Day in the life of a wedding photographer – UPDATE 2020

Ever wondered what wedding photographers get up to during the week? Here’s my life as a wedding photographer laid bare…

 

 

This post was originally written in 2016. It’s been updated for 2020 – updates are in bold italics.

What do wedding photographers get up to during the week? What do we worry about? How do we not go crazy working from home? Here’s my life as a wedding photographer laid bare…

I won’t lie: most days I’m at home in my pyjamas (still true). My colleagues are my two cats Loki and Kirby who do a great job of telling me when lunchtime is (still very true). I eat cereal for lunch (now replaced with a faffy diet that involves various methods of cooking, lots of time and lots of mess) and drink many cups of tea (still true but always decaf now). I tend to get dressed when Thomas messages me to say he’s on his way home. (Thomas replaced by Todd, and he’s as lazy as me so we’ve designated certain pyjama-like outfits as our home clothes so we don’t feel like slobs while actually being total slobs)

But let’s go back a bit and start my week on a Friday night, which is when my working week really starts.

The day before a wedding I make sure all my batteries are charged and do my most hated task – formatting memory cards. I have 30 memory cards and most are 64gb (I’ve now added 128gb to the family, because I shoot more), which stores around 2500 photos, but I burn through those babies like wildfire, so every week I find myself having to format cards. I hate doing this partly because it’s scary deleting photos and partly because I go through every single image against the ones on my screen to check they’re all there and it takes ages (I’m far too lazy – but more trusting in my newer cards – to do this now)! I also print out all the info I need for the wedding, such as group photos, timings, phone numbers and addresses. (nope – a screengrab makes do these days. God, I was organised back then!)

I then pack my bag (I own every camera bag going, but since moving to Fuji I’ve found the fjallraven Kanken bag to be the winner (Wow I don’t even remember using this as a camera bag, and can’t believe I did that – it’s so flimsy! I now use the Vinta camera bag which is solid and comfy and super secure). It’s a normal backpack but you can buy an insert to protect all your camera gear (ignore this, terrible advice), and I can even fit an Amazon tripod in there (that thing did not last). (I realised only recently that I only use a tripod as a more steady light stand so don’t need a bells and whistles tripod – the one I use is £13 and weighs basically nothing!) (I now use random wedding guests as a flash-holder, or the bar, tables or mantlepiece at a venue.)

So I pack my bag the night before – here’s a rundown of the kit I take to every wedding:

• 2x Fujifilm XPro2 cameras (wow, XPro2… this camera is like a dinosaur compared to the Fujifilm XT3 cameras I use now)
• 18/27mm f2 lens (I use this 90% of the day – it’s tiny and light so I can be super sneaky!) (Still use and love this lens although probably more like 30% of the day)
• 23/35mm 1.4 lens (replaced this with the 35/50mm – I use this most of the day)
• 56/85mm 1.2 lens (perfect for portraits) (Still use and love this lens)
• 2x Nissin i40 flashguns (also tiny) (they died, so badly. They were pretty shoddy. I now use Godox flashes which are a world away in terms of what they can do, such as triggering each other)
• 2x Cactus triggers (so I can trigger the flash off the camera during the first dance or rain photos) (not needed now I have Godox)
• Amazon tripod (hahaha. What a flimsy piece of rubbish that was – and why was I lugging so much stuff around?)
• Think Tank pouch I wear on a belt to carry lenses/snacks (which I always forget – being sugar-free almost vegan (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) makes it hard to find portable snacks!)/phone/list of group photos and timings (I now use this pouch to carry many snacks, and my phone)
• Spider holster belt to hang my cameras from – no straps for me! (yup, still love!)
• I also have a Think Tank memory card wallet hanging off the belt where I store all my used and unused memory cards – used go face in, unused face out! (still do this)

The morning of the wedding I have my usual bowl of overnight oats (wow, I was organised back in 2016, it’s now quick-cook porridge eaten while driving), then I leave with an hour to spare in case of traffic (yup definitely still do this!) and I always tell myself my start time is an hour earlier than it is, just in case. Only one time have I ever actually been “on time”, and that was because Brighton was gridlocked with the London to Brighton Beetle thing (ironically the bridal car was their own vintage Beetle, totally by chance!) (Brighton always catches me out, even now living close to Brighton) So yes I’m always super early!

I usually wear a maxi or midi dress with sandals or flip flops in summer and trousers, top and Etnies skate shoes in winter (they’re sooo comfy). (Where are those Etnies? I don’t remember them at all! I now wear a thick-material dress year-round – for windy day reasons… with colourful Vans trainers).

I turn up at the prep location, dump my bag, grab a camera and usually join the (or one of the) bride wherever she’s getting ready (often two grooms – not sure why I said bride?!), have a cup of tea with the gang, and shoot whatever happens. I don’t shoot the dress or shoes unless there’s a cool composition already happening.

By this time I’m usually starving and have probably forgotten to bring any food. I’ve just bought Huel (and that was the last time), so I reckon that’ll be good for this point in the day! (Usually I snack on mini cheddars I’ve shoved in my bag, or whatever the wedding party have on hand)

So yes the wedding happens and that’s a whole other post… which I will write! (I didn’t, and 4.5 years have passed)

By the end of the day I’m dead on my feet but super exhilarated (the dancing is the best bit, the most fun photos!) – I either drive home or stay in an Airbnb if it’s late. For 2017 I’ve taken the option off my pricing brochure to have anything other than all day and all evening coverage (and then put it straight back on after learning the hard way that 12 hours at every single wedding makes me hate myself and the world and everything that exists. And after realising that just because one wedding has an epic party that keeps on giving until the lights are on and the music stops, doesn’t mean that all weddings do, and when there’s literally nothing happening for 5 hours I start to hate past me a lot), because I love it so much and love to tell the whole story. So I’ll pretty much always be staying over somewhere!

When I get home I pop the memory cards in a safe and export them to two hard drives the next morning (I’m usually too tired to do it the night before and I know I’ll make a mistake) (I now throw my bag on the floor and go to bed – no one is going to break into my flat here). I shoot RAW to one card and JPEG to the second card in each camera. The JPEG card is 128gb so I can fit loads of weddings on one – an extra backup! The Fuji XPro2 is so damn awesome (it was! But the XT3 is way better) that the JPEGs are just as good as the RAWs and edit pretty much the same, so if it did all go wrong with the RAW files, my backup option is just as excellent. Why not just shoot JPEG all the time? I’m scared! I know RAW, I trust it, I have presets for it. Maybe one day (didn’t happen), but for now I’m going to stick with what I’m comfortable with. I upload the JPEGs to Dropbox so they’re also on the cloud (oh, so that’s why my Dropbox is so full! I now just fill up hard drives cos my internet is a bit… rural).

I save all photos into a RAW folder within a folder named with the number it is in the queue, the wedding date and the couple’s names. The file names are named after my cats!

Over the next few days I pick out a selection for a blog post/preview using Photomechanic and Lightroom (Todd does this now, while I watch Don’t Tell the Bride). I don’t blog all weddings, but either way my couples get a preview. I’ll be honest, I just choose my personal favourites for this preview, but my couples can rest assured that there are plenty of pretty, calm, non-gurning photos too! It’s just that I like the silly, gurning ones, so they go on the blog 😉 These are the photos that attract my future couples – and I love having couples who love fun photos!

I upload the chosen and edited photos to my blog/facebook/Zenfolio (oof, Zenfolio was awful and I’ve now killed it off and moved all my galleries to Pic Time) where my couples can download them, I then send an email to the couple to let them know, then sit on the edge of my chair for their reply (even though I have confidence in what I do and am always super happy with the work I produce, there’s always The Fear) (very much still true and will be the one fact that never gets updated in this post!). I then pop a few pics on Instagram – I’ve been doing 1 or 2 a day since they changed the algorithm (haha as if they only changed the algorithm once. I now do my Instagram in fits and starts, so no one should be offended if they don’t get Grammed). This is all part of my marketing – my kinda couples tend to use Instagram (more Stories these days) – photo-loving people! It’s also so my couples can easily share their photos.

I totally intend to cull all the images in the first few days after the wedding (by cull I mean choose the ones to keep) but sometimes I just choose the preview pics as it’s loads quicker and I can get the preview out faster. I use Photomechanic to cull, which is super fast, although I take like 6,000 photos, so not so fast. It takes a couple of hours to cull a whole wedding if I’m totally head-down on it, but I never am, so it takes a couple of days of stop-starting. I think once I did it in one go. Once.

I usually cull down to about 800 images, which means I throw out any blinkers, blurries (unless they’re “artsy”), and any that are basically duplicates. I take so many photos because I “shoot the moment” as they say. I really go for it. I want to capture an awesome photo, not just an ok one. I want the head back, mouth open, tears of laughter photo that takes time and patience to capture, not the smile-at-the-beginning-of-a-funny-story-another-guest-is-telling-photo-and-then-miss-the-big-laugh-cos-I-walked-away photo, which is easy to do. I don’t mind if I’m not shooting 100% of the time and that people think I’m slacking off (I don’t think they do think that, it’s just my paranoia!). I’m watching, listening, waiting. Then shooting like crazy when the moment happens! So I have to go through a lot of similar photos picking out the absolute best ones. I never throw away an image just because I’ve reached a quota – all the ones I deem worthy of inclusion go in. This is more work for me (or Rachel more precisely (now Todd, sorry Rachel! It’s easier to chuck the hard drive at someone in the same building!) but it’s worth it.

Over the next few weeks I spend my days culling weddings and exporting the Lightroom (like Photoshop but better) catalogs to send to Rachel my editor (her existence means I can have a life and sit in the garden (I miss having a garden – this is now replaced with “watch cat videos on YouTube”) and swim in the sea! (what an active person I was! I really did do this! Now I spend the time creating content and courses for photographers. Otherwise, this is now the same except I don’t actually do anything myself, Todd does it all!) When the weddings come back from Rachel (Todd) I check them over, export them, check them again, then upload to Zenfolio (Pic Time), where I keep all my client galleries. Urgh the word client. Couples’ galleries. I then email my couple with their full gallery and go back to that spot on the edge of my seat.

I used to send weddings on USBs in a wooden box but I had to be honest with myself and stop doing the things I wasn’t enjoying. I partly stopped doing USBs because they’ll soon become obsolete (yup, they did, for me at least! I don’t even have a USB hole in my laptop), plus a lot of my couples don’t have USB holes, but mainly because it took up aaaaaall my time. I’d spend entire days just wrapping up boxes and trudging to the Post Office.

Some couples get albums, which I design using Smart Albums – an expensive but nifty piece of software that allows me to design beautiful layouts fast. I love making albums, I think they’re great to have to show people your photos.

In between culling and checking edits I chat to my virtual colleagues on Facebook – these are 3 (now about 8!) fellow wedding photographers who are all based on the outskirts of London, so not close enough to work together in person. We do meet up every few weeks though, like a school trip. Most recently we all went to Milan on a little street photography excursion! It’s usually hanging out for lunch at one of our houses though, not always Milan! (It’s most often board games at someone’s house to be honest! But we have all been to Gran Canaria together since this post!)

I also sometimes take a rare day off to hang out with a bigger gang of wedding photographers; this summer I went to a picnic in Kent and this week to the beach in my hometown of Broadstairs. We went swimming in the sea, it was wonderful and much needed. (I now also go on mega street photography trips with 8 of us, typically once a year to somewhere exotic like India).

I also do Borrow My Doggy, where I literally borrow a dog. I walk Dorothy and Winston the sausages once a week and Pav the wolfhound every now and then. I love it – it gets me out the house! (I’ve since got two dogs of my own, who I no longer live with – life is a rollercoaster! I now borrow my neighbour’s Patterjack Ella)

On Sundays, if I’m not shooting a wedding, I tend to lounge about in the garden (aw, garden. It’s now telly) – all good intentions of Doing Stuff goes out the window. Sometimes I’ll visit my family in Surrey/Sussex, but mostly I plough through books in the garden. I love a good crime thriller and books about psychology. I’m reading The Psychopath Test at the moment, it’s terrifying to think they’re everywhere. (haha wow that got dark fast. It was a good book. I’m now listening to Jack Reacher audiobooks when I go to bed).

In the evenings, around 6pm (when Thomas gets home) (no longer live there) I make dinner, often using recipes from Anna Jones cookbooks (we went through a Hello Fresh phase, and now just make whatever’s cheap and quick), which takes me hours, then eat dinner sitting on the grass (we don’t have an outdoor dining table yet!) as the sun sets (well, in summer) (I miss my garden!!). Then Thomas and I binge watch Netfix series with Loki under a blanket (he loves sofa time so much he runs into the lounge) and Kirby on a cushion (well, this hasn’t changed) on Thomas’s lap. We most recently finished Orphan Black, but I also love Trailer Park Boys, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Scream… hmm I’m noticing a dark theme. (currently watching the US Office having just finished Modern Family and Prison Break) Around 10.30pm we say “bedtime!” and the cats’ eyes go wide and they run to their bowls. I then go to bed without turning an alarm on because self-employment.

If I have a weekend off I usually get straight onto Easyjet to see where I can go! Last weekend was Isle of Man, the next one I’m hoping is my home country of Lithuania – I’ve never actually been there before! (and still haven’t)

Most days I sit here with a cat on my lap being as annoying as he can be (yup, still), answering emails (yup, still), culling and checking photos (Todd), writing blogs (oh, yeah, it’s on my to do list, should really do that), planning my workshop (done, was awesome, did more), constantly re-designing my pricing booklet (yup, still), doing instagram, doing banking and tax things (once a year, kicking and screaming), procrastinating on Facebook (life hasn’t changed, oh how full my memoirs will be), doing the supermarket shop (although I’ve recently decided to buy all food possible from the farm shop) (HAHAHA), chasing the cats around the garden (oh, garden), going to the chiropractor (she’s a wonder worker) (she was a charlatan taking all my money) and eating Shredded Wheat (now a strict and controlled healthy diet. Ha.)

So there you have it, what it’s like to be a wedding photographer! (Apparently)

To learn more about becoming a happy wedding photographer, join me in France this October for my Kick Ass Workshop! (It rocked! I want to do more – but let’s check back in another 4 years and see…)