Showing up early and starting right away

As a wedding photographer, one of the things that you want to keep in mind is that your job begins before your official start time. In other words, you want to show up early, and you want to start right away. Now all you can do here is talk a little bit about that. You know, on your way to the location, really want to review your vision, your goal for the wedding, what is that that you want to capture? Do you want to capture timeless or luminous images? Do you want to create authentic photographs, do you want to capture genuine happiness? And then if so, you want to give yourself a little bit of pep talk, if you want to capture something that's genuine, well, you need to be genuine. If you want to capture authenticity, well, you need to be authentic and relaxed. So take a deep breath and then show up early so that you're prepared to capture some of those key moments before all the action begins. In order to illustrate the importance of showing up early and starting right away, I want to show you a few photographs which I think kind of illustrate this point. The first picture that I want to show you is this one. I showed up early, and I parked my car, and right after I'd parked my car, the groom pulled up in this amazing vintage vehicle. Now I didn't know that he had that car, so I quickly snapped the photograph. This isn't a great photograph, but it was my way to get towards a picture that might be good. I quickly jumped out of my car with my camera in hand and then captured this portrait, and again, you want to start before all of the action begins, because there are moments like this which are so important, it's a fun portrait. And then I walked inside to the house where everyone was getting ready. In this case I captured a few photographs of the bride's friends, and here they're just having fun, and while these pictures aren't photographically amazing, it's all about using the camera to make those connections and to document the day, and then I came across the bride's daughter, she was so excited about this day. And when you're photographing a wedding, many times you have some sort of connection with the bride or the groom or the family, and in this case I knew the family really well, and I knew Sydney, the daughter here, and I wanted to capture some of her excitement of this day. And so here, I'm just creating a few portraits of her. Well, next it was her time to get ready, and she was wearing makeup like she had never worn before, and she asked if I would snap a few photos of that. She's so proud I think and kind of beaming, and then I asked her to walk outside. We walked outside and she wanted pictures of her shoes, and also of here fingernails, and while I knew that those photographs wouldn't be stunning or portfolio images, they were important, because you want to take the pictures that other people want you to take so that you can ask for some of your own. Well, here were a few of my pictures of her, and what I like about this is you can really see her excitement, her excitement about the wedding, about her new family that's going to be formed as result of this day. And again, here are a few other pictures of where we are just walking around in the backyard and trying to capture a bit of who she is on this day and also her excitement. We are downstairs and while we were in this lower area of the backyard, we looked up and her mom, the bride, came out on this balcony, and we captured, or I captured a few photographs of her, and then we went back inside. When we went back inside, and all of a sudden she heard that her new dad, the groom was coming, and so she quickly hid behind this curtains, and I love kind of the excitement of her hiding behind the curtains there, looking out and waiting for her dad to show up. And then, of course, he arrived. And you know, as you seek to create interesting wedding photographs, you're always looking for those little moments. Now this photograph and the others, they were all captured before the official start time, that's why you want to get there early. You want to get there early, and you want to make those connections with the key people in the wedding, you want to start documenting those moments. Again, you want to get there early, and you want to start right away.