Pros and cons from a real world weekend wedding photographer

What’s your idea of making extra money as a wedding photographer?  How much time do you actually spend performing your favorite activity of shooting pictures?

 

Naturally it’s preferable to make sure your skills are up to snuff to satisfy the wedding party (especially the bride!), providing professional grade portraits.  One individual offered up his 2 years experience as a weekend wedding photographer.  See what you think about his pros and cons:

 

 

I have a 9-5 job and shoot weddings at the weekends. Unlike a previous poster I do it as a one man band so I get to keep all the revenue for myself

Pros:

• I get paid huge sums of money to indulge one of my hobbies. This is seriously like the cheat code for life

Cons:

• Business admin (bookkeeping, incorporation etc) is a life sapping pain
• I spend most evenings and a good chunk of the weekend marketing myself and managing advertisements
• Wedding photographers tend to be slightly creepy dudes and I get tarred with the same brush
• You need pro level gear from day one and that is many thousands of dollars. Two bodies, three lenses, a beefy computer, Photoshop, Aperture, backup solution, flashguns. You can’t fake your equipment and you need to know how to use it. Your clients expect and deserve nothing less
• You need a portfolio from day one and getting that is a chicken and egg situation
• Bridezillas who expect you to do Cosmopolitan style airbrushing on every image
• Joe Public’s utter disregard for copyright
• Uncle Freds who think they are as good a photographer as I am with their entry level half frame DSLR on auto mode. Get out of the loving frame
• Clients who don’t pay on time
• Clients who don’t respond to your messages asking for a list of must have pictures then complaining when you don’t get their must have images
• Second shooters who use other people’s work in their portfolio
• Album companies

Biggest jumps to make is getting the cash together to buy all the stuff and getting the portfolio shots together to whore yourself out to brides to be. Being a photographer is 90% business 10% photography!

I have been doing this for two years and only now is it becoming nice. Starting something like this up means you have no discretionary income, no social life, and a lot of late nights. But I am now at the point where I can seriously consider quitting the 9-5 and going it alone.