Best Business Practices for Photographers [135]
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NOTE
People who consider themselves "true photographers" are usually among photojournalists, corporate/commercial, and advertising photographers. I'd recommend a reexamination if this is your perspective. To me, this perspective is bad karma.
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From Time to Time, Even the Non-Wedding Photographer Will Cover a Wedding or Rite of Passage
Usually this situation happens with a relative the photographer knows who is getting married. The photographer hears that a family member or close friend of the family is getting married, and the couple has budgeted $2,000, $3,000, or $5,000+ for photography. "Are they out of their mind?" is usually what the photojournalist will wonder out loud. "Tell them to give me the names of the photographers they're looking at, and I'll tell them which one will be the best for them." In short order, the photojournalist has a list of five or so names and is surfing to their websites. At the first one, they look at the price list and are incredulous. By the fifth, they are saying to themselves, "Hey, I can do that type of photography almost with one eye closed…maybe I'll look into this more." And they do.
Along the way, the photographer will make a recommendation based on the quality of the photography, but there's so much more that goes into being a wedding or rite-of-passage photographer that it's an education unto itself.
For those of you who are looking to focus on rites-of-passage photography, there are several good books on the subject, and I'll list them at the end of this chapter. Further, there are excellent traveling road shows put on by the likes of legends Jerry Ghionis, Denis Reggie, Gary Fong, and others, all of whom will school you in weddings. The Professional Photographers of America have schools, books, and other materials that will help you to grow that type of business correctly. However, this book cannot, in one chapter, provide the breadth and depth that all of them bring to the table. What I will do is give you some tools and insights into the business and encourage you, ever so strongly, not to dive into the business doing weddings for a few hundred dollars as side income on a Saturday or Sunday (or other days when rite-of-passage events are occurring) and wreak havoc on the businesses of professional rite-of-passage photographers. They have enough "Oh, the bride's uncle owns a camera and he's pretty handy," or "At $1,500, heck, I'll get my cousin Joe who's a photo student to take a family portrait for a quarter of that" types of problems—they don't need you, dear reader, contributing to that. So please recognize that being a photographer whose business is serving those rites of passage is truly a full-time business.
It's a full-time business because many brides (I'll use them as the example for all rites-of-passage participants) experience sticker shock when they see a $3,000 price tag on a wedding. "For $3,000, that photographer better be frickin' Annie Leibovitz" is something I've heard brides mumble (or write on bridal chat forums) until they have a bit of an attitude adjustment. And, for the record, while I highly doubt anyone could convince Ms. Leibovitz to photograph a wedding, her assignment fees range from the mid-five figures to sometimes as high as six figures for the work she chooses to accept. That, in the commercial/corporate/ad world, is something worth aspiring to.
What takes some time to learn—and what a skilled photographer will give insight into— is that it's not