Monday, April 09, 2007

Getting Ready for Wedding Season

Another question I'm often asked (especially by other photographers) is, "What do you do to get ready for the wedding season?"

When I was photographing weddings in San Diego, this wasn't even something to consider. Weddings happened throughout the entire year. But here in the Chicago area, we definitely have a "Wedding Season" because very few people get married in the winter months. Besides, I often take the winter "off" to recoupe from the hard work of the rest of the year's photography assignments.

Because of this, I can go months without really doing a whole lot physically. Sure, I take some photography assignments to keep myself busy, but in no way are these assignments quite as rigorous as photographing a wedding all day long!

During the winter months, I often gain some weight due to the lack of activity. So I'll go on a diet several months before the first wedding to drop the added weight. I also start exercising to get myself ready to carry the added weight of all my cameras and lenses.

I usually wear a belt and shoulder harness system all day while working a wedding. In this, I literally carry all the photography gear I need to shoot a wedding for the entire day. Everything from lenses, batteries, memory cards and other accessories are on that belt system... including a water bottle to keep myself hydrated throughout the day! In addition to the belt system, I'll hand carry at least one camera and flash and sometimes will have a second camera and lens hanging from my shoulder. All of this added up makes for a very heavy rig. I recently weighed the belt with all the lenses in there and it was 15 lbs. The camera and flash weighed in at 7 lbs. So I actually carry on my body at least 22 lbs of equipment all day long!

Consider that I stand on my feet for anywhere from 8 to 12 hours per day, only getting to sit down while traveling from the ceremony site to the reception hall and also during dinner hour, you can imagine what kind of physical shape you need to be in to do this kind of work.

At the end of the day, I'm often very tired, but with the right physical preparation, I am often surprised at how much I can take. As the season goes on, I'm able to keep going... even for weekends where I have a Friday wedding and a Saturday wedding the next day. I try not to book two weddings in a row in the early months of the wedding season because that would be way too much to deal with physically. But as the season moves on, I can easily do two in a row. Sure, by the third day (Sunday) I'm usually very tired out. But I have the rest of the week to get the rest needed to prepare for the next weekend's work.

Anyone getting into this business will find out quickly that weddings aren't that easy to do. It takes preparation not only in your photography skills, but also in your physical conditioning too. And let's not forget people skills! That is equally as important as your photography skills! But that's another topic perhaps best left for another entry on another day!

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