Resources for Wedding Photographers

Everything you’ve heard is true: wedding photography is an amazing gig! As a newbie/aspiring/up-and-coming wedding photographer, your head is probably spinning with manual mode settings while contemplating which new piece of gear to spend money on next. But before you click over to Amazon.com to drop some serious money a new “must-have” accessory, pause for a second. If you’re remotely serious about wedding photography as a potential part- or full-time career, consider investing your time and money in education instead. Because bodies come and bodies go, but solid shooting technique and good business sense will get you way further in this industry!

With the advent of Google, almost any general piece of information is readily available at your fingertips with just the right search terms. But for those who might want a more curated experience as well as guidance and inspiration from those who have come before, here are some structured resources to help you along your path:

Organizations & Conventions
If you were ever in the Boy or Girl Scouts, or just generally enjoy being a part of a very large organization, the PPA or WPPI might be for you. They both offer annual memberships that come with various benefits like equipment insurance or magazine subscriptions.

Also worth noting, both of these organizations host massive conferences every year:

• Imaging USA is taking place January 20 – 22, 2013 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. Speakers and classes are plentiful along with an expo filled to the brim with products and services for photographers.
• The Wedding & Portrait Photography Conference+Expo is taking place between March 7 – 14, 2013 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, also offering a ton of speakers along with an expansive trade show.

Even if you’re not interested in attending the classes, the expo portion of these conferences will expose you to a mind-boggling amount of new stuff that you never even thought existed. Think of it is as Pinterest for photographers, in real life. If you’re unsure about which albums to offer your clients, for example, you’ll be able to run your hands on a bunch of sample albums and really see for yourself. Not only that, but a lot of print companies (e.g., WHCC, ProDPI) have a large number of sample products like cards and photo books. Seeing all of this in-person in one place sure beats getting samples made from each company, hoping their quality suits your business needs.

Online Forum
A popular forum that you should check out is the Digital Wedding Forum. Read, learn, and interact with the online community about gear, technique, and business. Just be sure not to get sucked into pointless debates, otherwise all of your time will dwindle away. There’s a membership fee to join, but you can get do a free trial first to see if it’s a good fit.

Offline Forums
For those who enjoy meeting and interacting with folks in real life, Pictage’s PUGs and SmugMug’s SMUG are both worth checking out. You don’t have to be a member of either services to attend these free meetings. They are a great way to (1) learn things and (2) meet new friends and colleagues.

Online Classroom
Creative Live is an online streaming classroom, offering various courses from running your business to shooting and editing techniques. Your options: watch the stream live for free (check out their calendar) or purchase the videos and watch at your leisure. Be sure to browse around the site and drop in on a live stream before committing to buying a video, to ensure you actually like the format and will benefit from it.

Like previously mentioned, there is a ton of information available out there, but hopefully this list helps provide you with a few specific launching pads to read, watch, learn, make friends, and create beautiful images for your clients while you start to build a successful business.

Finally, no list of wedding photography educational resources would be complete without mentioning the plethora of workshops and seminars available, but that lengthy topic will be discussed another day….

 

Selling the Two-Volume Wedding Album Set

Albums provide a great profit margin for your business and you can further increase that profit margin by upgrading clients to larger sized albums and/or by adding pages/spreads. But have you tried offering the two-volume wedding album set?

Whoa! What is the two-volume wedding album set?
Most wedding coverage comprises of two general types of images: (1) candid, photojournalism moments and (2) posed, formal portraits. The two-volume wedding album set naturally separates these two elements. Volume one is the storytelling album, filled with candid moments; volume two will display all the beautiful formal portraits.

Benefits of the two-volume wedding album sets:
- With so many must-have images for proper wedding coverage, most album designs get bogged down and cluttered with too many images. Yes, you can have too much of a good thing in one album. When you have two volumes, you have more pages to highlight your beautiful images.
- Not only will the overall design look cleaner and less cluttered, the division of labor with two volumes makes perfectly logical sense as a storytelling solution for your high-end brides.

How do you sell the two-volume wedding album set?

Needless to say, the adage “show, don’t tell” applies here very well. It would be fruitless to ask of your clients to imagine the wonders of having their images logically and beautifully spanning two separate volumes. You will need actual sample albums to show your clients the possibilities.

You’ll need to price the two-volume wedding album set moderately (as opposed to exorbitantly). Consider your costs of goods (design fee + product) and price it so that your clients receive a good value for ordering your two-volume wedding album set.

Depending on your current album offerings, perhaps you can offer different types of albums for the two volumes. For example, a flush mount album for the candid volume and matted album for the portraits volume.

Finally, it’s no use trying to offer this product to clients if you don’t think it makes sense for your business and shooting style. But if you’re providing a great selection of both candid and posed images and can see the value in offering two beautiful, cohesive albums as a set instead of one heavy, crowded album? Give this creative solution a try and it can benefit both your business and your clients’ enjoyment of their wedding images for years to come!

P.S.
Here’s a sample script/dialog on how to broach the topic and start the conversation:

You (The Photographer): Bride, I noticed you selected a lot of formal portraits for your wedding album….
Bride: Yeah, I just wanted to make sure we remember everyone who attended our wedding.
You: I definitely understand. It’s just that you also have a good number of artistic and documentary images. It might be a little bit disruptive to the album storyline if we squeezed in all the groups shots into the album design.
Bride: Really?
You: I do have a suggestion. Perhaps we can split your wedding images into two volumes, then you can have space for all your group shots and you’ll also have a nice volume for just the documentary images. Would you like to take a look at a sample I made for another wedding so you can see the benefits of having two volumes?
Bride: Sure!

 

MARKETING TIP: WEDDING VENUE ALBUMS

Wedding Venue Albums

As any busy wedding photographer can tell you, there aren’t many places these days where your advertising dollars can get you a good bang for your buck. It’s all about referrals and connections. However, there is a form of advertisement that have not been overly flooded, unlike the multitude of online vendor listings. This advertisement comes in the form of venue sample wedding albums.

It makes perfect sense. Brides in your target market will visit the venues suitable for her budget, and what a better opportunity than for her to see your amazing work right there at the venue in the form of a venue sample album! And even better, would be that the coordinator personally recommends you and hands the bride your business card. It’s almost too easy!

Of course, nothing is as easy as it sounds. In this article, we’ll discuss some tips and strategies for making the most of your wedding venue sample album so that you do get the best bang for your buck. We will assume that you have shot at least one wedding for that venue, although having shot multiple weddings will allow you to have a more diverse sample wedding album.

Make Friends

In the grand scheme of the wedding vendor pyramid, the venue coordinators and wedding planners sit on top because they are usually the first ones to be visited by the bride. Therefore, it is to your best interest to make friends with the coordinators. Prior to the wedding day, introduce yourself to the venue wedding coordinator and ask them if they need any specific shots for the venue. After the wedding has passed, the coordinator should know who you are, and will more likely to agree when you ask if you can produce a sample album for the venue with the wonderful images from the wedding.

Stand Out

Once the venue coordinator has agreed to accept a venue sample album from you, the next challenge is to create an album that stands out. Your album will not be the only album there – often, there are at least 5 to 10 albums sitting at the coordinator’s office or hotel lobby. How do you increase your chances of making sure the bride sees and remembers your album? That’s easy….just be sure to have incredible, mind-blowing images. Well, that would be the ideal case, but we all know that our images correlate with other things beyond our control – such as the aesthetics of the dress/makeup/decor, etc.

Put yourself in the shoe of a bride visiting the venue. You see 10 albums sitting on the shelf, and obviously you will not have the time to peruse through all of them. Which album will you look at first? This is where the conventional “don’t judge a book by its cover” wisdom should be totally ignored. The bride will probably pick up the albums that stand out the most. But what does that mean?

Well, it depends on the “other” albums. If most of the other albums are the traditional black-leather albums, then having a fabric cover or photo cover album will get her attention. If the other albums are regular square albums, then having a horizontal or a “calendar-style” album will make your album the unique one. If most of the other albums are “standard sized” albums, then having a much larger album will probably give your album more attention. So, what we’re saying here is that you need to see what the other venue albums look like before you determine the size and cover material of your album – this will allow your venue album to have the competitive edge.

Design for the Venue

Your venue sample album should look like an advertising brochure for the VENUE, not you! This time, put yourself in the shoe of the venue wedding coordinator. A prospective bride comes into your office and wants to see what typical wedding receptions look like at your venue. Would you pick up an album that contains many artsy “getting ready” shots and artistic photos of brides and grooms, or would you pick up the album that contains pages and pages of venue images showcasing various reception setups and room decor? Obviously, it’s the latter. You want the wedding coordinator to love to show off your album, and the only way to do that is for your album to show off the venue. Therefore, design the sample album with that in mind.

Don’t Be Shy

Once you’ve designed the album to show off the venue, the next thing is to make sure the prospective bride knows who took all those wonderful images in the venue album. That means you need to prominently show your studio logo and contact info at the beginning and end of the album. This is not the time to be shy – too often, we have seen wedding photographers inconspicuously place their logos at a small corner at the back of the album. You don’t want the bride to have to go looking for your studio info – put it right in front of their face.

Take Advantage of Studio Sample Discounts

Making a venue album for each of your favorite venue will not be cheap. Many photographers try to save money by using “cheaper” albums for their venue samples, but is that really how you want to convey your work to potential brides? Instead, take advantage of “studio sample discounts” offered by almost all album companies. Some companies will limit how many studio sample discounts they issue per year, while others have no limit. These albums will be seen by more brides than the ones coming through your studio, so don’t skimp on this marketing effort.

Rule of Seven

The old marketing adage says that a consumer needs to see your marketing message 7 times before they take action. While this may not translate directly to wedding photography, it does remind you that you should try to have a venue album at as many venues as possible. Often times, a bride will visit multiple venues, and if they see your sample album in multiple locations, you can be sure they will be more aware of your studio.

Keep Albums Updated

The last tip is an important one: Wedding styles (makeup, dress, decor, etc.) change from year to year. What is popular this year may be looked upon as old-fashioned and outdated the next year. You should make sure that your venue albums are updated every few years to reflect the current trends. Not only does this apply to the images, but also the physical album itself. Plus, it always helps to stay in touch with the wedding coordinator to make sure they know that you are excited to shoot weddings at their venue.

An Example Venue Album

Having said all of the above, it would be useful to take a look at an actual venue album design created by yours truly. The album design below was created as a sample venue album for Stanford University’s Memorial Church – a favorite wedding ceremony venue for those affiliated with Stanford in the Silicon Valley.

This album is designed as a horizontal 18×12″ album, thus it is a bit larger than your average sized album. The cover text font used matches closely with the official font for the university – thus, providing consistency with website pages, literature, and other brochures that may be present along with the venue album. On the first page, the title declares this album as a guide for weddings at the venue instead of the usual “bride and groom” names seen on typical wedding albums. Also notice the prominent studio logo (along with website address) under the title.

Throughout the album, the concentration is on the venue and the photographic possibilities for the bride and groom. Images from various corners of the church are shown, as well as photos taken from nearby locations – emphasizing the architecture of the campus. Also note the use of the “rounded corner” design elements on some of the spreads – this serves to provide some design differentiation from other albums.

We hope this article has been helpful and has inspired you to create (or re-create) some venue sample wedding albums. Now, get out there and start booking some weddings!

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INTRODUCING – Rounded Corners!

Hello Photographers!

We have one more thing that’s new here at Modern Album Designs. Now, this design style isn’t entirely new, but we want all of you to know that we also offer these rounded corners that not a lot of our customers know about.

If you’re interested on having these rounded corners on your next album design…let us know, and we’ll do a mighty fine job making it look grand!

 

Social Sharing for Album Previews

Hi everyone!

It’s been a while since we’ve written a blog post. Our apologies, but we’re back and ready for more!

We have something new to share with our photographers out there. Sharing your album preview to your clients has gotten easier! Watch this video to see what we have in store for you!

 

 

Joint MADWEST Promo!

Hey everyone!

This joint discount between West Coast Albums and Modern Album Designs is for NEW CUSTOMERS ONLY, so hurry up because this deal is too good to last!

For the first 20 new customers, they will receive 20% OFF their album design (regular or Mad One) and 20% OFF an album from West Coast Albums.

Use the promo code 20OFFMADWEST to get this deal!

Terms & Conditions:

-  New customers only (for both companies)
-  Limit one per customer
-  Limit of 20 coupons redeemed
-  Cannot be combined with any other promos
-  Cannot be applied towards studio samples
-  Expires Dec. 31, 2011

 

How well do you know MAD?

This is a simple test.

Don’t worry, you won’t be graded. We just want to see if you truly know Modern Album Designs. You never know…there might be something for you when you answer this. Shhh!!! (Don’t tell them I told you anything!)