Needing advice on pivoting from the wedding photography. This is so hard to admit to myself, as I have been studying and proactively assisting, second shooting for 2 years and now have an entire year of shooting my own weddings under my belt. This has been my dream for the last five years and I’ve been actively pursuing it for the last four years. I truly love weddings and love the couples + people I get to work with. But the stress of wedding days in general, being on for 12 hours, and then the intense editing for weeks afterward has been really hard on my mental health. Even though I give 110% at every wedding I do because I truly love the couples I get to serve, I know it’s not the right thing for me to continue to book wedding clients when I feel this way so I’ve stopped booking weddings for 2024. For anyone who has felt this way and pivoted - is there a lucrative type of photography you’ve pursued instead? I love shooting couples, portraits, and branding sessions, but would love to hear if you’ve found a type of photography that you’d recommend trying to pursue full time. Thank you so much in advance!
I’m going to be brutal and say that no lucrative alternatives are any less time-consuming and pressured.
I shoot commercial and I’m moving to more weddings. Sure, commercial can have its days of easier jobs and less time spent editing BUT: Having shot high-end events, interiors, portraits, campaigns and editorials for large-name clients that have high expectations and can employ me again should I do a good job (which is the key to this line of business) you will do crazy travelling, long days, back and forth editing, much more retouching than weddings often require and you’ll likely need a good deal more kit. So don’t go thinking the grass is necessarily greener.
Drop me a DM or email if you’d like some mentoring. Links on my profile.