The Real Journey to Becoming a “High-End” Wedding Photographer
There are a ton of photographer educators out there touting everything from courses to memberships to “masterminds” (whatever that means) that will take you from mid-tier new-ish photographer to LUXURY PREMIUM RATES in ONLY 3 months LOOKATWHATMYSTUDENTSHAVEACCOMPLISHED BUYBUYBUYBUY.
I don’t mean to disparage anyone’s course, or students who have invested in a course like this—because charging premium prices as a wedding photographer isn’t just a dream. Booking higher priced weddings and getting published is actually a necessity for survival.
For photography to truly be a sustainable career, most of us need to charge higher rates than the market average, and often significantly higher. We all know these high-end weddings are happening (blogs and magazines barely publish anything else), but for many of us, they seem elusive and mysterious. Instead we get inquiries that tell us our (existing, very reasonable) pricing is too high.
So that leaves “education.” The ads are pretty convincing—leaving me to believe that somehow I’m missing the secret that these high-end/luxury photographers know. Where are the secret abundant hunting grounds for these luxury couples with big budgets? A few familiar faces and a few unfamiliar ones dance across my instagram feed with their sponsored posts. Instagram has worked out that I’m a photographer and that means I’m also a potential customer.
But any message that essentially boils down to “get rich quick,” feels understandably suspicious to me, and I’m betting it does to a lot of you too. I’m not saying I know everything about everyone’s journey, but at least for me, the process of climbing the ranks has involved a lot more soul searching than following a list of steps. And I think that’s right. “Differentiate!!!” we are told. And yet, what the luxury photographers offer to teach us to follow in their exact footsteps.
I don’t know about you, but I’m always a little suspicious that maybe the educators’ dollars-per-year numbers have more to do with how many photographers that are paying them than actual couples. I could be wrong, but in the absence of any regulation, oversight, or transparency in the industry, this particular doubt is hard to dispel.
So what is it then, how do we become great?
I’m not saying that courses, mentors, masterminds, coaches, and experts don’t have a place, I just think that what underpins their advice is specific actions (as it should be for an educational course), but the reality of becoming a top tier photographer has just as much to do with our own internal spiritual journey.
The actual Ladder to being a high-end photographer…..Actually, ladder isn’ even the right term. It’s not all straight up. There’s a little up, and some down, and some sideways—more like a trip up a mountain from the foothills.
The Wedding Photographer’s Journey:
-shoot first wedding—do I like this?
There’s a lot of anxiety among first time wedding shooters. Even when you’re good with a camera, weddings can seem like an impossible marathon. There’s the
-actually charge someone for a wedding
Man this was a moment. Spitting out “$2000” with a straight face back in 2010 seemed like an insane leap of faith.
-be terrified
This phase lasts for a few years. The stress I think compels you to really do a good job and listen to people. If you’re not terrified at first, I don’t think you should be shooting weddings. There’s a lot you could miss or mess up.
-be proud of your work
Put it out there, get proud of your best moments. Loose your freaking mind when you get a great reception to a photo. You know when you get an amazing shot and you’re so excited about this. It’s still not every photo, but the great ones, they have that spark.
-be disappointed in your work
You know that your best photos can get an amazing reception. You know you FEEL THINGS when you look at the truly awesome ones. AND…then there are the other photos.
One of the hard and fast rules about weddings, whether you’re a documentary shooter or love a lot of traditional posing…it’s that SOME parts of the day will be out of your control, and you’re going to have to be ready to make good photos on the fly anyway. This is the thing that’s different about weddings than any other kind of photography (ok maybe events/concerts…but you don’t have to make sure someone looks bridal and perfect in those)
This disappointment will manifest in stress while you’re editing, and can’t quite get them to look right or match up with the other photos in the gallery. Photos taken indoors will look incurably orange and flat. Photos with flash will be too much or not enough. There will be a TON of near misses—almost perfect expressions, exposures, or compositions. Just a couple centimeters to the right . (Link to other article? Here’s why I think you should include your near-miss photos anyway.) None of your usual editing tricks work—maybe some new presets would help.
Don’t hate this phase. This discomfort is the forge in which your greatness is born.
-fall in love with your clients
In this phase some people find you and you fall in love with them. You meet their whole families and see how they treat each other when they’re stressed. You walk through one of the craziest times in their life with them. You celebrate their big moments and you scream a little bit when you see what you created on the back of your camera—it’s EXACTLY what they and you were hoping for.
-be afraid of your clients
At this phase you will also end up working with people you don’t feel connected to. With clients who try to overly control you to the point that your creativity is stifled. They’ll misunderstand something (perhaps willfully), ask for discounts, ignore you on the wedding day, resist following your directions, invite their friend with a camera to come shadow you, expect you to work in a way that absolutely does not work for you, second guess you, argue with you, and trample you. You’ll work with DJs and videographers and planners who don’t seem to click with you.
This is your proving ground. There’s no getting around it. But you’re not proving yourself to these particular clients. If someone tells you you’re too expensive or they don’t like your work, you’re not changing for them. Yes, you want to do damage control with a bad fit client to keep them happy, but you’re not changing your WHOLE APPROACH, or your business to suit these peoples’ tastes.
Because this business is ENTIRELY subjective. The only people you have to earn approval from is the clients who haven’t booked you YET.
-refine yourself
After working with some of the right clients and some of the wrong ones, you have a sense for how the right ones (for you) talk. You understand what they want and how they communicate and how they find you. You’ve decided you’re for real and you want to do what it takes. You might seek out someone to re-design your website because you now know how you really want it to look, or you take an editing class so you can stop freaking out about white balance. You add a few clauses to your contract, or you re-do your package lists to better avoid misunderstanding or haggling, you take a class on flash.
This phase should never really end, but it’s more intense at some times than at others. When you are honest about where you need and want to improve, that’s when actual improvement is possible.
-invest the time
Here’s where the get rich quick people get it wrong. You may be able to follow their “blueprint,” but the truly successful belong to themselves. No one else’s success can be exactly copied. Teachers can be amazing, but you can never get it ALL from them. Yes, a brand overhaul can be helpful, as can styled shoots at getting your portfolio to the place where you see the other successful people, but ideas you borrow from others are only the final veneer on a business whose soul you are solely responsible for.
And often when you feel criticized it’s not because you’re doing it wrong either. Invest in your own moral compass, preferences…
With art, conformity is a race to the bottom. As much as many photographers at the top of their game all look the same, They aren’t. “Differentiate!” the educators will cry—knowing just as well as you that you can’t copy everything from them even if they told you. You can’t make a new thing entirely out of puzzle pieces borrowed from others. The place your uniqueness and ability to differentiate yourself comes from is those fires of discomfort. From your ability to identify what should be and then breathe that thing into existence. This applies to how you operate your business, marketing, policies, and even every individual image. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you do have to have confidence in yourself to chart a path from where you are to where you want to be—even if you end up revising course many times.
-Find your confidence
After some time, if you’ve stayed true to yourself, you’ll start to see the misunderstandings and disappointing images fade into the background. This is because you’ve done the work. You’ve let the moments of discomfort and fear propel you forward to a new reality of your own making
-Find your champions
It’s easy to shout “support artists” on small business Saturday, but often people in their first year of making art aren’t that good. This isn’t a new thing, or a photography thing, or an internet thing, it’s just how art works. As you get better and better, you may find people come out of the woodwork to start saying how awesome you are. Don’t get mad at them for not saying this from the beginning. This is a sign of honesty that you can trust what they say.
-Step into your expert era
What luxury/high end clients and planners want is someone who is truly an expert and who is great to work with. You can’t really be either of these things if you haven’t put the time in to understand everything about your craft, as well as understanding what would make you a great team player.
-Keep learning
Stay humble. There’s always something you don’t know—whether it’s about new technology or the needs of the next generation of couples, or simply the comparative relevance of various social media engines. Your inner compass of what you like, what you think the world needs, and how you think it should all work can guide you.