Any advice/words of experience is really appreciated right now as I’m trying to navigate this. My camera/cards used for the portraits must have failed, because I’m missing a lot of images and I’m really lost as to how.

Everything was functioning normally when shooting. I could preview the images back, and saw the portraits on my camera. No lag or funkiness. But they’re not there now at back up. This was shot on a Nikon Z6. The card is showing only half of the day and is also filled with images from the previous wedding. I swear I formatted the cards prior. I did this when packing my cameras for the wedding.

When I put the card in my camera there are *some* photos appearing (no portraits) from earlier in the day that I do not see on my desktop when uploading, but they can only be previewed in grid mode and reads back “can not zoom in on this image” when I try to expand it.

I just took the jump into full time, so this all feel like a cruel joke on my end, but I’m incredibly devastated for my couple right now and am struggling to find the right approach to this. I have not spoken to them yet. I want to refund them their entire payment; this is all of the portraits and a significant half of the ceremony. This was a small wedding, and the couple is not local to the area which makes a reshoot not an option. I thought I could gift them an album from what I have, but all of this feels so insignificant to what I have potentially lost.

I’m pretty emotional right now about this, but wanted to leave a post if anyone has any guidance on how I can handle this professionally on all fronts - technical, client facing, and personal.

Hi! New photographer here. What’s the etiquette/professional norm from a photographer’s end after a client signs the contract and pays the retainer fee. They got sent an automated confirmation but I have not emailed them directly as their wedding is still far away. Should we be emailing them and thanking them, and communicating next steps even when their wedding is far away? Or are the automated confirmations enough?

So my current editing set up means I can edit a full wedding gallery and deliver to clients within a week (roughly 1-1.5k images). My question is - am I 'ruining' the experience by being so efficient? Should I wait a bit more to allow some time for couples to 'forget' the details and be more excited? Sometimes I feel like being so quick is actually dampening the customer reactions. Curious to know your thoughts on this.

So… this has been making me very sad for a while, and I already cried about it, haha 😂 But why does it feel like people don’t support each other on Instagram anymore?

Maybe my photos are just trash, haha 😂 But I book 20 to 30 weddings per year and receive inquiries all the time, so I don’t think my photos are that bad.

I always tried to support everyone on Instagram. I commented, liked stories, replied to people, supported their work, etc. I didn’t do it because I was trying to make connections or get something back. I just know how important support is and how much it means to me when someone supports my work. I think everyone likes it, no?

But I don’t receive the same support back at all. And I was okay with it until maybe a couple of months ago, when I started feeling like maybe everyone thought I was clingy or trying too hard. So I stopped.

But the same people watch my stories and seem very sincere and friendly in real life. They hug you, they laugh with you, they seem genuinely happy to see you.

Am I alone in this?

I see some photographers getting so much support and praise from other vendors, but no matter what I do, I don’t really receive anything back. And I don’t want to look like a fan who behaves like other wedding vendors are celebrities, haha 😂

I know you don’t need to be praised by other vendors to get bookings. But sometimes it just feels very lonely for me in this industry.

I really love weddings and I love working with other vendors. I especially love when vendors trust me enough to hire me as their own photographer which happens a lot.

Maybe I’m just a little weird to them 😂 I also have an accent and moved from Europe to America years ago, so maybe part of me still feels a little bit like an outsider here.

I don’t know. I’m just curious if anyone else in the wedding industry feels this way too :(

I feel like I post here once a week, but what a season! So just finished my 5th straight meeting with a client (not 5 meetings with them, but 5th straight with this issue) who's wedding is coming up in a few weeks and they said "can we get a photo with each person in our party". Like are people just not doing this anymore, god I still feel young at heart but some of the shit newer photographers are doing is making me feel old/saying "wait, is this just a traditional trend"

Hi everyone. This isn’t clickbait.

Photography has been my passion for over 20 years, and working as a photographer has always been a dream of mine. I have good digital and film gear, I’m comfortable with editing, and I have a decent body of work, I event pay a website domain for my landscape/street photography, but I ended up in a corporate career instead.

A few months ago, I attended an 80 person wedding with a solo photographer who had sold a package that included digital and one roll of film. At some point, he got overwhelmed and a guest told him that I was also a photographer. He then asked me if I could take the film camera and shoot some photos for him. I agreed because I had already noticed how overwhelmed he was.

About a month later, the bride posted on Facebook about how much she loved the analog photos from her wedding, tagging and thanking him. I then saw my photos being used in his Instagram ads to promote his “analog photography” package. He blocked me and never responded to my messages when I asked him to tag my website.

Honestly, what hurts most is that I spend my days at the office dreaming about being a photographer, while I’ve never had the confidence to actually put myself out there. Now I’m watching someone else get praise and potentially new clients for work I did.

Sorry for the rant, but this made me realize that I really want to give photography a shot.

How would you recommend starting a photography portfolio or business? How do you actually get your first clients?

I’m thinking about reaching out to my own wedding photographer and wedding planner, who are both very kind, and asking if they could recommend me to clients. I’d offer a few free analog photography packages, covering the film costs myself, just to build a wedding/portrait portfolio.

Once I have enough work, I could launch my profile and start looking for paid clients. I’d also get quotes from photographers offering similar services to understand the market. At this point, profit wouldn’t be my priority. I’d mainly want to build my portfolio and gain experience.

Thank you.

TLDR: A couple was selling photos they printed on site to my client.

I just shot a baptism over the weekend. My client booked me for the two hours, so I'm not salty or anything. I got paid, its chill. But I was just wondering what you all thought.

Right before the event started, a couple came in with a camera and a portable printer. The baptism was a catholic service so something like 5 kids were baptized. The couple followed the father as he was blessing and baptizing the children. They popped the on camera flash and flashed the children to get their photos. They then made wallet prints of the kids and charged the couples $5 per wallet sized photo. Little to no communication with families before they did it.

I watched them enter the church, they did not say hello to the Father or anyone. I tried being friendly and was ignored. Just wondering if this is what "shooting on spec" looks like? Were they jerks? Is this frowned upon? Whats up?

What are some of the photos you found hardest to capture?? Not because of lighting or things like camera setting. I'm more along the lines of timings, position and capturing the significance of rituals well - especially in things like south indian wedding photography or ethnic weddings...

Looking for some advice on a monitor for editing. I have an M5 Max MacBook Pro I’ll be hooking up to it.

I’m stuck between Studio Display XDR and the Asus ProArt PA32UCDM. I’m just not sure if the XDR is worth double the price. I edit in Lightroom and video in Davinci Resolve.

I’m a wedding photographer/cinematographer. I’m already using Instagram and Google Business Profile to get clients, and I also do some offline marketing.

I’m looking for other ways to get a consistent flow of wedding enquiries.

For photographers who are currently getting regular bookings:

What marketing channel is working best for you?

Are referrals from wedding planners, venues, makeup artists, or other vendors effective?

Are Facebook groups still useful for finding wedding clients?

Have paid ads worked well for you?

Are there any underrated platforms or marketing strategies that actually bring clients

Hello! I accidentally formatted the XQD before downloading all my images. I realised immediately and haven't used it since.

I have tried Sony Memory Card File Rescue and EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.

Sony's kept failing and Eraseus could only find files from the beginning of the month and a handful of the images I did download before, not from my last shoot.

** Luckily, this is only from a vacation and no wedding images**

I typically put in my wedding contracts that the remaining payment should be paid a week before the wedding date. Pretty standard I feel like and couples have never had an issue with that.

Wedding client 3 days before their wedding ask to speak with me on the phone. Honeybook has sent out a reminder email about final payment and I have sent a text earlier in the week and received no response but now they want to talk on the phone. Not a good sign.

I give them a call, they proceed to tell me how they didn’t realize how much money planning a wedding would turn out to be and they realized that one of my other packages were cheaper and asked if they could transfer packages in order to pay a lower remaining balance. When I pushed back, they got more honest about it — it wasn’t that they couldn’t pay, they just preferred not to and wanted the lesser package instead. I have never in my life dealt with this or had a client with this much audacity to ever ask something like this 3 days before their wedding and especially since they signed a contract with the package we already had in place.

I tell them it can’t be done, I have a videographer I need to pay and this was already signed off on. They proceed to tell me there just isn’t money to pay me. I propose to them to either find a way to pay the remaining the day before their wedding or I’ll be taking them to small claims court.

They paid that Friday before the wedding. Safe to say the wedding day was awkward but I kept it professional and they were too drunk to even remember the day let alone the situation.

So many red flags leading up to the wedding that I ignored because they paid my fee which wasn’t cheap for photo and video.

What would you have done?

Would any of you ever consider adding some graphic design to your wedding packages? And if so, how much would you charge?

Context: I took these photos on film, and then was having fun with some silly designs on photoshop once I was done editing the photos. Kind of looking at it like a wedding announcement thing from the 90s? I wonder if this is something people would in interested in when booking me, and would use them for their own announcements, invites, etc…

Has anyone ever done this?

It’s been many years since I have reviewed and redone the contract for my packages. I’m curious to all of you. What are the contract clauses that you have added to your contract that you added from experience the situation you don’t typically think of until you see it happen and then you go home and add it to your contract just in case

Bit of a random one, but as a wedding photographer / videographer is it generally okay to eat some of the wedding cake without feeling judged or considered rude lol

I’m getting a bit fed up with building such a good relationship with the couples that they think it’s normal to ask for ‘anymore of this’ ‘my mum just needs one pic of her with this person’.

Anything after this and you’re working for free based on a request that might not even come from your couple. What’s the best phrasing to stop it dead when there really was nothing more to add otherwise it would be edited and sent with the rest of the gallery.

When you are adding photos to 2 hard drives—One of the drives is for back ups, do you delete photos off of one of the hard drives after photos are delivered/finished, or do you keep them on both?

I’m just trying to figure out what my work flow should be as hard drive prices have sky rocketed 🥴😭

Hi there, just looking for some advice on how to boost the amount of wedding enquiries I am receiving!

I am an experienced photographer but have only started my business within the last year. I have shot 5 weddings as a second shooter and 1 small 3-hour wedding as the lead photographer.

I’m not receiving many enquiries and wondered if anyone had any advice on how to boost this? My social media presence is decent, my website is informative (my prices are also visible on my website). I am charging similar to those in my area but have considered reducing my largest package price to try and get more enquiries. I comment on the Facebook group posts when they are relevant to me. I have also signed up to a wedding fair in March 2027, trying to get on to more but they are all fully booked currently! I have considered adverts on social media but I’ve heard mixed reviews and don’t want to spend a fortune on marketing when I don’t have much income!

Any advice on how to get more enquiries/bookings?

(I’m UK based if that makes a difference)

The planets have been lining up for me this year and the last six events I've shot have been a return to my favorite years of 2005~2011 where couples create these big events that are a whirlwind and the photographer just has to hold on and document. No vision boards, mimimal bride involvement, couples that just trust you. It really feels like a flashback to the wedding photojournalism days, just before picture-taking smartphones & social media made everyone over the age of 12 so camera-aware and image obssessed. Adding to my joy is the responsiveness of modern systems — you don't have to fight it anymore. Heck, even the new lightstands are amazing. Rant of joy, over — thanks for indulging.

Hi everyone, I received an email yesterday from one of my couples asking to reschedule their wedding to next year.

Their original date is September 6th, and they’re asking to reschedule just 7 days before the wedding. They’ve only paid the 30% deposit.

I also had another inquiry for September 6th that I didn’t book because I was already booked.

I’m updating my prices for next year as well, so I don’t want to honor this year’s pricing for a rescheduled wedding.

What would you do in this situation?