My Own Experience

I have had a few photography specific jobs including a Wedding, a 50^th Birthday, and many family photography sessions. I have also been hired to photograph a christening in June and recently I have also started taking pet photographs to practice my skills and style for when I start work for GC Photo-Grafics.

Wedding

Below is one of the photographs I have taken and printed for the wedding that I did. It was a small wedding; only immediate family at the wedding ceremony and this helped me relax, as this was my first time shooting a wedding. The bride and groom were very relaxed about the photography, as they had not thought they would be able to find a photographer; the groom was very nervous about the photographs because he had recently had treatment in hospital and was very self-conscious about the photographs. He did not want “some random stranger photographing the wedding” so I volunteered as I knew the bride; they were overjoyed with this.

Although this was not my style to use the colour pop editing, I was asked specifically for some of this style by the bride and groom because they prefer this style and wanted to emphasize the colour theme. I knew professionally I could not refuse their request just because it was not my preferred style, but I also know that I must be careful about presenting myself because others will think this is my style.

I also used this image as a cover for the disc to make it look more professional and presentable than just a handwritten scribble on the front. Disc mock-up shown to the left.

I also printed a small selection of images for them on A4 and this surprised them, as they were not expecting for this to happen.

It was a small ceremony as only immediate family were invited, I photographed for most of the day, doing some shots of the bride in her home, the ceremony and then the reception on the evening. This was a great experience for me and I learnt a lot about doing the wedding, I think if it was a full wedding then I would have panicked more and been too nervous to concentrate. But I feel I am more prepared to do weddings in future although I would prefer to start with being a second shooter to build up my confidence and experience even more.

One problem I encountered was that the wedding was towards the beginning of the summer break from university; this meant I had to wait until September to organize, edit and retouch all of the photographs because I could not access the software from home, the couple were understanding about the small wait that would mean but I still felt guilty and got the photographs sorted as soon as I could. 
In response to this happening I bought Photoshop that I needed, and then also applied for the POCP training course in order to receive the Capture One software. Doing this meant that I could work over times when I was not able to get into university to access the software and after graduation.