![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Virginia-Wedding-Photographer-Loudoun-Golf-and-Country-Club_085.jpg\" "\\"Virginia")
<\/p>\nI was at a wedding recently and I had a guest come up to me with one question, “Are you shooting in manual mode?”\u00a0 It wasn’t a question I was expecting him to ask but it did get me thinking.\u00a0 I was shooting in manual mode and it’s just how I feel comfortable being able to manually manipulate all of my settings, especially when working with an off camera flash.\u00a0 The guest went on to say that he was himself photographing a wedding in Richmond the following weekend and that he was going to try out some new gear.\u00a0 It got me thinking about a few things.\u00a0 The thing of it is, being able to shoot in manual mode on your camera does not mean you are capable of photographing a wedding, nor does having the latest and greatest gear.<\/p>\n
I had an acquaintance call me up excitedly about three years ago and exclaimed that he was going into photography.\u00a0 He had purchased the most expensive camera in Nikon’s lineup and had the top of the line flashes.\u00a0 I was impressed at his investment in his newly chosen career.\u00a0 I asked him to send me over some photos and that I’d be happy to take a look.\u00a0 The photos didn’t look anywhere near professional.\u00a0 It proved a point, that even if you have the latest and greatest gear, that does not make you a qualified photographer.\u00a0 This acquaintance soon discovered that and decided photography wasn’t his chosen field.\u00a0 It is not the gear itself that makes the photo great, it’s the person operating the photography equipment.\u00a0 Why am I telling you this?\u00a0 Firstly because it was on my mind, but secondly because I have heard of cases where couples invest in an expensive camera and hand it over to Uncle Frank to do their wedding photos.\u00a0 This is probably the biggest mistake you could ever make!\u00a0 While well intentioned it may be, it’s too important of a day to risk handing it over to an amateur or non-professional.\u00a0 Ask yourself this?\u00a0 If you needed to have surgery of any kind or let’s even say something as innocent as your timing belt in your car replaced, would purchasing the right tools for the job and handing them over to someone with little to no experience yield the results you would want?\u00a0 Most definitely not.<\/p>\n
If you want to pursue a career in photography then I applaud you for following your passion.\u00a0 Before you go down the road of investing a ton of money in gear thinking that is what will improve your craft, realize that no amount of expensive gear will make your work what it could become without understanding the principles of proper exposure to include how to meter your light, how to determine the best aperture for the situation, what shutter speed will I need to keep this image sharp, and what ISO (film speed) should I use given the current lighting situation?\u00a0 Even with this knowledge, you may still not produce the images you think up in your head.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because being able to compose a shot is another aspect entirely and that’s a topic for another time.<\/p>\n
I’m not writing this to discourage anyone from joining the ever growing base of photographers.\u00a0 I absolutely love my work from the technical aspects of photography, to the art of photography, to the business of photography.\u00a0 I love it all.\u00a0 I am simply putting out there that if you think a camera will make you a great photographer or capable of photographing something as important as a wedding day, think again and take care because a wedding day is not something you can ever get back.\u00a0 Remember that your clients, family, or friends are counting on you to capture their memories and in the words of Henri Cartier Bresson, “Photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again.”<\/p>\n
A little heavy for a Monday morning post?\u00a0 I think I’m going to go crank up some Imagine Dragons and eat some ice-cream \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
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I was at a wedding recently and I had a guest come up to me with one question, “Are you shooting in manual mode?”\u00a0 It wasn’t a question I was expecting him to ask but it did get me thinking.\u00a0 I was shooting in manual mode and it’s just how I feel comfortable being able […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126,318],"tags":[319,309],"class_list":{"0":"post-8453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business","7":"category-photography","8":"tag-photography-industry","9":"tag-photography-tips","10":"entry","11":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8453"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8460,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8453\/revisions\/8460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dujourblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}