How to Become a Destination Wedding Photographer
So, you want to travel the world as a photographer? Want to travel to cities, make beautiful images and have someone else pay for it? Destination wedding photography could be for you.
So, you want to travel the world as a photographer? Want to travel to cities, make beautiful images and have someone else pay for it? Destination wedding photography could be for you.
If you’re looking to get into the market of destination weddings or you’re already invested, you may want to take notes. There is plenty of opportunity out there for all photographers and good money to be made. And it doesn’t matter where you live or if you have a family.
Love traveling? Jelly of all those photographers who have pictures from around the world? Well, its easier than you think to get started. Below are some tips and tricks to get started in destination photography.
As a photographer who specializes in destination weddings, I found a perfect marriage between travel and wedding photography (no pun intended). My vocation has allowed me to travel to numerous countries, discover exotic locations and connect with fascinating locals for more than a decade.
If you love travel, then you have probably fantasized about traveling the world and getting paid to do what you love, photography. I still remember my first destination wedding. I was hired to shoot a wedding in Ireland and I nearly lost my mind. I couldn’t believe someone was willing to pay me money to travel across the globe to take pictures. I had already had the travel bug, but after this, all bets were off. I was hooked and would spend the next 10+ years looking for any and every way to travel the world doing what I love.
Over the years, I worked with Laura on several occasions. For a hobby photographer, it’s a true pleasure to work with a professional model. Laura doesn’t need much direction, works hard and doesn’t complain even when we’re shooting outside in the pouring rain. She also has a great sense of humor and it is always good fun working together. After shooting with Laura, the results are always “next level.” In this article, we will share the 4 pillars of a successful location shoot with you, based on our recent experience in London.
From a bird’s-eye view, this adventure looks quite glamorous and the end result of these productions most certainly is. But what folks don’t get to see are the 16-hour days in 110-degree heat put in to get the shot, the 4am call times for light, the intense pressure of clients’ high expectations, the cold-calling to get new clients, the all-nighters I pull to get retouched images over to a client before their print deadline, the endless hours my Dreamteam and I spend estimating and planning productions, and the hundreds of emails that go back and forth for each and every shoot. There are no sick days in this kind of work.
Underwater photography while mesmerizing is not for the faint of heart. You have all of the regular challenges that come with shooting on land, and then about 1000x’s more challenges that come from shooting in a moving environment. All of this is intensified when you are shooting in the ocean versus a pool. While almost everything can be controlled on land, that is not the case while underwater. You have a split second to get what is in your mind, set up and captured in camera to eventually share with the world.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you’re probably interested in shooting destination weddings. There are a lot of reasons why photographers want to photograph destination weddings. For one, you get to experience capturing the wedding in an entirely different scenario than what you’re currently used to. Destination weddings often have carefree clients who are interested in amazing photography and will typically choose places that feature beautiful scenery.
For us, it's about empathy. As artists, we believe many things go into creating beautiful, unique work, but being empathic with our fellow humans is the only way to truly understand and grow the way we create art. That's what photography is to us. It's getting to know and learn about life from some of the most energetic, gifted, and spirited souls our planet has. What we do enriches our lives and our marriages daily. So we've put a lot of thought into creating an experience for our couples that will reflect this enrichment in our art and give our couples the once-in-a-lifetime photographs that they deserve. We call these “adventurous elopements.”