just nice and clear. And then put your date in every single calendar everywhere. Do not forget that date. You have to show up now. [00:25:25] Speaker B: Phone. Yeah. Calendar on your wall. [00:25:28] Speaker A: Yep. Set reminders, write it on your mirror. Yep. You have to be there. Yeah. You booked a wedding. Now, depending on how much time you have, you've got to get to work. [00:25:45] Speaker B: Obviously. [00:25:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Great photo. Raining again. First wedding. Obviously. It could be three months away. It could be three weeks away. Sometimes you. You know, sometimes you pick up that first wedding because another photographer cancelled or something. Sometimes you've got a year, which is. Which is great. Lots of time to stress about it, but don't. Don't leave it too long. Get preparing. What, like, I would sort of divide things into, like, skills and gear. You know, they're the two things that you need to sort of figure out what. What you've already got and what you need to work on. Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, um, gear. Gears. Probably less important than skills to a point. At some point, if your gear is not up to scratch, it's just gonna. You're gonna do a terrible job. But generally, you know, working on your skills is actually going to be cheaper and more fruitful than just buying gear, but gear can be a lot more exciting. [00:26:56] Speaker B: Yeah. I think skills, though, teach you how to use the gear and make the most of what you do have. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:06] Speaker B: And making. Yeah. That key work for you. [00:27:10] Speaker A: That's right. And then you sort of grow them at the same time. You push your skills a bit. You buy something new by some off camera lighting or something like that, but, yeah, doing an audit of each of those things and being honest with yourself about that sort of stuff, I think is the best place to start. And then you can make a plan for both of them with the time you've got left to get them dialed in and gear to start with. This guy up on a tree taking some photos. Simple but effective kit. You don't want to have a giant bag of stuff on the wedding day. You don't need it. You definitely don't need it. [00:27:52] Speaker B: Do you carry a bag on a wedding day? [00:27:55] Speaker A: Me? Yeah, I do, I think, but I. It's not. Most of what I need is on me and the bags just nearby. So it depends. Depends. [00:28:08] Speaker B: So you have it. You have it nearby but you don't. Yeah. You don't carry it to every spot or location? [00:28:13] Speaker A: No, it's nearby. So it'd be nearby for the ceremony. I would, I would generally leave it then when I go and do walking around with a couple and that kind of stuff and getting some photos with them in the bridal party and then it would be back inside with me for the. The rest of the night somewhere, just in case. But yeah, I don't really like to drag a bag around to each spot, but everyone's different. [00:28:39] Speaker B: But that slows you down. [00:28:40] Speaker A: It does slow you down, I think keeping your kit lean, but having enough that you've got. So two cameras, like you said before, at a minimum, one main camera, that is the one that, you know inside and out and can do a good job. It doesn't have to be the best or latest camera. This is where it's. It's funny because, you know, you can get a second hand camera as long as it's been looked after. That we would have been shooting with ten years ago and that, you know, they were fine back then. Yeah, they just do the job. They do the job, but you need to know how to use it. So, you know, it could be an old canon five D mark III. You'll just have to be wary of dynamic range and high ISO limitations and things like that, and also slower auto focusing. But we were shooting weddings with them ten years ago. There's no reason you couldn't shoot one now. And you could definitely use it as a backup. But again, you need to know how to use that camera. So buying one as a backup and not ever using it because you've got another camera that you prefer is risky. When that camera dies on the wedding day and you have to use your backup and you've never touched it before, that's. That's not a good way to roll. Yeah. What if someone was shooting their first wedding? Would you say, just don't try and. Don't try and go crazy with two, the same cameras or anything like that, unless they're already well, into their gear progression. Just one good camera and some sort of backup. [00:30:25] Speaker B: Some sort of backup, hopefully on the same system so that lenses are cross compatible and things like that. And then, yeah, just keep it simple. Something that's got a bit of reach length, you know, lens wise, something's a bit wider and something in the middle, or even just two lenses, just something wide, something long. That's. We shot a long time with like a wide and a 7200. [00:30:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So, like lenses, to be. To be more specific, like a couple of ways you could go is. Is like Jim said, like a wide angle zoom lens of some sort, like a 16 to 35 or something like that, and then a longer lens, 70 to 200 or something around there. I would recommend either going that direction or going with something like, say a 24 to 105 f four lens, which is like a higher end kit lens, and then some sort of prime, say a 50 m or 1.4, which is 1.8. Sorry, which is a cheap, super cheap prime in most systems, something like that. That range could get you wide enough and long enough and then also low light and shallow depth of field of a 50 mm. 1.8 would be another good way to go. Whichever way you go though, make sure, yeah, you're not relying on just one link lens. Try not to rely on a kit lens too. That comes with cheaper cameras. You know, like if the apertures sort of like a 4.5 to 5.6 or something like that, and that's the only lens you have, you're really going to struggle with low light indoors even. Yeah. So at a minimum, grab a nifty 51.8 and then, yeah, try and build your kit into something that's got a decent wide angle lens and a decent long length lens and you should be fine. But yeah, keep it to two or three lenses. You don't need any more than that. Unless you've already got a big kit built out and you're just transitioning into weddings. But yeah, just as importantly, like, rather than getting that fourth lens, is get yourself an on camera flash, even if you only shoot natural light. You know how many natural light photographers. Yeah, don't be a natural light photographer that only shoots natural light because they don't know how to use flash. If you want to be a natural light photographer, at least know how to use flash in an emergency and then choose not to use it for creative reasons. But how often are you using on camera flash still now? [00:33:06] Speaker B: Basically the only time I use it is like dance floor. Yeah, don't use it in any prep stuff. [00:33:15] Speaker A: Would you say that's because you've got better with working with light in preparations? Your lenses have gotten better gathering more light or have camera sensors gotten better as to where you don't need to worry about the isos being as high? Like why are you using less on camera flash? [00:33:34] Speaker B: It's probably all three of those reasons. I'm better with light. The camera is better than light and the lens lets in more light. So it's a, it's a combination of all three. [00:33:46] Speaker A: Yeah, but yeah. Having that ability to put a flash on your camera, point it at the ceiling or at a white wall or something and illuminate the room when it's dark and there's not much light coming through the windows or the light coming with the. Through the windows when the bride's putting a dress on is, is all green. Cause it's reflecting off a grassy lawn or something like that. And the lights in the room are terrible. Orange down lights or something. The flash can make everything look great, smooth it all out and instead of shooting at 3200 ISO, you can bring it back down to like 800 or something like that. Get a flash, get a flash. Get lots of batteries for it and. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Yeah, get a good flash. If you're gonna get on camera and feel on camera, get a good one. [00:34:34] Speaker A: Yeah, look, we've, you can definitely get away with a godox or a young Neuo or whatever. They're on camera flashes have gotten better. If you don't know much about on camera flash there's basically a setting that you want to run it in called ETL or whatever depending on the system. Basically it's like, think of it like auto lighting. That flash figures out the best amount of light to throw into your scene. Whether you're bouncing it off the wall or pointing it straight at the couple. It figures out the amount of flash to put out. So you don't want a manual flash for this stuff. It's way too hard. Manual flash is fine for off camera stuff, but you want an ETTL flash for on camera. And the third party ones like Godox, which is what we use for our off camera flashes, and Yong Nuo and other brands like that, they're fine. But they aren't quite as accurate as say if you're using Nikon on SB 910 or whatever, or canon. I forget what they're up to. RT 6000 or something like that. They are a bit more accurate with their auto exposures and things. [00:35:48] Speaker B: Yep. [00:35:49] Speaker A: If you're gonna, if you're gonna get into this, you know a first party lens to match this. Sorry. Flash to match your system is probably the way to go, but they are expensive. Yeah. So I've got, I've got Carrie in here on the list. That's really about bags, bags, camera straps, that kind of stuff. [00:36:09] Speaker B: What camera strap would you use? [00:36:11] Speaker A: Oh, well, you know, there's a lot of options, but you would have to buy a lucky strap from luckystraps.com. best camera straps on the planet. But, no, seriously, at least, you know, if you're shooting with, you know, more gear than normal, you're gonna be out on a wedding day probably anywhere from six to ten plus hours. If you're, if you haven't figured out, you know, the bag, the strap and stuff you're gonna use, get. Get into that before the week of the wedding. Like, get it as soon as you can. Yeah. Pack your gear, see how it all fits. Wander around the street with it, see how comfortable it is. Don't leave that stuff to the last minute, because you do want to kind of have that dialed in before the day to make sure that you're comfortable and not destroyed the day after. Or worst case, you can't even fit everything in your bag. And, you know, you kind of juggling lenses in pockets and stuff like that. That's not how you want to, want to go into first wedding, drop something. And then also memory cards, batteries. How, how do you think about that sort of stuff? [00:37:16] Speaker B: Um, so I've both, yeah, from the start, I've always shot with two memory cards in my cameras, so I've got a duplicate of each image straight away. Um, I'm back in the day, obviously, when people shot film, and then when they started shooting digital, people said, use lots of memory cards so that if you lose one, you haven't lost the whole day. And I think that that's absolutely crazy. [00:37:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:46] Speaker B: I want to have the biggest memory card in my camera that I can because I never want to pull it out. I want to pull it out when I'm sitting, when I'm ready to ingest it, whether that's ingesting it in the car, ingesting it at home. I don't want to touch my memory card, think about it until it's ready to ingest. I don't want to be changing it, putting them in things, because it all happened at an inconvenient time. So having cards that are big enough to shoot what you need to shoot is super important, I think. [00:38:15] Speaker A: Yeah, 100% agree. Look, I do. I get that theory of, you know, if one card fails that you still got most of the day, and that kind of thing. Obviously this stuff changes a little bit if your cameras got dual card slots. Get enough memory cards, use both slots. Ideally, shoot raw to both those slots. Or if you have to, you could do jpeg to one, raw to the other, but ideally raw to both. And obviously just, just quickly, you should be shooting raw no matter what for your wedding. But yeah, if you have to, a set of JPeG backups on another card is okay, but raws would be better if your camera doesn't have two card slots. Look, that's okay. It's not ideal, but the. Yeah, that thought of separating memory cards is not only, like Jim says, you know, you're gonna run out of a card, a smaller card, probably, as the bride walks down the aisle or something, or the first kiss is about to happen, which will ruin your day. Also, the risk of taking a card out of that slot and then putting it into a, you know, ideally a memory card holder, but most likely your pocket or something, because you're rushing because the bride's walking down the aisle at that moment, there's a far greater risk of you just losing that card then of it failing. If you had have left one big card in the camera, so that that risk of taking a card out and swapping it is a really big risk. It's usually going to be something like that that causes your problems, rather than just the memory card failing. But they do fail. Have you ever had a memory card fail, Jim? [00:39:53] Speaker B: No. Yes, I have. [00:39:58] Speaker A: Did it. Did it. Did you lose photos off it or did it just stop working during the day? [00:40:04] Speaker B: It just stopped working. It was. I bought a different brand of cards. You've had lots of great runs with these cards. I bought a different brand to what I normally buy because it was slightly cheaper than what I normally. It was. Lexar. [00:40:18] Speaker A: Lexa, yeah, I've used Lexar a lot, actually. [00:40:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and I normally run sandisk. I bought these because they were like a $100 cheaper per card, and then I had issues with them, with both of them, of actually, all four of them. So, yeah. Return them and got some sandisk ones. [00:40:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So it stopped working. Were you able to access any of the photos on that card? [00:40:45] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. It just was erroring in the camera. So nothing was wrong. It hadn't, you know, nothing was lost, but it wasn't happy. [00:40:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So, and that, that's the reason why not only do you need a large enough memory card in your camera to shoot the full day, ideally or enough cards to shoot the full day, then you need backups and those backups in case something like that happens and you have to pull a memory card out that's failing and put another one in your camera. You need to have a spare card on you just in case. Ideally, you won't have to use it, but you gotta carry one. You don't want to be without a card when the action's happening. So, like, card sizes is very dependent on how long you're shooting for, what camera you have, all that kind of stuff. But in general, what size cards are. [00:41:32] Speaker B: You using these days I'm using 128 gigs on a D 850 or DF 50s. So ideally they'd probably be a smidge bigger for at least one of the cameras. [00:41:47] Speaker A: Yeah, 128 seems to be a pretty good price to size ratio currently. Often as you go bigger and bigger, cards get sort of disproportionately expensive. You know, it's now the point where 128s aren't too bad, especially if you can deal with a slower card. You don't want to be too slow because the speed of your card is how quickly the camera can write images to it so you can continue shooting. If the buffer in your camera fills up while it's still writing to cards, you can actually not be able to shoot anymore or your camera severely slows down. And again, that always happens at the peak of action. [00:42:25] Speaker B: So first, here's walking down the aisle. [00:42:28] Speaker A: Exactly. Fast cards will help speed that flow up in the camera system. So try not to cheap out on cards. [00:42:34] Speaker B: Actually, don't cheap have the best cards that you can afford to get for what you need to shoot. [00:42:39] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:42:40] Speaker B: And whether that's weddings or sport or portraits, if you can afford to get the better cards, just. Yeah, yeah. [00:42:46] Speaker A: Prioritize cards and batteries. We won't talk much about batteries, but personally, I've used third party batteries and first party batteries. Third party batteries can have problems. First party batteries can have problems too. But Nikon or Canon or Sony, I've never had issues with anyone but Nikon. They will replace them if something goes wrong. Sometimes they just stop charging and do silly things like that. But I would personally buy first party batteries, especially if, you know, if you're, if you go into camera house and they're trying to charge you $90 for a third party promaster battery, don't, don't buy that. Don't, don't like, buy a canon or a Nikon battery for an extra $20 or something. Yeah. And make sure last a long time. They last. They last. They've got better warranty. They work with the system better. They'll have information, battery information that you can see in your menus and stuff like that. About the life. Yeah. If you want to take the risk on a cheap battery, at least make sure it's actually a third party. Make sure it's actually cheap. You know, make sure it's like $40, not basically the price, like a promaster. Sorry, camera house, but it's just life. Okay. What? Don't to bother buying? What? That doesn't even make sense. What shouldn't you bother buying for your gear in the lead up to a wedding? You don't need a $1000 tripod to shoot a wedding. You probably don't need a tripod at all to shoot a wedding. [00:44:16] Speaker B: No, you don't. [00:44:17] Speaker A: You don't need a polarizing filter. Nope, you don't. You don't need an nd filter. [00:44:22] Speaker B: Nope, I don't need that. [00:44:25] Speaker A: You don't need a macro lens to shoot rings. But if that's something, if it's something you want to buy and you've got the money to, and you think you use it for other stuff and that's cool, go for it. You don't need it. [00:44:39] Speaker B: No, we've both had one and we. I used to use it once a day and it was painful to use, so I ended up getting rid of it. [00:44:46] Speaker A: And obviously you can't take those spectacular ring shots without a macro, but just don't make them a feature of what you do if that's not something you're into. If you're into it, it's super cool. It can be fun to shoot those big, exciting ring shots, but it's also not what the couple are usually after. They want pictures of themselves and their family and friends more so than they want that, you know, fancy ring photo. So not really needed. And yeah, same with off camera lighting. If you're into it, great. Do it anyway. But you don't need to go out and buy that stuff for your first wedding. One on camera flash will get you through everything you need to do. Definitely, you know, same thing with reflectors, all that kind of stuff. You don't need all of that to shoot your first wedding. So don't get carried away with the extras. Spend that money on memory cards, batteries, a nifty 51.8. [00:45:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:44] Speaker B: Would you shoot with on camera flash outside? [00:45:48] Speaker A: Would I? [00:45:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:50] Speaker A: Look, there are times when you could fill that used to be a thing. [00:45:56] Speaker B: You know, I've seen people do it. [00:45:58] Speaker A: I think I've done it back in the day with like a little tiny bit of fill flash onto the faces. Cause you gotta remember like sensors were nowhere near as good at bringing up shadows as they are now. So when you had like a really sort of backlit scene or something like that, if you could, you could just pop a little bit of flash, you know, like you would put it at, I don't know, the EV compensation on your on camera flash at like minus two or something like that, depending on the brightness of the scene. Whole nother thing to get into. Yeah, it could be a thing now if your camera's been made in the last five years, especially if it's like, got a Sony or Nikon sensor or a modern canon sensor. You. Yeah, no, you don't need to put a flash on your camera outside. There are some, there are some funny photos of Jim and I kicking around with on camera flashes outside. Rest assured. Yeah, if you look at. Or maybe it's just. No, no, there's some of you. It's probably just because we walked outside. So say we were doing the bridal preparations or using bounce flash for the bride to put her dress on and then we went outside with the girls to take a quick photo of them on the deck or balcony or something like that. We just didn't pull our flash off our camera, but it was turned off so it's fine. Calm down. Gear. Simple but effective. Make a plan for the things that you need. So other options. If you get to the point of going through gear and seeing what you need, like you can buy some things, but obviously that's going to be dependent on your budget, how much time you've got and is it worth buying it? Do you really need it or is it just something that you need for that one day? You might be able to hire or borrow it, but don't hire or borrow something. First of all, don't, don't hire a borrower. Something that if you broke it, you can't afford to replace it because it'll probably happen. Don't hire or borrow something you have no idea how to use on the day, so don't use it. [00:48:11] Speaker B: You need to hire before. [00:48:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. If it's, if it's a mates camera you're going to borrow, borrow it multiple times in the lead up to the wedding if they'll let you and I and shoot with it. Know how to do everything you can, learn it. Do not get to the point where you're on the wedding day and your camera dies or you drop it or something. And then you have to figure out how to learn it. How to shoot with a completely different camera you've never used. You have to know how to use your backup camera almost as well as your main camera. And mostly, just like we were saying, don't get carried away with gear. You don't need a 200 mil f two lens to shoot portraits for ten grand. You know, like, just keep it simple and nice. Any final thoughts on Giudia? [00:49:00] Speaker B: No, I think with everything with the wedding is keep it simple. Literally every single part of the wedding. [00:49:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. Start learning now. Don't wait until the week before. This is in reference to not just, not just technique, which we'll be talking about, but also your gear. You know, read the manual. Now's the time. Even if this weddings not for a year. Don't leave it till the last minute. [00:49:33] Speaker B: Do you read the manual when you buy a camera? [00:49:35] Speaker A: Look, I used to. I didn't with the r three and the r five, just because. Two reasons. I used to read every manual for every camera that I got. So particularly the canons. That was early on. Then I switched to Nikon, read the manuals again because Nikon system was different to canon, had to figure out where everything was. When I switched back from Nikon to canon to go mirrorless, got the r five and the r three, the two reasons that I didn't read the manual. One, I already knew the canon menu system and they were kind enough to note, change it drastically when going to mirrorless. So I was quite familiar with it already and how everything worked. But two, now there are some awesome YouTube channels that will spend like an hour going through what things are on a. On a camera and, you know, in the menu settings and they do a. [00:50:28] Speaker B: Great job specific to your camera usually. [00:50:29] Speaker A: So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can. [00:50:31] Speaker B: Probably. Every camera made is just about a video of how to set it up better. [00:50:36] Speaker A: Someone done a killer job of it. Obviously you can't take their word for everything. They might have different preferences or whatever, but it's a great place to start. If you're not into reading manuals. You don't like reading, it's boring to you. Find a video, you'll be able to sit there for literally an hour and watch someone go through every menu item you can follow along with them. Learn about each one. It's. Yeah, YouTube is awesome. Compared to what was around ten years ago, there's so much you can learn. All right. Essential skills for shooting your first wedding. Yeah, I've thrown a few dot points here. [00:51:13] Speaker B: But do you, how'd you learn how to bounce flash? [00:51:17] Speaker A: I played around at home. I bought my own flash. That was the important thing. Bought a flash, started playing around at home. [00:51:24] Speaker B: I started photographing Ted and stuff like that. [00:51:29] Speaker A: Yeah, just a dog or whatever, whoever. Just experimenting, pointing it in different directions and playing around with things. Look, these days, again, YouTube, all you have to do is google it and something, something will come up and watch a couple of videos and you'll find something. I actually, I learned some of the best techniques with bouncing flash from a photography workshop I went to, a Jerry Jonas workshop and he taught us about bouncing flash off walls instead of ceilings, and to bounce it off the furthest away wall, not the closest wall, if you've got enough flash power and ISO was high enough, obviously, otherwise you wouldn't get enough power. But if you bounce it off a further wall, your light is, light source becomes even bigger again, because as the flash travels, the area that it bounces off becomes larger and larger and you would get really nice shadows on the face and stuff like that. And it wouldn't look like the difference between bouncing flash off a wall or even a ceiling compared to just pointing it forward straight at the subject is so different. The only time it should be pointing forward straight at the subject is if you're on the dance floor getting those dance floor shots. [00:52:48] Speaker B: Yep, I agree. [00:52:50] Speaker A: But yeah, the bounce flash thing, that's just something, you know, you could, you might be able to do free or paid work for events is probably the best way to learn it. Find some, I don't know, business. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So nightclub for dance, dance floor shots, but for bouncing, bouncing flash, like finder, if there's some event space that runs like conventions or something like that. Or, you know, sorry, I'm at a. [00:53:17] Speaker B: Restaurant, but yeah, I. Oh, yeah, like, not a restaurant, like a bar. Like, you know, something still may be open during daylight hours or something. [00:53:27] Speaker A: Yeah, an engagement party, you can do something like that whether it's paid or free. But get, get out and practice. Learn what, what it bounces like off different directions and stuff, because that is what's going to save you in a reception when all the lights go down and I suddenly your camera isn't putting out photos that you like and you need some light, but the venue's got no lights. You need to be able to use flash. So yeah, practice for that one. You just have to, you gotta practice and see what happens when you change certain settings and then. Yeah, the other big one, working with people yeah. Especially working with groups. The family photos, which you'll often do straight after the ceremony, are one of the critical parts of the day. You need to. [00:54:21] Speaker B: Super important. [00:54:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really important. They're often the most. I wouldn't say boring photos, but, yeah, they're not. [00:54:28] Speaker B: I say boring. [00:54:29] Speaker A: Yeah, they're pretty boring for us to take. They're also really boring for the people in them. Yeah, they really are. The people in them often aren't having the best time because it's just something that has to get done, so. [00:54:43] Speaker B: But it is important. It's important for families and stuff like that. [00:54:47] Speaker A: Critical. If you muck those ones up, you're in big trouble. But. But they're also the ones that no one wants to do. So you've got to be fast and efficient and accurate with your photos. So practicing with groups, it's a hard one to do. If you, you know, if you don't have a large family at home that you can just tell to come outside and practice with, but, you know, you could do free family shoots for people just to practice working with sort of smaller groups. And then, yeah. Any experience you can get, you know, off. If you work somewhere, ask them if they want an updated, like, group staff photo or something. You come in, do it for free one morning or whatever. Anything you can do to get the experience where you have to position a small or large group of people in nice, even light and then take their photo while they're all smiling with their eyes open. It's simple, but it's actually. [00:55:42] Speaker B: It's simple if you follow the rules. [00:55:45] Speaker A: What are the rules? [00:55:47] Speaker B: Even light? So generally, we would always make sure the sun is behind the people, even if they are in the shade, because sometimes, you know, the shade will be dappled. Nice background. Nice, but simple background. Not, not the most critical thing, but the critical thing, number one, is light and even light throughout the whole time. So often we've started doing family photos, say, near the ceremony area, it might be the perfect spot or in front of the arbor, and it'll be overcast. And in five or ten minutes, the sun's opened up and we've had to move. And so now I almost wouldn't do that. I'd always just shoot where you're never going to have to move them. [00:56:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:34] Speaker B: If you can. And then, yeah, it's just everyone in one line. Ideally for family photos. [00:56:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And then, and then for bigger groups, multiple rows of people. But you'll get on a ladder or something to get a bit of perspective. [00:56:53] Speaker B: Yeah. If it's a big, like, maybe mainly just a group photo. Otherwise, normally just get everyone in one line, even if they're really big. Squish them up. [00:57:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So what about. This is something that I think a lot of photographers don't think about before shooting their first wedding is obviously, they might think about posing couples, but I don't know if they realize how often, like, how often do couples say to you, what do we do now? You know, like, they're looking for you to give them direction on what to do in the photo, or sometimes even just what to do during the day, as in, like, what? How long do we have left? Like, you're. That they. You're in control, especially during that I photo session, which here in Australia is usually after the ceremony, you know, after family photos and stuff. Then you have a photo session, then you get them back for the reception, for the party, but they'll be looking to you for guidance. And I think that's one of the things that can take you by surprise. Because you're not ready to answer that question. Yes, because you're thinking about photos. You're like, oh, I don't know how, you know, setting my camera. What aperture should I use for this photo? Does that look good? Or whatever? And then they're standing there and they're like, what do you want us to do? [00:58:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:17] Speaker A: How do you practice for that? [00:58:19] Speaker B: You just start, I think always. Whenever in the past, when I haven't had an idea, I've just moved. Moved them, done something, gone for a little walk and started the process. Because I think that if you just stand there and you're looking around, you're kind of, you're not seeing things. Whereas if you just start, even if the photos suck, those ones, you generally see the next shot that's going to be worthwhile, you'll start reading the light a little bit better. [00:58:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:51] Speaker B: So that would be. Yeah, I would always just start, even if I don't exactly know what I. What I want to be. [00:58:58] Speaker A: What about, what about them? When they're saying, like, what should we do? What should we do in the photo? Like, how do you, do you have some sort of go to posing options that you can always throw them into, or how much direction do you give couples? [00:59:17] Speaker B: I don't give them a lot of posing direction in sort of too much body placement, but I do give them prompts to kind of get the things out of them that I do want, if that makes sense, because otherwise, you know, people just be sort of standing there, sort of straight onto the camera, whereas, yeah, I'll give them prompts to try and get what I need out of them. [00:59:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Like what? What sort of prompts? Give me some examples. [00:59:49] Speaker B: I can't. Can't share that here. [00:59:51] Speaker A: Ah, come on. We share everything. Our valuable listeners, they want to know they got to shoot their first wedding and they've got to be successful. Give us something. [01:00:00] Speaker B: Um, which I'd normally just start. Do you know, a formal. Formal photo, you know, like what Nan wants on the mantelpiece. And then. [01:00:11] Speaker A: What do you mean by formal photo? [01:00:13] Speaker B: Literally standing there looking to camera, get that sort of done out the way. [01:00:17] Speaker A: So, like both. Both, like bride and groom or either. Or whatever, but just literally smiling straight. Straight at the camera. [01:00:24] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. Look in the camera sort of straight on you. You know, maybe just hold each other or something like that. And then, you know, you might ditch the flowers or whatever and maybe get them to just. And I would normally just say, you know, don't worry about me, just worry about each other. And that would normally bring them into an embrace or something like that. [01:00:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And then you just let them do their thing. [01:00:48] Speaker B: Let them do their thing, yeah. Whether they're people that are real cuddly and kissing or if they're. They laugh at each other or maybe they're just really awkward, too, because that's also some people that's just. That's the same. So you kind of just work with that. [01:01:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, you know, I think it's a hard skill to learn some of the, again, behind the scenes stuff that you can see on YouTube or training websites and stuff like that, that teach wedding photography. Like, you can see the sorts of things that people say to couples to just keep them entertained, break the ice and keep them moving. But, yeah, I'm the same. We try and get couples to move through a scene, do something as opposed to positioning hands and feet and all that, like going to that kind of detail. Other photographers do that and do it very well, but not really our style, but, yeah, more so telling them to go for a walk somewhere, maybe giving them the suggestions of whether to hold hands or. Yeah, embrace each other or whatever, but then kind of letting that happen for a second and taking the photos, even if they. Even if they laugh, because how awkward it is or something that can be the shot. [01:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm also big on just kind of letting things come to me or, you know, letting things come to them so that rather than you might give them a prompt and it might take them a minute to get there if you're wanting them to laugh or something like that, but just letting it kind of come naturally rather than trying to force it. [01:02:31] Speaker A: Some of the just simple but technical details, focusing on moving subjects. Super easy one to practice. Get a friend, tell them to walk towards you. Try it in different lights, like light scenarios. So the sun behind them, the sun in front of them, the sun beside them, and see if you can get focus as they walk down the aisle. That's where knowing the focus mode of your camera, like are you on servo focus or continuous focus where it's tracking them? Or are you on single shot focus where it's locking on and then by the time you take the shot, they've taken half a step and they're actually out of focus now because they're in front of where you focused on the camera. Like you need to know your gear, you need to know like a bride walks down the aisle really slowly, but it is still possible to miss focus on a bride walking down the aisle very easily. That's one of those shots that you can't fuck up. You have to get it. You got to get it. So you got to practice it. And it's an easy one to practice, you know? [01:03:32] Speaker B: So practice with your dog. [01:03:35] Speaker A: Yep. Practice with anything moving subjects. Try and get focus on their face, on their eyes. Don't accidentally get focus on the bouquet of flowers they're holding or something like that. And just, well, the person next to them. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Even if there's two people walking bride with the dad or something like that. Get the focus on the star of the show. [01:03:56] Speaker B: Hmm. [01:03:58] Speaker A: And same thing with details and macro. If you're going to do lens, sorry, ring photos with a macro lens or anything like that. It's super easy to practice at home. Just do it, do it as often as you can. Detail photos with like flowers and stuff like that. You don't even need people to practice that stuff. So no excuses. Get into it. I think this is our last slide because I ran out of time. [01:04:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Should we do this as part two? [01:04:27] Speaker A: Maybe, maybe, maybe we'll do this. We'll talk about some more stuff. We'll talk about some more stuff. We don't need slides, but yeah, like I was saying, free and free stuff on YouTube, behind the scenes, wedding day. Just search that. There'll be a million of them. There's some paid options, like, there's a million paid options as well. Taylor Jackson has paid stuff, but he also has free stuff on YouTube. So you can see if you like his style or not. Before you bother paying for any of the courses, creative live subscription gives you, like, I think you can get monthly as well. And you get access to so much stuff, you know, you could just get it for like two months and just binge watch five different wedding photographers and how they do their thing and then cancel your subscription. Cost you, like next to nothing. Jerry Jonas, I don't know how much he's doing anymore. He used to do heaps of behind the scenes stuff. He's very posed, but you can learn a lot from that. And then at least you can see what good posing is so that you can identify when the couples look like that, even if you're trying to be more natural. So there's still a lot to take away from his style if that's not the way you like to shoot. But yeah, just find some content and like, just devour it. If you've got time and in that preparation for the next months or weeks or whatever you've got before the wedding, learning and learning more stuff that brings you up to kind of like the week or two weeks out, which is where you really start to have to make sure you've got all of the information for the day mapped out. And we do that with a questionnaire. Now, our software system that we used to book weddings has a questionnaire builder and stuff as part of it. And we've got a pretty involved questionnaire that we've built out over the years that gives us all of the information that we need to know on paper. The couples can do that in their own time and submit it to us. We send it out. What do you send out now? Five or six weeks before? Four weeks before? [01:06:40] Speaker B: Yeah, about four to six weeks out. [01:06:43] Speaker A: I'll send out the question and then they submit it sometime, you know, in the, in the weeks leading up to the wedding, because obviously, if it's too early, they're not going to know all the details that you need to know about the day. But if you send it out too close to the wedding, they're not going to have time to do it because they're flat out and they'll leave it to the last minute. So that I wouldn't suggest for your first wedding putting together an online questionnaire unless you really love playing around with survey builders. [01:07:12] Speaker B: But we'll literally do it on surveymonkey, though, or something like that if you want to. [01:07:17] Speaker A: But again, you're kind of spending a lot of time setting something up that you may never use again. It might be easier to have an in person meeting and just write notes. It might be easier to have a phone call and write notes or, you know, just send them the document or something like that. But there are some critical things. We'll walk you through our questionnaire to give you some ideas, but there are some things that you really should get, ideally on paper or in person, make notes of so that you don't, you don't miss out on critical information that's going to make the day flow better and that the couple really, really want. So some photo, some detail and you don't find out till the end of the day that that was the most important thing. That's. Yeah, that's the purpose of this server. Have you got it, Jim? [01:08:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know how to bring it in there. [01:08:09] Speaker A: If you just hit present down the bottom, it'll say present and then share screen, and then it'll say something about chrome tabs and just share the exact tab that it's on. [01:08:29] Speaker B: Is that sharing? Yeah. Cool. Oh, and I've got to be in it. [01:08:34] Speaker A: Yeah, you got to be in it to scroll. Yeah, yeah. So we'll quickly go through. Hey, slow down. We'll go through. This is the survey that they get. So we obviously, look, we always put the date, we should already know the date. Obviously we put at the top because it doubled, triple confirms that we've got everything right with the wedding. We ask again, like a lot of this stuff we might have chatted about in the very first meeting, but often that could be months or sometimes years in advance. Things change. Maybe our notes were wrong, whatever. So we just reconfirm everything. So we're asking about the bridal party, how many people, what their names are, and any special relationships that they'll often put in there that, you know, this is my best friend from primary school or something like that. Helps us zero in on special moments. We ask the address where the girls will be getting ready, the address where the boys will be getting ready. Obviously there's also. This could be different if it's a same sex couple, something like that. [01:09:35] Speaker B: We change that depending on. [01:09:37] Speaker A: Yeah, we've got different versions depending on what we're asking. And then we ask them what their plan is for the morning. That's important to know what time they're getting hair and makeup and that sort of thing. And that's whether you're covering that or not. They might not want you in the morning. We often don't get booked for the morning. Some people just want us to show up once they're already ready. One thing that we introduced later on is how important are the details while they're getting ready. Things like the dress hanging up, shoes, perfume, rings, flowers, that kind of stuff. We just made a multiple choice, like, not that important. We're like some photos, but they're not the most important. Or these photos are very important. And that basically tells us whether we should be focusing on the people while we're there in the morning or the things, because you, you know, if you're doing one, you're not doing the other. If you're just one photography, you can't be everywhere at once for a wedding day. Everything is a compromise and you're choosing what to focus on. And if you spend the entire time trying to get the perfect dress hanging up photo, you're missing, you know, the bridesmaids having a good time while they're getting their makeup done. So. [01:10:54] Speaker B: And that happens, too. You hear them having a good, good laugh. [01:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah. But the important thing is getting what they want. So if you know, and to get what they want, you need to know what they want. What else we got on here? Do you want to keep on? [01:11:11] Speaker B: Yep. Any special decorations like we've had in the past? People have got things stitched on the inside of their dress or just things that they wouldn't think to tell us in intermediate, but, you know, it might be super important, so. And then we can obviously make special. Pay special attention to those. [01:11:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And look, this stuff might be a little bit on the side of, you know, maybe if you're shooting more than one wedding and you're trying to refine your process like this. This is getting pretty into the weeds in some stuff and might not be critical, but just give you an idea of what we asked for so you can at least know what questions you might want to ask in a meeting leading up to the wedding. What else? [01:11:58] Speaker B: We got things about kids, you know, is there any special kids that are going to be there? Car. Like wedding cars. Some people super important to them. Definitely feel like it's a trend that's going away is wedding cars. [01:12:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:13] Speaker B: Less people when they are there, they are important, but yeah. And then again, details that we already know. But good to have a confirmation that that's exactly where the ceremony is going to be. What times on the invitations is also handy because sometimes they might put 345 down for a 04:00 ceremony. That's good to know that they're planning to be there at four because their guests will all be there at three, you know, because sometimes telling your guests 15 minutes earlier is actually a great idea, so that if they're late, they're still early. [01:12:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Just before you move on, you had in there as well. Where will the ceremony be held and why did you choose that location? Like, sometimes that sort of stuff can be super handy if it's a sentimental location. Maybe someone's parents or grandparents got married there or something like that. And just knowing that before the wedding rather than finding it out afterwards can be really handy. You know, if their grandparents got married there, maybe you want to get some candid shots of their grandparents in the ceremony location, that kind of thing. So. [01:13:22] Speaker B: Or maybe they did a photo there and then. Oh, we actually want to replicate that. Or, you know, there's lots of things that could pop up from that. [01:13:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:13:32] Speaker B: Um, rehearsal, which we was helpful at the start because we did sometimes go to rehearsal. [01:13:41] Speaker A: I've got that on my notes here. I. My advice would be 100% go to the rehearsal of the first. [01:13:47] Speaker B: If it's your first wedding. Yeah, for sure. [01:13:48] Speaker A: And that's what. Yeah, this, that's the focus. It's like, if you can. If you can make it there, uh, go there. If they're, especially if they're having it at the ceremony location, which they usually do, go there often it's the afternoon before, so it's usually at about a similar time. But be mindful of it. Any time difference, because the light will be different. It could be different with clouds and stuff anyway, but it's gonna give you the best setup. Not only do you get to meet more of the bridal party, you get to meet the celebrant and talk to them. [01:14:18] Speaker B: And then sometimes they'll have funny things. Sometimes, you know, they'll be like, oh, don't go here, or, or this is going to happen. And you didn't know that that was going to happen. And it's handy to be. Have some insight. [01:14:32] Speaker A: It could be, yeah. If it's a religious ceremony, there'll be, there might be things that you don't know about that are going to happen or rules for that particular venue. It's, it can be so handy. But like, like Jim says, now, especially, you're shooting multiple days, Friday, Saturday, it's not possible to go to every rehearsal, and you also don't need to because you've got a lot of experience. But I used to go to them a lot, and I actually still go to them every now and then if I don't have much on. And it's, I don't know, it's nearby or whatever. Sometimes it's just fun to meet people before the pressure of the day. It's. Yeah, I would go 100%. That's. That's going to be your biggest leg up on not feeling nervous on the day because everything's not new. [01:15:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Things like celebrant, how many people are going to be there again, you probably already know both of those things, but it's just handy to have it in there. [01:15:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:15:32] Speaker B: You have to. [01:15:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And we also ask whether they want a big group photo of everybody. If that's not something you're comfortable doing, maybe don't ask them. If they don't answer because don't do it. Don't offer it if you don't think you can handle it. But it's something that a lot of our couples want. I don't remember if we did it early on or not, but I reckon we did. Maybe not at the first wedding we shot together. I can't actually remember, but when we first started, it was something that. It wasn't as common. It didn't seem like everyone was doing it. Now it seems like every wedding wants it and everyone does it. I don't know if that's just us, but look, it's something that we do. It's not something you have to do. And if you don't feel comfortable getting up on a ladder and trying to tell 150 people to do what you want to fit them into your shot and then also making that work with light and background and all of that sort of stuff, then don't offer it and. Yeah, don't talk about it. [01:16:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Formal family photo list again, decided to have everything together. We spoke about them that before, obviously. [01:16:54] Speaker A: Yeah. How we shoot it, having a list is to work off so that you don't miss something on the day. [01:17:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:17:01] Speaker A: And then having them think about not only the list and writing it down, but having them think about someone that can organize the groups on the day because you'll be busy trying to take photos. You don't know what anyone looks like. So just yelling out names can be pretty deflating when no one's listening and stuff like that. And you can end up sounding like a bit of a grouch if you're just yelling out names, trying to get groups together. Whereas if you get Auntie Kathy or, you know, some. Some. One of the girls from the bridal party, one of the boys from the bridal party who are confident and have, you know, a nice loud voice and know a lot of people, give them the list and just let them organize it. And then you can focus on the photos. [01:17:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:17:52] Speaker A: Whip through the rest of this pretty fast. It gets a little bit more detailed and is not as important. But I mean, we ask them about the photo session and if there's anything that they specifically want, any locations or anything like that that they think about, we've, you know, we talk to them about that in person as well. But again, sometimes they write stuff down that they haven't mentioned. [01:18:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Happens all the time. [01:18:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:20] Speaker B: Where's the reception? Because sometimes it's not at the same place or sometimes it's changed or they might. I don't know, you might have just had a different idea. So it's good to just get that again. What time is it that starting? So you know how much time you've got to work with. [01:18:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:38] Speaker B: Because you're also a bit of a timekeeper on the day, making sure that there. Everyone's. Yeah. On time. [01:18:46] Speaker A: Ideally, if this is your first wedding, ideally you will get a timeline from either the couple or maybe the venue have put something together. But often if the venue puts a timeline of the wedding day together, it doesn't include hair and makeup and that. That end of the day, and sometimes it's not complete. So this is hard. We've got a lot of experience, so we kind of put together our own timeline or fill in the gaps from what we get from the venue. But, you know, if you don't know how long everything usually takes a. You've really got to try and get that information out of the couple and just ask them questions about everything. What time will you leave, where you're getting ready to go to the ceremony? What time will they be serving dinner? What time are you doing speeches? Try and find out as much information as possible. Talk to the MC. They usually have a running sheet for the night, so that's obviously something you can't do until the day of the wedding. If the couple's going to give the MC a timeline of when to do speeches and cut the cake or any other exciting things that are happening, try and get that information for yourself as well. The more you've got, the more you can make sure you're in the right place at the right time. [01:20:00] Speaker B: And often that timeline that the MC does have is potentially different or conflicting with the one that you might have previously spoken about. Because things often change in the. The last few days. [01:20:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:20:13] Speaker B: So good to get that. Yeah. Again on the day, just to triple check. [01:20:18] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [01:20:23] Speaker B: Who is your mc? Always good to know. Cause you need to chat to them. What else do we need to? [01:20:30] Speaker A: And then we just find out stuff about first dance. I mean, we ask our couples if they want sunset photos. Again, don't ask if it's not something you're comfortable doing. Sunset's a great time of the night to shoot, but it also can be tricky if you have no experience in it and it often conflicts with stuff that's happening in the timeline, whether that's them eating them doing their first dance and that kind of thing. So for your first wedding, don't stress too much. If you get a chance to shoot sunset, obviously you can get amazing photos, but that's probably the not the most important thing on the day as, as far as making sure everything's smooth. And then we also get a list of just everyone that's involved. That's just something that we do for marketing purposes later on. It's not something that you need to do if you don't want to. [01:21:15] Speaker B: No. But if there is a videographer, maybe reach out to them. Yeah. [01:21:20] Speaker A: Handy to know, especially if it's your first wedding. Yeah. Yeah. They might have some information you can share and make friends on the day. And they can be, you know, if they might be way more experienced. And you can let them help guide the day along if they're an experienced videographer. And then, yeah, we get some more information about the couple. How did they meet? That's often a fun story, like tell us about the proposal, that kind of stuff. We start to learn a bit more about their personality. Again, depends. You might already know these people really well, and none of this is important. But. It's important. But you don't need to find it out because you already know. But this is the stuff that we try to find out. [01:21:59] Speaker B: Yep. And then, like, what they're most looking forward to on the wedding day or most anticipated moment. It's usually, you know, first kiss, those sorts of moments, but it's good to know just so that if it's something else, you're extra prepared for it. And then again, if it's your first wedding, not as critical. But why would they choose to us or you? [01:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:28] Speaker B: Cool. [01:22:29] Speaker A: So you've got a lot of information. It's the week of the wedding. Maybe it's the day of the wedding. You've gone to a rehearsal yesterday. Things are about to happen. And that's where having you've got all this information, you can plan. Like, I often put stuff into maps. Like, you know, our town's pretty small, but I'll still put stuff into maps and just double check, like, how long is it going to take for me to drive from where the girls are getting ready to the ceremony and make sure I know in my head, like, okay, this is the latest I can possibly leave here to get there. [01:23:03] Speaker B: I still do that for everybody. I know how long it'll take to the minute, almost. [01:23:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So plan as much of that stuff out as you possibly can before you're actually in the thick of it, because once you're in it, you're busy just thinking about taking photos and your gear and maybe your memory card stopped working and all that sort of stuff. And, yeah, I plan it all out in advance. And then make sure all of your batteries are charged and that you've got enough batteries to last a full day, and all of your cards are formatted and everything's good to go. What. What else do you do? The morning of. Yelena says she didn't know that I could be that organized. I can be. I just choose not to be all the time. [01:23:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I think I'm with you there. I think we're probably both extremely organized for weddings. [01:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:59] Speaker B: And that's probably the only thing. [01:24:02] Speaker A: Well, you can't be organized for everything in your life. [01:24:04] Speaker B: No. No. [01:24:07] Speaker A: Yeah. What do you do, like, on a wedding day? What's. What's some stuff? Do you plan, like, snacks and things, or, like, when do you have your gear ready to go? [01:24:16] Speaker B: I always have mine ready to go the day before. I hate stressing about things on the wedding day, so I try and minimize those things for me. So things like formatting my cards, packing my bag, having my batteries, like, charged, ready to go. This is obviously different if I'm shooting two weddings, but the first wedding, I always make sure I'm packed the night before. [01:24:40] Speaker A: Just. Just to be clear. You mean shooting two weddings, as in on a Friday and a Saturday or something like that? Jim. Jim does not shoot two weddings in one day. No, no, don't do that. [01:24:51] Speaker B: No, don't do that. [01:24:51] Speaker A: Don't do that. [01:24:53] Speaker B: But, yeah, no, making sure, like, my key is prepped, ready to go the night before. So on the wedding morning, I'm not stressing about, oh, I've got to pack my key. I've got to think, you know, where's that thing that I couldn't find a. Yeah. You know, just relax. Make sure you've eaten and drank in a lot. [01:25:12] Speaker A: Drinking? Drunk, drunk. You get drunk before a wedding? [01:25:17] Speaker B: Not often. [01:25:19] Speaker A: So you're hydrated, is what you say. [01:25:21] Speaker B: Hydrated? Yeah. [01:25:22] Speaker A: Yeah. What do you wear? [01:25:26] Speaker B: I wear brown boots, black jeans, and a, like a button up shirt. Like a cotton button up shirt. It's. We, I guess we used to wear, like, businessy sort of shirts. Thankfully, we don't wear them anymore, but they're still, there's still, like, a smart, casual look. Seems to work for all of our weddings. I definitely know there's some wedding photographers that would kick around in like, a full suit or like, bow ties and stuff like that. We, all of our weddings are country weddings, so that look works. [01:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:26:04] Speaker B: And, you know, we're running, jumping, climbing, lying down in that cow paddocks. [01:26:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:26:11] Speaker B: Sometimes it's, you have to be able to do it all. [01:26:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And you, in my opinion, like, look, if you want to look as fancy as you want to look, that's no stress. But in my opinion, you shouldn't stand out. So you don't want to be the best dressed person there? I don't think. If you want to, that's fine, but I don't think you should stand out in terms of looking like you are the best dressed person at the wedding. It's not your day, it's their day. So I think going, you know, an extravagant suit or something like that is not needed, and it might be focusing on the wrong things for the day. You need to be comfortable. Stuff like this. What you're wearing needs to be durable. Obviously, if you're a girl, we have absolutely no experience in what you should wear. But the cool thing about women, they kind of get maybe a little bit more choice in terms of, for hot days and stuff like that on what fits in the, into that realm. For warm days. We kind of very rarely would we wear shorts or something like that to a wedding. But I've done it once. Yeah, if it's going to be 40 degrees. But we'll always check with the couple first. Don't rock up to a wedding wearing shorts and runners and a polo top or something. Unless you've double checked with the couple. They probably won't care if you run it past them. But, you know, you don't want to look out of place either. You don't want to be the only one that looks a bit sketchy at the wedding because people do notice. [01:27:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you just track ease and like, a baseball cap. [01:27:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's bad. [01:27:53] Speaker B: Which, like, like a hat's not bad, but the whole look together was just trackies, baseball cap, and, like, runners. It was, um. [01:28:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. I think the key is don't stand out. Don't have people notice what you're wearing. If they don't notice, you've chosen perfectly. But if they notice what you're wearing, then you've underdressed or overdressed and. Yeah, but, yeah, be comfortable. Pack heaps of water. Pack snacks. Don't rely on them. Yeah, lots of snacks. Don't rely on them to feed you. They will feed you, but don't rely on it because things happen with food. Sometimes. Maybe you don't have time. Yeah, sometimes we don't get fed. Sometimes the skateboarding. [01:28:34] Speaker B: Get fed at our first wedding. No, you did. I didn't. [01:28:38] Speaker A: Oh, really? [01:28:38] Speaker B: You got fed at about 11:00 p.m. oh, okay. And I think I left it like quarter to eleven and I missed it. [01:28:46] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't even remember, but I remember. [01:28:49] Speaker B: When I don't get fed. [01:28:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Jimbo crumbles, but, yeah, bring. And so bring your own snacks. Bring water. Be essentially self sufficient for the day. Just in case. Just in case for some reason, food doesn't come your way. And whatever you do, do not be the first person to walk up to a beautifully set up dessert bar and start eating the cake. Don't touch it. You be the. If you touch the dessert bar or the food or whatever, that's somehow self serve. Be the last person. Do not be the first person in line. You're there to do a job. You're a fucking guest. Don't touch it. [01:29:35] Speaker B: Like the videographer that was taking little snacks when the lady was still setting it up. [01:29:41] Speaker A: Oh, man. Yeah, it was an amazing dessert bar that we needed to take photos of, and she was still putting stuff out on the table and he grabbed like, a little cupcake or something and ate it. Do not be that guy. Don't. The food is not for you. But, but the, the couples and the families are always awesome. They'll always offer you something. And, yeah, have. Have a tasty treat after all of the rest of the guests have had something, but not before, not even in the first half. What else? What else? On the day? I think we got a little bit distracted from how to shoot a wedding on the day, but arrive early and stay late. So get there. Ideally, I reckon 15 minutes early to walk into wherever you're starting with. Say, if you start with the girls getting ready, get that. Like, get there early, but don't walk in half an hour early. They won't be ready for you. They'll probably be that. They'll be awkward because maybe the girls are still, I don't know, naked or something. Don't, don't get there too early. But 15 minutes early is a good way to start the day and leave late, stay after the time you told them you'd be there till, and then leave. What are your thoughts on that stuff? [01:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I think always start early, finish late. And I. If there's nothing going on when your finish time sort of comes around, then, you know, you can leave a few minutes, but if there's sort of a bit going on, giving them 15 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour isn't the end of the world. [01:31:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And I always go up to the couple, both of them together or separately, what depends on how drunk they are and where they are in the wedding, as that what you can do. But I always say, hey, you know, it's 11:15 because you were going to finish at eleven. I'm about to head off soon, you know, say thanks, and it was an awesome day and all that stuff, and then say, is there anything you wanted before I take off? [01:31:51] Speaker B: Because anyone they want to get a photo with or something. [01:31:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. Any photos that you want. Because there might be just that one person that they've been meaning to get a photo with all night and they haven't had a chance to. And that way you've given them the opportunity to tell you and if they need it, most of the time they say no, but you never know. And at least then you've asked. So. [01:32:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Yelena, do we have a meal included in our contracts? We don't have meals. No, there's no. Well, I don't think so. [01:32:21] Speaker A: I thought it was in there at some stage, but look, I think it. I thought it was in there either way. Put it in. Don't put it in. For your first wedding. You can probably just have a conversation with a couple about it. It depends on how long you're staying. But if you're. If you're there from, you know, for 10 hours and it goes well across meal time, I would tell them that. [01:32:46] Speaker B: Nothing in there. [01:32:47] Speaker A: Okay. Well, we get fed every time, but they just expect basically we're going to be stuck there. We can't leave to go and get food. If they feed us, then we're there taking photos. If we have to leave to get food, we could be gone for half an hour to an hour. And that's just. That is not possible for a wedding. But on the other hand, we do bring snacks to make sure we're not stuck with that food, just in case. [01:33:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:12] Speaker A: And, yeah, we just have a conversation with the couple about it to make sure that they know what the deal is. The couple always asks us if we have the dietary requirements and all that kind of stuff. [01:33:23] Speaker B: Normally the caterers, asking them, you know, what vendors you have, how many is that? You know, is there. Is there a ten piece band that they've got to feed? [01:33:31] Speaker A: Yeah, and yeah, it is usually the caterers, but sometimes if it's a backyard wedding or something like that, this stuff might all be different. But usually if it's a venue, they've done this a thousand times and the venue is asking them, what about the band? What about the photographers? What about the whatever. [01:33:49] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's gonna need food. [01:33:52] Speaker A: Just gets taken care of. So on the day, we could go really, really deep about how to do a wedding day. Maybe we'll do a full podcast on that at some stage, start to finish. But the most important thing, like, now that you've learned all the skills and you've watched a heap of behind the scenes stuff, is just to, yeah, arrive early, be everywhere, like, do your job, don't get food, and make sure that. Make sure that you don't make the day about you and your photos. The day is about them and their wedding. You're just there to capture it. So don't. Don't take things over and don't drag them all over the place when, like, you know, read that. [01:34:36] Speaker B: Gauge. Yeah, that. Yeah, right. Yeah, I was gonna say gauge how they read the room. Because some people want more. [01:34:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:42] Speaker B: And some people don't. And it's. It's about doing what they want. Because what they want is you'll give them the outcome then. [01:34:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:52] Speaker B: If you try and do extra stuff, they'll just go, we. This is nice, but we actually just wanted to hang out with. With everyone. [01:35:00] Speaker A: Yeah, they need to have a fun day. And look, it's proof that that's. That's the most important thing because we get thanked and told we've done an amazing job. Usually at the end of the day, sometime by the couple or the parents or who knows what. And we're like, you haven't even seen the photos yet. That's because the photos at that point aren't important. The important thing is that everyone's had a good time and that we've worked hard. So, yeah, don't make it about you and the photos. Make it about them and their day, and you should be fine. Also, look, there's a million of these things, but put together for yourself your own shot list. Don't necessarily share it with the couple or anything like that, they might want to talk about that sort of stuff. And if it's your first wedding, I think that's, you know, we don't talk about that sort of stuff with a couple anymore. They, they trust what we do, and. [01:35:55] Speaker B: Occasionally we get one, but, yeah. Yeah, it's actually generally more trouble than not having one. [01:36:02] Speaker A: That's right. That's why we don't usually talk about it. But that's why we also ask so many questions about certain special things to do with the day so that we can focus in on that stuff. But when you're new, find a shot list, modify it, if it needs to be modified to things that you think are important. And make sure you get the critical shots. Bride by yourself looking at the camera, groom by himself looking at the camera, you know, like a shot of the back of the bride's dress. You know, all of these things that you might forget because you're busy doing the wedding day stuff. There are certain shots that they will want, even if they don't tell you they want them. And one of those ones is the bride staring at the camera, smiling, holding her bouquet before her hair's messy, before the dress is messy or something like that, because that happens. Get that shot. You know, get a shot of the whole bridal party together. It sounds, you know, basic, but you can miss things. So if you have a list and you look over it, you know, multiple times before the wedding, maybe take it with you on the day so that when you get a little break, you can sort of go through it and mentally check some things off and see if you've missed anything. Because if you have, I mean, I remember back to the early days, we, we figured out that we missed a certain shot or something like that, and we would make it happen during the end of the night because we were like, damn it, they wanted that. Or we know that they'll probably want that. Let's, you know, let's take them outside and get a shot of just the two of them doing this thing that they wanted or something like, yeah, find a shot list and. And learn it. There are just some things that every couple wants, whether they know it or they don't know it. And if you don't get them, they'll be disappointed. It. Agree? Disagree? [01:37:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. [01:37:56] Speaker A: Anything to add or want me just, you know, roll this whole thing by myself. So, yeah, I don't know. It's just, it's, it's one of those things. Or maybe I'll find one and put in the show notes or whatever, but yeah, that. Find a shot list and. And then interpret it for what you think you want to do. But there's some stuff on there that is critical. And then after the wedding, then what? [01:38:27] Speaker B: Back up your photos. [01:38:31] Speaker A: Really? [01:38:33] Speaker B: A lot of times. [01:38:34] Speaker A: Just once. [01:38:35] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm actually doing four at the moment for couples. So I have a working copy and then three. So three are in one spot and then one off site. So there's. Yeah, I've sort of got my old computer running one to the raid and then to just a normal hard drive, like an in progress hard drive. One staying on my laptop and then one that goes off site and stays in the car. [01:39:03] Speaker A: Yep. A raid is a big network storage drive. If you're shooting your first wedding, you probably don't have one of those. Probably don't need one of those. So simple way to sort of talk about this would be you've got a computer. Make sure you've got two external hard drives. If you're shooting one wedding, you could get away with the smallest hard drives on the market. A 500 gig or whatever. I don't know, they're like $50. Like, get it, get bigger ones. If you plan on doing more photography stuff. But have one computer, two hard drives, that's three things. Then make sure you've got a copy of the photos, the full set of photos. Don't delete any. The full set. Everything you took from the day on the computer and both hard drives, verify that they're all there. Double check the sizes of the folders. Once the transfer is complete, make sure that the photos actually open in lightroom or whatever editing software using. Verify they're all there, three copies. And then take one of those copies and put them somewhere else. Take them to a friend's house, whatever, but get them away from your other two copies. A different physical location. That is the bare minimum to make sure that that wedding is safe. And then once you've done that, you can then format the cards or shoot another job on them or whatever. But do not touch that card or those cards until you have three copies and one of them is in another place. Don't you check. [01:40:31] Speaker B: Yeah, check the files, like even bring them into Lightroom or whatever you're going to edit with and just make sure that they're. They're all good. [01:40:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Shots by Jeremy. Thoughts on SSD versus hard disk drive? Obviously SSD's always are better, but they are always way more expensive. You really only need an. Yeah, you really only need an s. I use a couple of SSD's for backup drives at the moment when I'm shooting on location because it's faster to transfer. But don't spend money on SSD's except for maybe if you're using one as a working drive where your photos live and you edit straight off that SSD. But if you're at the stage where you're still sort of building out a kit and that kind of stuff, if the hard drive in your computer is large enough to hold a wedding, then just buy boring old, slow hard drives as your backups because you can spend that money elsewhere or a photography workshop or subscription to some sort of training website or something like that. You don't need to have, you know, monster SSD drives for all of your backups or anything. Just, just make sure they're backed up. Don't lose their wedding. Don't lose their wedding. And then we try and get them a sneak peek of photos fairly quickly, within a few days if we can. We mainly started doing that for marketing purposes because obviously that happens fast. People comment on them, on social media and all that sort of stuff. [01:42:06] Speaker B: The wedding's like recent, so it's in people's minds. [01:42:10] Speaker A: Everyone wants something fast. They want to be able to post photos and if they don't have your photos to post, they'll post some iPhone photos or whatever. Now if this is your first wedding, marketing probably isn't the most important thing to you right now, so that's not that important. But what getting them a sneak peek does is it buys you time to edit the photos because then they're not desperately waiting to see what the results are like. It also gives you a chance to go through, find your best photos, hopefully feel good about what you've done, identify if there are any major issues with what you've done, so you can communicate that with a couple, you know, you missed the first kiss, maybe have a conversation about that. But yeah, you can do a lot by just giving them, I don't know, at a minimum, ten photos maximum, probably 50, something like that somewhere in there, bit of a range of the day. So they've got some things to post on social media and they feel good about choosing you as their photographer. And you can feel good about the fact that now you've bought yourself, you know, two, three, four weeks to edit the wedding and they're not stressing and waiting and wondering if you managed to capture everything they wanted. [01:43:26] Speaker B: Culling. [01:43:28] Speaker A: Ah, yeah. Okay. [01:43:30] Speaker B: So after the wedding, you've backed it up. We cull at the moment in Lightroom. We have culled in other things before, but at the moment, culling in lightroom, depending on the time, we've probably shot somewhere between three and 10,000 photos. If it was Justin, actually. [01:43:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And that happens. That actually brings me something. On the wedding day, it doesn't seem to be as much of an issue anymore. But back when we started, there was a lot of talk about whether people overshot a wedding. Spray and pray was kind of looked down on, and being more selective about your shots and being a true photographer was kind of praised. I was never very good at that. I tried, but have big. Have big cards, have big hard drives. Shoot as much as you want to shoot. Don't worry about anyone looking down on you, because the last thing you want is to have a very small amount of photos to choose from. And most of them, someone has an eye closed or a funny face, and you're like, damn it. If I had just taken a burst of three images instead of one, I might have got the shot that I wanted. [01:44:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:44:41] Speaker A: Just overshoot it. Who cares? There's no. It just gives. Yep. It's just hard drive space. It takes a bit longer to go through. Yep. But you can refine that. If you become a, you know, a more consistent wedding photographer, you can work on that stuff. I never figured out how to work on that stuff. I still overshoot. I don't care. Come at me. But it gets results. So don't be worried about how many photos you're taking. If you are worried because you've got small memory cards or something, just buy bigger memory cards if you can afford it, so that you don't have to worry about it and overshoot and then get to what Jim was talking about, which is cutting the wedding down. [01:45:23] Speaker B: Which is super tough. And lately I've been. I feel like I've been over delivering, or I'm just getting better. I'm not sure. [01:45:30] Speaker A: Hang on, though. Before, early, I. Earlier in the show, I had a quote that said, under promise, over delivering. Wouldn't over delivering be a good thing? [01:45:39] Speaker B: Yeah, but I'm almost doubling what we're. We tell people we will give them, but. [01:45:45] Speaker A: But wouldn't that be good or is that bad? [01:45:48] Speaker B: Um, that's. If that's the thing, I'm not seeing stuff I can pull out. Like, I'm pulling stuff out, but I'm still delivering close to double what we guarantee we'll deliver them. [01:46:01] Speaker A: So we give people a guaranteed number of images. We've always done that, but we've always lowballed what it is so that they know roughly what they're getting. I think. I think in their early days, I wrote 150 and they got 400 or something because I had no idea. I was like, 150. Sounds like we can definitely. You never want to guarantee 400 and only have 350 to give them. You have to give duds to make up numbers. Guaranteeing numbers isn't that important, but I think it gives people a little bit of peace of mind that they're getting a certain. [01:46:34] Speaker B: They just know they're getting something. They're not going to get nothing at the other end of it, or you're going to charge them extra or. Yeah, yeah. [01:46:41] Speaker A: But in my opinion, the downside of delivering too many images, if you end up giving them multiple shots of basically the same thing, they can get a bit tiresome to look through, and the wow factor can get lost. But I know myself it is. It can be really hard to choose. So go through the cull two or three times, look over it. If you're not sure. See if there's a friend or another photographer that can have a look through with you and try and get rid of anything that is unnecessary. Oh, good question. We're just getting to this, Jeremy. Thank you. So this is jumping a few steps ahead, but we always deliver a full set of color and a full set of black and white. Because, again, when we started, it was sort of common to kind of do a mixture of both 70% black and white. And the cool thing with that. The cool thing with that is if you've really mucked some shit up, black and white can obviously muck up having some really bad lighting situations. [01:47:47] Speaker B: It hides. It hides a lot of things. [01:47:49] Speaker A: Yeah. If you've got terrible skin color because of the green grass or something like that, you can hide it with a black and white photo. And sometimes, if that's critical to deliver the shot, you might have to deliver them as black and whites only for those certain photos, if you really muck some stuff up. But we always deliver a full set of color and a full set of black and white. That gives the couple choice, because the last thing you want is theme. Having to come back to you to say, hey, that black and white photo is really cool, but we want a color print of it on our wall. And then you're like, oh, that's going to look terrible in color. [01:48:20] Speaker B: Or I'll have to edit. [01:48:22] Speaker A: I have to re edit it. Got to find it. So, yeah, we would do a full set of both. [01:48:28] Speaker B: Someone's trying to call me. [01:48:30] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:48:31] Speaker B: Even though my phone's on do not disturb. [01:48:35] Speaker A: Well, we'll wrap this up soon anyway. But, yeah, jumping back a few steps, do a few passes of your cull. And then when you're culling, something to think about is try and look beyond the photo that you've taken in terms of, you know, you might have taken a really cool photo with some cool bokeh and some nice lighting and all that sort of stuff. Try and look beyond that. Look at the couple. Do they look good? Will they be happy with this photo? [01:49:02] Speaker B: What's their expression like? Yeah. How do they. Yeah, how do they look? How do their bodies look? [01:49:09] Speaker A: Is it a flat photo of them? [01:49:11] Speaker B: Yeah, they need to look good for it to be a good photo. Because if they don't look good or you think that they'll feel good about it, then it's not worth delivering it. [01:49:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So focus on them first, even if that means leaving out a photo that you're really proud of. You'll just have to try and get it again another time. When. When you get the expression right. But the expression is more important than the cool background or whatever it is you managed to do with that photo. [01:49:38] Speaker B: You can give them, like, funny photos, though. Like, if it's, you know, a really funny face and you've got some other nice, flattering ones, you can give them something that's a bit funny or. Yeah, you think that if they'll appreciate it. [01:49:49] Speaker A: Yeah. But they will zero in on whatever it is they're self conscious about. And if you have given them, like, some photos that accentuate that part of their body or whatever it is that aren't flattering, but you put them in because you are really excited about the background or something, that's the only thing they'll then see throughout the entire wedding. And you can kind of ruin their experience of their day looking back by doing that. So be mindful about what they look like. You know, paint them in their best light. No one likes seeing a photo of themselves where they look dumb or whatever. They look weird. And. Yeah, just try and think, what would you like if you were them? Would you like this photo or not? And then editing presets. We won't dive into this too deep, because, again, this could be its whole entire own podcast. We've gone through many iterations, but we've got things dialed into where we use one preset for the entire day. That's not to say we don't edit every photo individually, but a base preset sets. [01:50:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Blues, our greens, our skin, tones. Yeah. So how we like them. [01:50:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So the important thing is that the look and feel of the wedding isn't changing every ten photos. If you want to do a few hero edits or whatever, that's totally fine. If you want to get a bit creative on a few. Maybe if you're going to get too creative, you could include a couple of versions of the same photo. I wouldn't be opposed to that. When you're new and learning, if you. [01:51:20] Speaker B: Want, we often do that with some sunsets or silhouettes, or there'll be certain moments of the day that you might shoot creatively, but you want to give them the safe option, too, because they just might not. [01:51:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Or one that matches a set and then one that's its own creative edit. Again, this, you know, you're new to this. It doesn't matter. You can do whatever, but try not to have, you know, you don't want to be using ten different presets across the whole day, especially if they're quite different. And presets aren't even critical anyway. You know, you could go into lightroom, choose the camera portrait profile, you know, add a little bit of contrast, a little bit of saturation, and just use that and just make sure then you're working with your white balance and your exposure. But there's a million ways to learn how to edit a wedding. Google Lightroom wedding edit. If you're not using lightroom, I would recommend it. But again, whatever you're comfortable with. First wedding. But, yeah, we do not use a million presets. We have one color, one black and white. I have some other ones that I play around with because I like to. But, yeah. Jeremy says, oh, what's our go to white balance? We don't have one. [01:52:36] Speaker B: No, it's whatever. We shoot skin tone. [01:52:41] Speaker A: We shoot our cameras on auto white balance. So I would say our go to white balance is as shot. Sometimes my first thing that I'll choose after as shot will be auto in lightroom to see. Sometimes if the camera got it wrong, Lightroom will get it right on auto. But sometimes Lightroom is terrible at it. And then. Yeah, then I literally just drag it up and down and have a little look. What's your process of white balance? [01:53:14] Speaker B: It's the same. It's going auto and then going, all right. Was that. [01:53:17] Speaker A: Was it. [01:53:18] Speaker B: Was that the same? Was it close? Was it the opposite? And then tweaking it somewhere in between, like, tweaking it then from there, whether it. Yeah, whatever it needs. Yeah, there's no. Yeah, I shoot the same. I very very rarely would I ever shoot a specific white balance in camera. [01:53:37] Speaker A: Just normally auto, sometimes I'll put it on cloudy because sometimes canon seems to in cloudy situations, sometimes it seems to default closer to a daylight white balance and look a bit cool or something. So sometimes if I'm not, but that's just for the in camera experience. It's literally doesn't matter if you're shooting raw, you can change it later on, so who cares. But yeah, I'm the same. I usually leave it on auto 99% of the time. [01:54:01] Speaker B: So essentially just shoot raw and then worry about it later. [01:54:06] Speaker A: Spray and pray. [01:54:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:09] Speaker A: And then, you know, after that you're basically done. You got this? [01:54:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:14] Speaker A: You've edited wedding. [01:54:15] Speaker B: You've edited it on your presets. [01:54:16] Speaker A: Yep. Get someone to look over it after you're done. You can also a good way to check on the same monitor. Maybe find some photos from a photographer that you admire online and bring that up on the same screen, maybe from their website or something. Social media can mess with stuff a little bit, but even still there will be low res versions. But at least you can check it on the same screen and go, do mine look in the same realm as this or are they completely different color cast or something strange is going on just to double. Yep. And then after that export them. We export full resolution files. The couple gets full size files to print and some online files that are a bit smaller that are easier for them to share online and send to family and friends and stuff. And look, you can do an online delivery with Dropbox or something like that. Or you can do a nice usb in a box. That's up to you. First wedding. You can dial that stuff in later on. But the most important thing is that you get the right images on the day. [01:55:21] Speaker B: I'll probably talk about that maybe more in the future of online versus a usb. [01:55:26] Speaker A: Yeah, we can do, we'll do a few more of these that are digging into more things that you can do to grow a wedding business rather than shooting your first wedding. But, but yeah, I think you were just about to ask that. Okay. But yeah, I think online delivery is totally fine. It's getting faster and faster again. Back when we started delivering a full wedding online would have been a bit of a pain in the ass for the clients just to download now and ask to upload. Actually that's a good point. [01:55:57] Speaker B: We didn't have that Internet speed. [01:55:59] Speaker A: Yeah, now you could totally do that and I think it's fine. Lots of amazing photographers solely do that. But, yeah, USB is nice because then they've got something fine and then they've got a few. [01:56:12] Speaker B: Something tangible. Yeah, they've gotten from the day. [01:56:16] Speaker A: Hey, something else too. Try and keep your backups and keep those files for a long time, even if you just keep the jpegs. But the very first wedding that I shot come back to me one year or two years ago and they couldn't find their wedding files and I gave them the full set of photos. I almost. I almost threw up in my mouth when I saw my edits. But I was able to give them their full set of files eight or nine years later. And that felt great. It was worth it. There's not many times when we've had to do that, but doing it once is worth all of the money, all of the hard drives and all the time we spent archiving and backing up. [01:56:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:57:00] Speaker A: So keep that first wedding, keep it safe, back it up, and maybe we'll. [01:57:06] Speaker B: Go into that again another day. Archiving and that sort of thing. [01:57:10] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. Fun subject. We won't put anyone to sleep. Should we leave it there? [01:57:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:57:16] Speaker A: Anything else? [01:57:18] Speaker B: No. [01:57:19] Speaker A: No. Hey, anyone that made it this far? 1 hour and 57 minutes in, leave a comment down below and we'll get in touch. Give you something special. Not you, Jeremy. [01:57:32] Speaker B: Can I leave a comment? [01:57:33] Speaker A: No, not you either. [01:57:34] Speaker B: No, I want something special. [01:57:36] Speaker A: Maybe not Yelena either. Anyone else? We'll see. [01:57:41] Speaker B: Anybody at all? [01:57:43] Speaker A: Um, yeah. Cool. Signing off. [01:57:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:57:49] Speaker A: Catch you guys in the next one. [01:57:52] Speaker B: Thank you.