r/WeddingPhotography

If you’re photographing wedding receptions, please wear ear protection!!! We spend hours standing right beside speakers, DJs and bands. Hearing damage is cumulative, and once the damage is done it can’t be reversed. Trust me it can sneak up on you.

Protect your ears now so you can keep doing what you love for a very long time. Consider this your reminder to throw a pair of earplugs in your camera bag.

Met a wedding photographer recently who told me she shoots pretty much the entire wedding with flash.

Indoors, outdoors, daylight, good natural light… doesn’t matter.
It’s basically her signature style, she fully owns it and charges pretty high prices for it (She says).

It got me thinking. If clients are paying specifically for that look, fair enough.

But if your answer to every lighting situation is flash, is that a strong creative style or just a limitation you’ve turned into a brand?

Genuinely curious what other photographers think.

I’ve seen a meme going around of “uncle Bob will also be taking photos” and uncle Bob is a professional wildlife photographer with a $20k lens.

This got me thinking, does anyone actually do this as a service; having a third shooter with a long lens for more candid, non-posed shots?

Hybrid wedding photographers, I need your workflow advice!

I've been incorporating a couple rolls of 35mm and/or 120 film into wedding days and I LOVE it, but I feel like I still haven't quite found my rhythm with shooting film alongside digital.

For those of you who regularly shoot both, how do you manage it throughout the wedding day without feeling like you're constantly thinking about which camera you should be grabbing?

Do you have certain parts of the day you intentionally shoot on film? Certain moments you always shoot on both? Do you keep your film camera on you all day or intentionally grab it at certain times?

And what little systems have you figured out that make the whole thing feel more seamless?

I know I'm probably overthinking it, but right now adding even a couple rolls feels like one more thing my brain is trying to keep track of on an already busy wedding day. 😂

I'd love to hear what your actual wedding-day workflow looks like and any tips you wish you knew when you first started shooting hybrid.

First I apologize if this doesn’t go here.

Long story short, Cousin’s wedding in two days, their photographer had a family emergency and called out. They want me to take pictures since I have a camera and lenses.

I dont do this for a living, I only take pictures mostly when I travel, just for me, nothing professionally at all. Im a newbie in this world leaning by reading from others and watching YouTube videos.

What I have is a Canon R6ii with RF 24-105 f4, RF 70-200 f2.8 and the RF 50 f1.8 STM. I don’t have a flash.

What will be the go to lens for it? Wedding is at 3pm. Church and party is all inside. Maybe some classic pictures outside of the group, the couple, etc.

Manual mode all day? Aperture Priority? Shutter Priority? Or just Auto and hope for the best? I have two SD cards, one saves RAW, the other one saves JPEGs.

Other than that, trying to learn something Im not familiar with in two days so they can have something to remember.

I appreciate the help!

The prevalence of named, additional insured COI requests from venues has exploded compared to when I first started. I used to get maybe one or two a year and every other venue was fine with regular proof of insurance but now I'm getting them for nearly every event and (at least here in NYC) many venues want themselves plus a billion parent companies explicitly named.

My current insurance is fine. They have a nice online portal and everything is easy and quick ...except COI requests. They don't generate them on weekends and it's a whole process to add venues to additional insured and then generate COIs. With how common they've become, it's put me in a weird situation a few times already and added a ton of time to my workload.

I'm thinking about switching and I'd love to hear some thoughts on what companies we're loving or avoiding in 2026.

Do you love who you're using? Does anyone use someone with a fast, online way to generate COI documents? What is up with the explosion of additional insured requests over the last few years anyway?

Thanks friends.

I'm thinking about offering a basic videography add-on for just the ceremony, speeches and first dance.

Static camera(s), a couple wireless mics. Shooting in 1080p at 30fps would minimize the horsepower needed in post. I'm already at the wedding with my gear. Setting up a couple cameras doesn't seem like a huge leap in on-site work.

What's the pitfalls I'm not seeing?

I'm getting more and more people asking about video and not necessarily wanting/needing video of the getting ready or portraits. Just seems like an offering I should explore more even if it means initially offering it for free/cheap just to try out.

Hey all, I am new to this thread do if it is not the right place to ask this question please tell me. So far i have photographed 3 weddinc; 2 were for friends ans 1 was a paid external gig. I went to a friend's wedding recently and i learned that the photographer they got came from my city or near it. You have to know that i live in a fairly small and low population region so photographers are rare here. Since i want to gain more experience my question is this : is it weird for me to get in touch woth this photographer and ask if she needs an assistant or a second photographer? I have a small wedding portfolio and a bigger but more concert oriented portfolio too.

Thank you in advance ✌🏻

Can anyone recommend a good flash system (on camera and off) that’s not super heavy? My canon R3 hot shoe is on my last nerve. My flash is constantly coming lose and I think it’s just too heavy for my hot shoe. Currently using the Godex Flashpoints.

I thought about just getting a trigger, but I'd still like to use on camera flash when needed.

TIA!