When I started doing wedding photography back in 2013 I couldn’t have imagined that I would still be doing it 10 years later.
And now it’s clear we’ll be doing it for a lot longer, maybe even for another 10 or 20 years.
It’s hard to get to the point where you can live off of wedding photography. But it’s even harder to continue doing it for a long time.
In this article, I’m going to take an honest look at the challenges you face over time as a wedding photographer, and how to overcome them.
Here’s everything we cover:
- Tools to Help You Stay in the Photography Game Long Term
- Why It’s Hard to Keep Doing Wedding Photography
- Why Wedding Photography Is Worth Doing for Years—Even Decades
- Advice for Staying in the Wedding Photography Game Long Term
Tools to Help You Stay in the Photography Game Long Term
Here are the things we’ve done to help us stay in the industry for over a decade.
1. See It as a Calling, Not a Job
At the end of the day, what motivates my soul about my work is providing people with memories that will last for generations.
In my wedding photography work, we have a strong focus on candid moments between humans.
For us they are what weddings are really about, and what we strive to capture and deliver to our couples. Being passionate and committed helps us stay focused during the long hours of a wedding day.
If you look at wedding photography as a calling rather than just a job, you’re more likely to invest time and effort into perfecting your craft, and that will help you maintain a strong business overtime.
2. Develop Your Eye
Being able to make the ordinary look extraordinary is a skill.
You can hone this skill by looking at other artists’ work, studying photographic techniques, and practice—lots of practice!
Being tuned in to emotions and authentic moments also helps, because it allows you to see the moments that will make for great photos. This is incredibly important for wedding photography, but applies elsewhere too.
My wife and I often talk about being able to identify the best micro-moment from each moment. For example, one of the best emotional photo opportunities when two people are hugging is actually just after they hug, when they look each other in the eye.
3. Study Strong Communication and Interpersonal Skills
These skills are crucial in wedding photography, where you’re constantly managing people’s expectations while dealing with stress and extreme emotions.
Coordinating with vendors, guiding the couple, dealing with the bridal party and the families so you can get the poses you need, all while maintaining a calm demeanor—all of this requires strong emotional and communication skills.
4. Cultivate Empathy for Your Clients
We care deeply about the couples we work with. Even when we’re tired or emotionally worn thin, we still try to show up full of caring for our client, which helps us remember that the focus is on them and their big day.
Being empathetic helps ensure that couples feel comfortable and understood.
This connection also leads to better, more authentic photographs—and it also leads to more word-of-mouth clients and better reviews, helping you grow your client base and continue doing your work.
5 . Develop a Strong Work Ethic
I was brought up with a strong business ethic, and an understanding of the value of work in shaping a person’s character. And I feel like that has been the core value that has made everything else fall into place in my photography career.
6. Work on Your Business Acumen
For a wedding photography business to succeed long term you have to be a good artist who knows how to shoot beautiful photos.
But you also have to know how to price your services, handle contracts, pay taxes, invest in gear efficiently, market yourself, and handle all the other details that come with running your own business.
7. Manage Your Budget
Our wedding photography business didn’t start being profitable until after our second year. But we were able to quit our other jobs and focus on the business in the first year we started doing wedding photography because we had built up our savings and kept our cost of living low.
And focusing on the business meant we could grow it. By our fourth year, we were consistently making over six figures every year, and that’s continued to be the case since then.
8. Be a Lifelong Learner
Don’t be satisfied with what you currently know, no matter where you are in your photography career.
Keep pushing yourself to do better. To take better photos, to learn more about your art, to be curious about the way photography works and how you can improve your craft.
And remember that learning isn’t just about shooting photos. You can work on your soft skills, like communication, as well as skills like editing, branding, deliverables, learning how to use new gear, or creating a strong wedding vendor community.
The more you keep improving, the better you’ll get, and the more your business will thrive.
Why It’s Hard to Keep Doing Wedding Photography
“Nearly 85% of photographers don’t make it past 5 years in the wedding industry.”
– US Dept. of labor, 2017
Why is that?
We’ll take a look at the specifics in a moment, but Jada Parrish sums up the primary challenges really well in this article on why he quit doing wedding photography:
“There’s no denying that wedding photography is great money, but it is a lot of hard work. The repetitive nature of capturing the same type of event week after week began to stifle my creative spirit. . . . With nearly every Saturday booked and seven-day workweeks becoming the norm, editing sessions intertwined with exhausting shooting days. After nine years of photographing weddings, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I’d hit my limit.”
Here are some of the main things that make wedding photography challenging.
1. You Work on the Weekends
While your friends are out having fun on a Friday night, catching a live performance or going to a bar, you’ll be at work.
And if you have kids, you may have to miss out on their friends’ birthday parties because you have a wedding to shoot.
Note: You shouldn’t work every weekend as a wedding photographer. Ideally you have busy periods and then slow periods, so you can catch your breath and rest.
2. Weddings Are Stressful
There’s lots of anticipation, expectations, and money spent at weddings. And guess what, it’s a moment that you can’t repeat. And it’s your job to capture all of it without failing.
Which is definitely stressful, but also means you’re doing meaningful work, that’s full of life and beautiful moments.
3. There’s a Lot of Repetition
If you shoot wedding after wedding every weekend they can all start looking the same. So it’s important to switch things up in your approach so you can keep the work fresh.
4. It’s Physically Demanding
As photographers, we carry heavy equipment on our backs for hours and hold weird poses to get the right angle.
We go up and down on our knees about a thousand times per wedding. We barely rest and don’t stop moving and taking photos the whole day.
In your twenties, you may not have noticed all of this. But now we’re in our mid thirties and it’s tiring work. And that’s why we make sure to exercise and stay fit, so we can keep doing this job for many more years to come.
5. Long Hours with Little to No Breaks
See above. 🙂
6. It’s Competitive
Where we work, more and more photographers keep cropping up. They bring
lots of energy and great ideas, which pushes us to stay on top of our game.
But this also means we have to stay competitive and think about beating the competition, year after year.
7. Weddings Require A LOT of Energy
Laurenda Marie, who has the rule of only booking 10 weddings a year, puts it like this:
“I have an introverted personality naturally, but on a wedding day I transform into an extrovert. Thankfully so…but that takes a lot out of me! This transformation is imperative to keep everything running smoothly and for my clients and their families to take me seriously . . . I direct posing, sing praises, and am constantly thinking about my next move.”
Phew. That’s a lot—and you have to do it over, and over, and over.
Why Wedding Photography Is Worth Doing for Years—Even Decades
Despite all the challenges I just listed, I still think that being a wedding photographer is one of the most rewarding jobs you can find.
Here’s why I love it so much.
1. We Are Helping Make Memories
As a wedding photographer, we’re able to make people happy and provide memories for them that can last generations. Just think about that!
Sometimes these photos will be the last professional photos of certain loved ones, like grandparents.
We once had a bride contact us years after her wedding to thank us for taking a really nice portrait of her grandma, which they used for her coffin when she passed away.
That really put our work into perspective. It made us realize how important photography can be to bring back memories and keep those who left us alive in our hearts.
2. It’s Creative
Being a wedding photographer is an amazing creative outlet.
You get to express yourself artistically at every wedding. If you are motivated, it can be an amazing field in which to develop and evolve your skills as an artist.
3. The Pay Can Be Great
If you perfect your craft and learn how to market yourself you can make a lot of money with wedding photography.
4. Great Work-Life Balance
Once you get to that higher pay grade you can find a really nice work-life balance.
It takes some hard work to get there. But once you do, you’ll find that you can do less work, charge more, and focus on raising your kids, or spending time with friends, or doing other things you enjoy.
5. You Actually Make Something
Shooting photos has the satisfaction of producing a tangible output.
As opposed to working in an office, where you don’t see the end product of what you are doing, when you take pictures for a living you get to literally see the result of your work.
6. People Appreciate You
We often have people praising us and thanking us for our work—which is really gratifying!
Some responses from our couples after we send them their photos are very touching. Knowing we help couples relive their wedding day and be able to see moments they missed is a very rewarding feeling.
7. It’s Interesting
Being a wedding photographer is sociologically interesting.
We get a window into people’s lives during one of the most important days in their entire life, when couples and their loved ones are full of nerves and excitement.
8. The Hours Are Flexible
If you manage to organize your week well you can enjoy many things people with regular jobs can, especially if you hire an assistant or you outsource some of your work.
9. The Touching Moments
Doing this work, you get to witness and enjoy really emotional speeches from a human that loves another human.
This is priceless for me. I cry during a good speech 9 times out 10, and I am not a crier.
10. You Meet Lots of Interesting, Sweet People
I’ve found that the wedding industry is full of like minded, interesting people, who are some of the most fun and creative folks I’ve ever met.
Advice for Staying in the Wedding Photography Game Long Term
At this point we’ve covered skills we recommend cultivating, why wedding photography is challenging, and the things we love about doing wedding photography.
But how do you stay in the game for a long time?
Here’s our advice to help you last a decade as a wedding photographer.
1. Avoid Burnout
Do this by limiting the number of weddings you do per year.
It can be stressful to juggle working weddings on the weekends, editing during the week, shooting engagement sessions, answering emails . . . take care of yourself, and establish a boundary for how many weddings you can do and stay healthy and well.
2. Make Sure to Rest
Schedule days off and keep them. This is key if you want to have a healthy and joyful life.
Also, if you have a baby, give yourself the full maternity or paternity leave you’d get if you weren’t self-employed.
This will require planning and saving, but it will be well worth doing.
3. Take Vacations
Make sure to go on vacation during the low season.
Try not to immediately jump into low-season upkeep work after you deliver your last wedding.
Respect yourself and take a few weeks off to do whatever your soul seeks, whether it’s staying home and resting or going on a big trip.
4. Stay Relevant
In terms of style, make sure to keep your work relevant.
Research what blogs are posting, keep following people that inspire you, and study how and why they do what they do.
Read magazines, read blogs about trends, and in general stay updated on developments in the industry.
We always try to be aware of trends, and incorporate some of the things that speak to us about them without going overboard.
Brown edits, direct flash in your face, blurry photos, GIFs, you name it, we have seen them and tried them, always while being careful to stay true to our own voice and style.
5. Always Be Marketing
You have a down season but your business doesn’t. Not when it comes to generating new business for the next season, anyway.
So make sure to think about ways to keep driving interest in your work, even when you’re not doing it.
6. Keep Learning
Whether through online or in-person workshops, youtube videos, articles, reading books, looking at art, talking to mentors . . . never stop learning.
7. Get to Know Wedding Planners
Maintain and nourish relations with wedding planners.
Here are some tips for doing this:
- Be nice to them when you are working
- Send them wedding photo galleries they can use on social media and their website (this is also great marketing for your work!)
- Ask them for feedback on how to improve
- Do styled shoots together
- Publish weddings on wedding blogs and make sure to name the planner—collaborate with them on this too
- Offer them free portrait sessions
- Give them sample albums they can show couples,
- Send them a gift for Christmas or their birthday, or just because
8. Get to Know Other Photographers
Here are some tips for this one:
- Be nice! Other photographers aren’t competition, they’re colleagues and potential collaborators, and may be the ones who refer your next client.
- Offer yourself to be on their backup list if they can’t shoot a wedding last minute.
- Have a list of recommendations for when you are busy on a particular date, and tell couples to tell the other photographers you recommended them.
- Offer to do an exchange for portrait photos, couples photos, or family photos.
9. Get to Know Others in the Industry
Get to know all types of wedding vendors, decorators, DJ’s, videographers, make-up artists, etc.
Just being nice to them can go away.
After a wedding, follow up to share photos they can use for marketing can go a really long way. Get their contact information, and send them photos you think they could use.
10. Hire an Assistant
We hired our incredible assistant Mariana four years ago to help us with selection, editing, album design, and Pinterest, and she has been a godsend.
11. Do Your Own Thing, Too
Taking on personal photography projects can inspire and motivate you, as well as help you grow in different directions as a photographer.
Last year I did a project on the fisherman of Lake Atitlán, a beautiful lake in Guatemala near where we live, which is surrounded by three volcanoes, and considered one of the most beautiful in the world.
With this project, I was one of the finalists in the Latin American Contest of Photojournalism—you can see the selection of photos I submitted here. This brought me great satisfaction and made me think of weddings in a different light.
12. Cultivate Gratitude
Thinking about your journey can really help you reset.
Take a moment now and then to reflect, and be grateful for how much you have grown as a photographer.
Look back and reflect on the long path you have gone and all the steps you took.
13. Prioritize Your Life Over Work
Put the things you enjoy doing and the people you love first. This is huge if you don’t want to start hating being a wedding photographer in the long run.
Of course, make sure you meet deadlines even if you have to work some evenings or other times you’d rather not. But keep the bigger picture in mind—you’re working so you can have a life you enjoy, that enriches you, and don’t kill yourself working all the time.
14. Always Do Multiple Backups
Never stop doing multiple backups. If you lose a wedding your reputation might suffer, and you may also get paranoid about it happening again.
15. Work Smarter, Not Harder
Find ways to speed up your workflow. Here are some things I do to speed up my work:
- Make sure you optimize Lightroom or whatever software you use to go as fast as possible.
- Find a preset that doesn’t require much extra tweaking.
- Use AI software to help you select your photos. Some suggestions are Narrative Select, Aftershoot, Imagen or FilterPixel.
- Use AI software to edit your photos like Imagen, Luminar, Neurapix, Wildernis and Narrative Edit.
16. Eat Well
Your knees, back and energy levels will thank you as you age as a wedding photographer.
17. Move Your Body
Find some way to exercise, whatever works for you.
This one is especially important if you want to be a wedding photographer long term. Go to the gym, do yoga, do pilates, go rock climbing, stretch or just walk.
Whatever you do, just make sure to move your body. Doing this gives your body happy chemicals, and if you do it right it will keep your body out of pain and help you age well.
18. Take Self-Care Seriously
Get massages, dip into hot water (with epsom salts!), meditate, breathe, go to therapy, or do whatever works for you to relax, activate your parasympathetic nervous system and feel fresh and calm again.
19. Be Kind to Yourself.
This is especially important when things go wrong.
Sometimes you won’t get all the likes you expected on Instagram for that really sweet photo you posted. And at some point you will receive bad feedback, or a potential new couple will choose a different photographer, or you will have to work extra hours some weeks.
You might even fall at a wedding and get hurt, you may miss a meeting (remember to set reminders!), and you may doubt your work and yourself.
When this happens don’t judge what you’re feeling.
It’s all normal, and it helps to remember that we have all been through it at some point over the years.
Reach out to friends, support groups and therapists for help. Give yourself some time to process, learn, rest, recover, then keep going.
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