Re: What if guests show up with better gear
 

Man, all I can say is that's a bad deal if the guest shoot better then you. I would worry more about a guy like Noa attending the wedding on his day off and just decides to shoot some footage, I have been that guy before.

But I say, live and let live. Years ago, while shooting a high end wedding, there was this jerk in the aisle blocking my shot of the bride coming down. Bad luck rained down on me that day as my camera developed a head clog as the brides was coming down the aisle.

Guess who was my new best friend?

Re: What if guests show up with better gear
 

You really need to find some weddings to work, and it will all fall into place. Don't overthink it before you start.

You can wear what you want, you have to be who you are, and your customers will accept you based on your pesonality and work. But first you need to just jump into it with some people and get a feel for it.

I wear a suit, you do not have to do what I do. I have seen photogs wearing flip flops, so who cares?

Dockers and a nice shirt are perfectly fine for many weddings, but it depends also on the venue and individual wedding what feels right. You have to be comfortable to work, and to be able to focus on the job at hand.

Video people all have their own idea of how to dress, what cameras to use, etc., so by jumping in you can find where you fit in.

Get on the phone and start calling some folks, tell them about your equipment, and try to set up some dates so you can get some experience.

Re: What if guests show up with better gear
 

Stop worrying about unnecessary things and just focus on doing your job. Your clients hired you because they like your work. Keep it simple.

Re: What if guests show up with better gear
 

You're right Jeff. One of the most important things someone mentioned is "they hired you for what they saw you can do".. e.g. a demo reel. I don't have that, so right now my guess is I should start out shooting some weddings for free to get some footage to then show. I know of several photographers that say they could probably land me a gig working for little money (or free as they know I need a demo reel). I just need to figure out how to be a one man show with two cameras, set up the audio right, and what shots I *must* have before I can show up trying to shoot a video.

There is also the task of learning how to really put pieces of the footage together to make a good video. I've never liked the long 1 hour videos that are in the order it was shot. It's always appealed to me to see a sort of 2 min trailer, and then maybe a 10 to 20 minute video with various cuts, b-roll, etc.

The music is another issue.. gotta use those sites that allow for buying music for weddings, which until the past few years hasn't been much of a concern but now more than ever with sites like youtube and such running software that determines songs are illegal!

Re: What if guests show up with better gear
 

That's a good thing, then at least I can compete on an equal level with other videographers when it comes to adding emotion with music, youtube seems to be doing a quite good job at it, my latest video was uploaded by my client to YT and got the message that he might be using a song that should be licensed, it even had the name of the group and title of the song mentioned so whatever software they are using, it's working. No issue in my case as I had licensed the song properly. I only wish Vimeo would do the same so some of my Belgian competitors could start using licensed music as well, I"m still amazed at how easy they can get away with just ripping popular commercial songs from very known artists and Vimeo not doing anything about it, but that's another story. :)

Re: What if guests show up with better gear
 

Thumbs up. I'm always happy to have additional people recording. If a guest with a DSLR or a relative with the videocamera stresses you out, you haven't been recording long enough.

Re: What if guests show up with better gear
 

One occasion I was jealous of a guest's footage: --

When doing speeches at reception, I'm generally on midshot or head-and-shoulders close-up. Why? To get all the facial expressions. Tripod is generally around normal operating height (unless I'm obscuring anyone's view...).

But at one wedding I noticed an eight-year-old girl, sitting on the floor, holding an iPad, rolling a full-shot of the speaker, centre-frame. She got body language from the rest of his body, nice reflections in the polished wooden floor, interesting backlighting, interesting low angle, interesting background and environment, etc. Plus, you could see everything happening in his face anyway. Never been so jealous of a guest's footage.

Of course, hopefully mine would have been higher resolution, better exposed, and more stable. So take that, eight-year-old girl.