I’ve been a wedding photographer for almost 20 years. When I started photographing weddings the mark of a good photographer was his trusty Hasselblad medium format camera. The rise of 35mm photojournalistic style wedding photography was being accused of dumbing down wedding photography. Some photographers kept the negatives, others gave them to the brides. There was an old guard and a new school of wedding photographers.
Right now there are more huge changes happening in the wedding photography game. New photographers are flooding the market, shooting weddings at very cheap prices, mostly turning out bad work made pretty with purchased Photoshop tricks called actions. They’ll be around just as long as it takes to break a camera. They’re uninsured and don’t have enough money to buy a new camera. Pity the bride who has them hired the week after that camera breaks.
But some of this new breed have good ideas. I call them ‘The Cool Club’ and keep an idea on what they are up to. Not to keep up with them, but to stay ahead of them.
So this week I have implemented two changes. The first has been a long time coming. A camera upgrade. Canon finally launched their new 5D model, the Mark 3. I bought one yesterday and will buy a second one next week. They’ll be my wedding photography workhorses from now on. Spent last night doing something I’ve never done before with a new camera. I read the manual from cover to cover. Today I am putting it through its paces. So far I am loving the quality of images from this camera.
The other change I have made is also technology related. As I mentioned earlier I’ve seen wedding photography changed from being medium format film based, to 35mm film, to digital with images delivered on CD, then DVD. Now the DVD drive is starting to disappear from computers. As a result I am moving over to a combination of wedding photo image delivery that uses USB sticks and online downloads.
Here’s a photo of my nice shiny USB stick boxes. Of course it doesn’t matter how pretty the box is, nothing beats your wedding photos published in a quality custom made album.
