In the south almost all brides expect a bridal portrait taken way before before the wedding day . Other areas of the country
may do portraits but wait until the wedding day and include it as part of the wedding coverage. I know San Antonio wedding photographers must allow enough time for bad weather since it can change at the drop of a hat as well as time to print the wall size photo.

The large bridal portrait will be displayed at the reception venue for all to admire . A lot of brides will also use the portrait as part of her guest book. A custom guest book showing the couples photos and bridal photos have become a big hit with my San Antonio wedding photography clients.

Any location can work for a portrait and the decision should be up to the individual taste of the bride. I find most bridal portraits are printed vertically so you should decide in advance if a traditional vertical portrait or a horizontal shot works best. It depends on the background of the venue as well as the place in your home that you want to display the photo.

After selecting the size, which is usually twenty by twenty-four or twenty-four by thirty-six inches comes the type of material to print the image on. Many go with traditional glossy stock while others will prefer a matte canvas, gloss metallic, clear acrylic or even real metal which can work for both a contemporary and a antique western look to show off your bridal portrait. The Alamo city is a great location for San Antonio wedding photography.

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I know I should have determined all of this earlier, but did I make a mistake or what? Everyone told me that choosing someone to take pictures of the wedding wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

I guess I didn’t think that it was that big of a deal in choosing a wedding photographer. How hard could it be? I mean, I just need someone with a good camera that knows where to point it.

Or so I thought. I finally sat down and started looking at websites. There are a lot of choices out there! How do I know if anyone is any good? How to finally make a decision? Who can I count on to actually show up for the event?

Thankfully, after dealing with a bunch of flakes and people that just didn’t seem to understand that I wasn’t trying to be artsy or over the top. I just want good quality pictures from a a Houston Wedding Photographer.

I want pictures that aren’t all posed. I want to look back on this event years from now and just be crying and laughing from all the great wedding photography. Who wouldn’t?

I’m sad that I waited so long, but happy with my choice. My guy is good at capturing the actual event in such a high quality way – I can’t wait to see the pictures and see how it all turned out.

I figure the entire day is just going to be one big blur anyway. Glad to know that I won’t miss a thing.

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One of the many ways you can generate money as a photographer is to specialise on events. Sports, Charity Balls, Schools proms and all sorts of other events where people make memories can be worthwhile business. The great thing is that all you need is a good camera, lots of memory cards and some business cards at one end of the market or a potable studio and printer at the other.

Capturing the Images

It’s vitally important that you get creative on where to take photos. The best possible events are events where people want to keep the memories for a long time . Bonus points can be had if the event is the type of happening where people demand extra high quality, or if you can offer something which means that the people couldn’t have taken the photos themselves.

People are making a lot of money off photographing sports events. Here in England, kids are dreaming of being the next Beckham or Best and their parents are often very encouraging of their sporting efforts. What the photographer does is that he calls up the team manager, ensures it is okay to take photos at a football game. They then goes to the game and takes photos.

When the photographer shows up with a huge 400 mm lens – same as all the parents have seen on television – they are taken seriously and they take great care in making sure they’ll get a couple of action shots of every kid on the field. At the end of the game, they hand out flyers (printed cheaply from an web based printing company.) Later in the evening, they’ll upload all the photos to an event photography website and sells the prints. The only costs incurred is the petrol for driving to the game and the flyers, which cost next to nothing.

At bigger tournaments, they can shoot 8-9 teams in a single day, hand out around 100 flyers and in the longer term sell around £300-500 worth of photos. Not bad for a day’s work.

Wedding photography can be done using the same event photography model.

You arrange to cover the wedding reportage-style and make sure that you photograph everybody. People flirting with the bridesmaids and drinking along with all the ‘official’ photos you do. You can charge the normal fee for photographing the wedding and in addition you can arrange for your internet site to be printed on the wedding invitation (offer the happy couple a 30% discount to get the website on the invitation and on any other paperwork they distribute, then make sure to mention to everyone you photograph that they can buy the photos on-line on the website on the invite).

It’s a lucrative business and in addition you are offering a service most photographers don’t being the option of letting anybody get copies of the prints straight away and conveniently.

The key point is to find a niche market where you can prosper by being the best photographer in the room and offering an convenient way for people to buy your photos. Horse shows, dog shows, livestock competitions, parties, plays, festivals, portraiture – everywhere there is a market, you can try and do event photography. In addition, for many of the events, you can make money by selling your best images as stock!

Marketing the Images

You can get great success by having flyers printed – simple A5 flyers in full colour, with 2-3 of the best photos, and a website . Mention who you are, mention how easy and cost effective it is to buy photos from you and hand them out to anyone who might want to buy your photos .

If you can get a tie-in as an ‘official photographer’, it’s worth setting up a booth at the event as well. Hire someone to sit there with a printer and a computer and print out the best images there and then, allowing people to buy them, but make sure to have a stock of business cards or flyers as well, to allow people to buy the images at their leisure, at home, via the internet.

How to Sell the Pictures

The mechanics of selling photos can be quite complicated. Back when many started doing concert photography, they decided to have a go at doing it all themselves – and Rockprints is a testament to that (incidentally, Rockprints was designed by the same guy who did the current Photocritic design – Martin Jacobsen). Most ended up using commonly available gallery software called Coppermine and hacked the hell out of it so they could use it to sell photographs via on line print web sites.

Many things have happened since then those days. Selling work more effectively and directly to the customer can only give the event photographer more benefits.

There are quite a few specialised sites on the web , who help you out by providing ways of selling pictures .

Luckily, there are plenty of solutions out there to choose from so you find one that suits you best. Photo Stock Plus offer a ‘events-photography-in-a-box’ solution, which works very well.

The company takes a fee up-front each year. For your money, you typically get a 500MB printing account, which can store up to say 10,000 images. All you need to do is to use the uploading tool (which also watermarks and resizes your photos for you, saving you a metric tonne of time) to create events galleries, and you’re up and running.

A Final Word of Warning

Event photography is hard work. No, seriously. You’ll be constantly on your tip toes, trying to get the best images, fielding questions from people around you, handing out flyers, travelling to locations, copying images, preparing galleries, etc. You’ll hate it until you’ve managed to get used to the pace of the work and managed to work out a good workflow. Or done as many now do only sell print on demand there and then and not bother with the web galleries.

On the other hand, there is a plenty of money to be made if you are able to put in the hours.

Most of the well organised event photographers make a good living from this kind of work

Most of the event photographers have a similar setup to this whenever they do weddings, to maximise their income.

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