Answer: For most people, I actually recommend NOT getting an SLR. They’re bulky, heavy, expensive, and likely something you won’t take with you very many places. It’s like having to bring an extra purse with you everywhere you go! I know many people who have purchased an SLR for whatever reason, and then a few months later, find themselves leaving it at home most of the time. In fact, I hardly ever bring my SLR with me when I’m not on the job!

Most people would be better served getting a regular point and shoot (P&S) camera. They’re lighter, smaller, a whole lot cheaper, and the image quality is almost as good (from what the average person can tell). You’re more likely to bring it around with you when you’re out and about, or even when you’re traveling. The quality of P&S cameras are now a lot better than what they were even a few years ago. Some of the best P&S currently on the market are the Canon S95, Canon G12, Canon ELPH 300, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5, and Sony Cyber-shot HX9v.

However, if you’re set on purchasing an SLR, go with any of the Canon or Nikon bodies, and you’ll be fine. At the time of this blog post, the Canon Rebel T3 is $440, T2i is $615, T3i is $670, and 60D is $1k. All of them are great cameras and will last several years — it all depends on your budget. However, keep in mind that the lens is more important than the body, so you’ll probably want to shell out at least $400 for a decent lens. Don’t buy the stock lens–they’re usually sub-par, with a few exceptions.

If you’ll be purchasing only one lens, and sticking with that for a while, you’ll want to get a general walkaround lens with a decent zoom range. If you have a Canon body, a good budget lens will be the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8, the Tamron 28-75 f/2.8, or the Canon 18-200 f/3.5-5.6. Some photographers love the Canon 24-105 f/4L, though I’m not a big fan of that lens myself. But if you intend on buying more equipment later, then start with a prime lens. It’ll help you become a better photographer down the road.

Also, consider purchasing 2nd hand equipment — it might save you quite a bit of money.

And if you want to do deeper research, check the reviews on Amazon for specific equipment. I find them to be rather accurate, and they generally give you a good idea of how hundreds of other people use their equipment, the weaknesses and strengths, and potential alternative choices. Also, Amazon prices tend to be cheaper than most other places.

TL;DR: If you’re set on purchasing an SLR, go with the Canon T3i + Tamron 28-75 f/2.8.

FAQs:  TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Current travel schedule

Southern California (various): January 12-17, 2011
Los Angeles: February ?, 2012
Las Vegas: February 19-23
New Zealand: March 1-7
Melbourne, Australia: March 8-13
Cairns, Australia: March 14-17
Sydney, Australia: March 18-21
Philadelphia: April 26-30
Wichita, Kansas: June 21-25
New York City, NY: June 26 – July 2
Hawaii: August 2-7

For booking inquiries worldwide, or for more information about wedding photography in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, get in touch with us via our contact form. Special rates for destination wedding collections are also available!

Phonetically, it’s along the lines of “june-shen” or “joon-shen”.

Post processing
Adobe Lightroom 3
Adobe Photoshop CS5

I get the sense that this question comes most often from those who think that there’s something inherently special with the equipment I use. If you’re one of those people, this list is unfortunately useless to you. Instead, let me direct you to this other post and the corresponding comments; it will be much more helpful in leading you where you want to go.  :)

(Note: This is the fourth in a series of Frequently Asked Questions that I receive on a regular basis. Over time, I will be adding answers to more FAQs from brides and photographers. FAQs will also be accessible via a table of contents page, which I will put up … eventually. Hopefully this will be helpful for you guys!)

In addition, I will be making some generalizations based on my experiences and my knowledge of the industry. Like everything else in life, there are exceptions to the norm.

A few years ago, whenever someone would tell me, I want to become a wedding photographer too!, in my naïveté I would immediately exclaim Yea! Go for it! But nowadays, my responses are not quite as enthusiastic. On one hand, I still want to say, You HAVE to pursue your dreams! On the other hand, I also want to say …

10 reasons NOT to become a professional photographer

1. Running a photography business has little to do with photography. If you think you should go pro just because you love photography and friends say good things about your pictures, think again. Being a photography professional has little to do with actual photography. Sure, you’ll shoot your weddings on the weekends, and there’s always editing to do. But ever consider how much of your life you’re going to end up devoting to emails, contracts, client meetings, advertising, troubleshooting, networking, researching? You are the human resources, IT, admin, marketing, sales, and accounting departments all wrapped up in one. And those responsibilities can be a rather significant part of your job. How much experience have you had running a business?

2. You can earn more working full time at Starbucks. It is true that there are some ridiculously rich wedding photographers out there — they live in mansions, drive Ferraris, live a rock star lifestyle. But according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2008 the average professional photographer earned $26,170. If you worked full time at Starbucks, you would be making about $35k/year. You’ve also heard about their awesome benefits, right? The truth is, many among the new generation of professional photographers are able to do what they do because they still living at home, or have a S.O. or spouse who is working full time helping to pay most of the bills. Do you ever plan on raising a family or buying a home? Good luck with that on your $26k income!

3. Your workweek is almost twice as long as the average person’s. When you have a full load, expect to be working at least 60-80 hours per week. Do you know who else works long hours like that? Doctors and lawyers. Guess how much they make?

4. Weekends are work days. Ask any wedding photographer, and they’ll tell you about all the birthdays, parties, baby showers, movies, (friends’) weddings, graduations, dinners, and trips they have missed out on. When the rest of the world is out relaxing and sleeping in and hanging out and having fun, you’ll be waking up at 7 in the morning to shoot someone else’s happy day.

5. You get to pay for your own health insurance. Forget about company benefits. As a professional photographer, you get no health insurance, no 401k, no paid vacation, no sick days, no paternity/maternity leave, no subsidized higher education, nada.

6. You get to pay for your own equipment! You thought camera equipment as a novice was expensive? Wait till you get to the pro level! And add in equipment insurance, business insurance, workshops, laptop upgrades, desktop upgrades, program upgrades, studio rental (unless you work from home), album and print samples, etc. Sure, they’re all business write-offs. But they’re also all money out of your pocket.

7. It’s easy to book jobs if you’re only charging $2-3k/wedding. If you’re excited because an engaged friend of yours is willing to pay you $2500 to shoot their wedding, and you think that this is a sign you should go pro, keep in mind that booking at $2-3k is a piece of cake for any half-decent photographer. The question is, how much do you need in order to earn a living? Do you realistically think you can one day stop budgeting like a college student if you only charge $2500? According to a recent CNN report, the average federal government employee earns about $116k/year in wages and benefits. They generally don’t get fired even if incompetent, clock out everyday at 5pm, and are entitled to hefty pensions when they retire at 55. How much do you want to be compensated for your 80 hour weeks? $50k without health benefits?  $60k with no P.T.O.? Then you need to be booking at a minimum 15-20 weddings/year, and charging at least $4-5k each. How many years do you think it’ll take you to ramp up from charging $2k to charging 2.5x that amount? Most do not think about how difficult it is to scale up.

8. The immigrants weekend warriors are coming to take over your job! These people work during the day as accountants, engineers, IT professionals, etc, and during the weekend, they shoot weddings. Because they already have a stable income, most of them are content charging $2k/wedding. (You’re probably currently one of these yourself.) But if you want to make this a full-time job, how do you expect to compete against an exponentially growing number of people who are delivering a service virtually for free?

9. Most people cannot tell the difference between great and average photography. I don’t think I really need to explain this point, right? But here is the significance of this statement: if the average couple cannot see the difference between your work and Uncle Bob’s weekend shooting, why should they pay you more? To them, your prices are just overinflated. Not only are weekend warriors and novice photographers competing with price–they are also competing with perceived quality. Such is the nature of the industry you are thinking about making a career of.

10. Most never make it. Of the photographers I know who started out around the same time I did, the majority of them are either still struggling to make ends meet, or are seeking another career path. And every week, countless “established” photography studios are going out of business. Most likely, you’d just end up becoming another statistic.

Wasn’t quite the rosy picture you expected, huh? I know that many of us photographers often give off the sense that ours is a glamorous lifestyle. We travel to exotic locations, do what we love, are part of the happiest days of people’s lives, are among beautiful people, get to be our own boss. But that’s only one side of the coin. There’s a good reason why we don’t talk about all these other things. I urge you — before making plans to turn your interest into a career, count your costs. If being a professional photographer was as fun and easy as most people think it is, then everybody would try to become one. Which, I suppose, would explain the sudden glut in the supply of wedding photographers — along with the subsequent (albeit smaller) exodus from the industry. However difficult you think it is to become a successful wedding photographer — it’s likely even harder than that, and there are many things I have also left off this list. Is any of this giving you pause yet?

Or after reading all that, are you even more resolute in becoming a professional wedding photographer? Then perhaps — just perhaps — you have what it takes. If you have been following my blog and facebook for awhile, then you know how much I freaking love my job! And trust me, the benefits faaaar outweigh the drawbacks I talk about above — at least in my experience. At a later date, I’ll be posting the real answer to “What should I do to become a professional photographer?”

p.s. If you would like an automatic reminder, go ahead and add yourself to the email list at the top right corner. Or you can also subscribe to my blog on your RSS reader.

p.p.s. If this is your first time reading my blog, I just want to put it out there that I’m not saying all this to discourage new competition or anything like that! I’m all for the free market, and my philosophy is “Go big, or go home!” Several dozen photographers have told me that I’ve been an inspiration for them to jump into the industry, and I am currently also personally mentoring a handful of local photographers — so much for equipping my competition! =P This post was written to encourage people to think seriously about their plans before betting the whole house.

p.p.p.s. Looks like this entry is getting reposted around the web. Feel free to chime in anytime! Would love to hear what you have to say.  :)

p.p.p.p.s. For a hard look at some of the numbers, here is a veteran photographer’s perspective. Here‘s another.

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For booking inquiries worldwide, or for more information about wedding photography in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, feel free to get in touch with us via our contact form.

There was once a shoot-out between a group of professional photographers. Among them was Yervant, one of the world’s top wedding photographers. Unfortuantely for him, he did not bring his camera and had to borrow an old Rebel from a friend. He picked it up, took a look at it, and said, “Good camera.” Everybody else snickered, because they all had their top of the line camera bodies and $1500 lenses and whatnot. But then at the end of the day when they gathered to compared their images, Yervant’s images were by far the very best.

Remember this: The camera is only a tool. It’s not a magic wand that helps us take amazing pictures. It’s not a guarantee that the $3000 we spent on the body will help us take $3000 pictures. The imagery that comes out of the camera will only be as good as the photographer behind the lens, because far more important than the equipment is our own vision.

I have seen amazing photography taken with simple point and shoot cameras. At least one commercial photographer I know of sometimes uses a Canon G10 (a point and shoot camera) for ad work that goes up on billboards across the nation–and you wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t mentioned it. At the same time, I have also seen pictures from a $6600 1Ds Mark III that don’t look any better than if they were taken with a Rebel Xt.

If our purpose is to own the latest and the greatest, or if we have a lot of disposable income, then by all means–we should go out and buy the best equipment we can. More expensive models are generally much better cameras than cheaper models. But if you’re like the most of us with a limited budget, keep this in mind: a camera is only a tool, and the pictures will only be as good as our vision.

So if you are a beginning photographer and don’t have thousands of dollars burning in your wallet, here is what I recommend: Start first with a lower end camera body. Ditch the stock lens, and spend a little more money buying a good lens, because the lens is generally more important than the body itself. If you have money left over, invest in some workshops with talented photographers you respect. This is the fastest and best way to improve your work. It’ll put you leaps and bounds above the other photographer who just bought the 5D Mark II but did not invest time and money in improving his vision. Keep practicing, keep learning, keep getting better in your work. And eventually, when you start finding yourself being limited by the equipment you’re using rather than a lack of skill or vision, then it’ll be time to upgrade. But by that time, the equipment will be cheaper, the technology will have improved, and your photography will be *that* much better.

For the rest of the answer to this question, click here.

(Note: This is part of a series of Frequently Asked Questions that I receive on a regular basis. Over time, I will be adding answers to more FAQs from brides and photographers. FAQs will also be accessible via a table of contents page, which I will put up … eventually. Hopefully this will be helpful for you guys!)

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For booking inquiries worldwide, or for more information about wedding photography in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, get in touch with us via our contact form.