Art of capturing someone's big day
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Loading... - Ella Murph
- 26 May 2022
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Award-winning photographer Vanessa Joy has been photographing weddings for over 20 years and prides herself on making her client’s big day a fun and stress-free experience. Joy’s introduction to wedding photography came from her mother, who actually worked as a wedding photographer as well. Her high school photography teacher ran a business photographing weddings, too, and after Joy graduated she joined him as an assistant, where she worked for nearly five years. She started her own business in 2008 and has been capturing couples on their big day ever since.
She’s currently one of Canon’s Explorer of Light photographers—an honor that is only bestowed to five wedding photographers in the country. In the lead-up to her busy season, Joy took some time to talk with us about the pre-planning she does before a shoot, her favorite gear, and why she thinks second shooters are indispensable.
How have you seen the wedding photography industry change since you started shooting on your own?
Wedding photography has changed so much. With film, every shot was so planned and expected and you would set up for it by focusing your camera on a pew, and once the bride or groom, whoever got to that pew, that’s when you took the photo. With cameras like the Canon EOS R5 and the EOS R3, which have such impeccable autofocusing, you barely even have to think about focusing anymore. You end up taking a lot more pictures than you did back in the day—which leads to good things.
You capture more moments, you can capture them more easily, and more photos come out. But it also leads to a little bit more work, but then of course they get more images in their wedding albums. When I first started, wedding albums were, I don’t know, maybe 50 pictures. Now, most album designs are about a hundred pages and there are three or four pictures per page. With all of that, client expectations have definitely gone through the roof. I’m just waiting for my first couple to ask me to face-tune all their photos.
How do most of your clients find you these days and what is your process like for confirming jobs?
It’s usually either through a referral or Instagram. If they found me on Instagram or they found me through a venue, they’ve usually already seen my photos. Even if they haven’t, I usually go through some sort of description of what I do the day of. So they inquire, I give them a bit of a starting range for price, just to make sure we’re a good fit there—because there’s a wedding photographer for every budget and a client for every photographer. If I’m within their budget range, we’ll get on a call and I usually ask them a lot of questions. I want to talk to them about their expectations, their wedding, and figure out what they want. From there I can sort of tailor what I do to fit what they want—assuming it actually does fit. I don’t change styles with every wedding that I shoot, I’m going to shoot the way I choose. Read More...
