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 started shooting landscapes and abandoned locations (urbex photography). Then I tried shooting models. I liked it. Then I had the chance to shoot a friends wedding cerimony only. They liked the photos, altough they were not anything special, I got a few photos they still have on their profiles to this day.
Then, a model friend told me about a known friend who was marrying and asked how much I would charge to shoot their wedding. I talked to them, showed them my work and low cachet for the job, they accepted it. And they paid me more to stay after the cerimony and take note of what photos each guest would want printed. The bride and groom would them take the photos and print them themselves. Fine by me, I still didn’t had experience with printing photos from a wedding, so I didn’t care.
From there, I started to shoot weddings here and there, mostly friends or known people, and was charging more on each time.
This year, I’ve shot 3 weddings and for all of them, I have made a gallery for clients and guests to see and order prints from. I work alone and I love the work. I have my main job in the printing business, so sometimes I get to print some large photos for my clients ate a great price. I don’t know how I did the transition, looking back to my photography and watching how I am today, makes me really happy with the results.
My tip: enjoy what you do, take your time to familiarize with both your gear and your clients. I insist on having a small shoot before the wedding takes place so they know me, and I know them. The last bride I had a photoshoot with, was pregnant. They used one of the photos from the shoot, to make a testimonials frame, where people would place their messages next to the photo. When I was about to leave the wedding that night, the bride happily pointed to the photo to show me how she loved that photo. Made my day.