When people find out that I’m a photographer, they often immediately ask if I shoot weddings. There seems to be a belief amongst the general public that all photographers do shoot weddings. It doesn’t seem to matter what we specialize in – many believe that if you make a living from your camera, you’ll automatically be happy to shoot weddings when called upon.

It’s a common misconception that weddings are an easy gig for a photographer. Rock up, shoot pictures of everyone looking happy and smiling and get paid handsomely for a few hours work. The truth, however, is that shooting a wedding is one of the hardest jobs for a photographer to do.

image by micadew

All the really great wedding photographers I know only shoot weddings, as the job requires so much effort. To be an exceptional wedding photographer, you have to be prepared to put in long hours, deal with tricky people and keep a smile on your face at all times. It’s not for everyone. People often quibble over the prices that wedding photographers charge, but the job is certainly not over in a few hours. In most cases, shooting a typical wedding involves several meetings with the bride and groom before the event, a full day’s shooting on the actual day and the production of a stunning leather-bound album with all the photos from the wedding.

My main issue with photographing weddings is that it’s not my speciality. I’m a portrait photographer, which means that I mainly work with studio lighting. I love the way you can control light with monoblocs and accessories and the effects that you can create. I also enjoy working with natural light when I get the chance, and I know my way around a flashgun. So it might sound as if, with those later two skills, a wedding would be no problem. Right?

image by Katsu Nojiri

However, my work is not formulaic. I like capturing the unposed moments – the moments when a subject is chatting away with me and I photograph a spontaneous laugh or gesture.

And whilst there are opportunities to capture spontaneous moments at weddings, there’s always a need for some formal shots and some ‘set’ pieces that most brides and grooms want. It doesn’t matter how relaxed the couple are – at least one relative will demand formal line-ups for the record. A wedding is, by its very nature, a staged affair in some aspects. Of course, a good wedding photographer actively enjoys blending in those staged moments with more informal shots and that’s what makes them so good at what they do.

I don’t shoot weddings because, as well as being good at what I do, I’m savvy enough to know that my skills are best suited to other genres of photography. I like to think that I’m a people person (and I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t be a successful portrait photographer if I wasn’t), but even I shy away from the intense skills needed to keep everyone happy on what can be a stressful (as well as happy) day.

image by 古 天熱

And it’s not just stressful for those involved. On the few occasions that I have stupidly agreed to photograph weddings (now thankfully long in the past), I’ve found it one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done. It doesn’t matter how good a photographer you are – there’s always a little bit of your mind thinking, ‘what if something goes wrong?’ You can’t reshoot a wedding! The pressure to get the perfect shots for the happy couple is fairly full on and it’s not a feeling that I particularly relish.

So yes, I take my hat off to those who do choose to shoot weddings and am extremely thankful to them for doing their job so well. I just hope that members of the general public reading this article will realise why a good wedding photographer is worth every penny they charge.

Because at the end of the day, you’re not just paying for the photographer’s skills – you’re paying for a person who can cope in such a high-pressured environment and still produce stunning work. As for me, I’ll just stick to the photography I love and will keep continuing to not shoot weddings!

What about you?