For some very good reasons, I have decided to stop photographing weddings. There are many lessons I learned from the challenges of weddings that may be useful to all photographers.

Wedding Photography Is Not a Great Place to Start Professionally

Many photographers see weddings as a stepping stone into the world of professional photography. However, it’s possibly one of the hardest genres to do well. You need a wide range of skills in different genres, perfect camera control in each, an understanding of your system’s strengths and weaknesses, and the ability to create compelling images that, nonetheless, have your own style. If you get it wrong, you have ruined the most important day of two people’s lives.

I’ve seen a lot of wedding photographers come and go because their photography work was just not good enough or they didn’t have the personal wherewithal to meet the needs of the clients or run a business. Before asking for money from clients, you need to have your work assessed by another professional to find out if it is good enough – not by your Mom or partner, though; they will only say nice things.

Coping With Stressful Photoshoots

Many photographers find weddings stressful. All established and successful photographers worry that their images are not good enough. On top of that, there is the expectation that the photographer will deliver every shot that the happy couple expects. There’s also the nagging concern that you have the right amount of equipment and haven’t left anything behind.

Although those doubts cross my mind, I’ve learned not to let them bother me. I’ve been doing this long enough to realize what is expected. I know what equipment I need. I regularly practice with my cameras, so I know what their capabilities are too. Then, I have settings applied to custom modes, so the cameras are ready for any circumstance with a quick turn of the dial.

Talking of equipment, you won’t be the only person who is stressed. I always carry a couple of pocket packets of tissues with me. These are for mopping the face of a tearful child with a runny nose, the sweaty forehead of a middle-aged man, and happy mothers’, fathers’, grooms’, and brides’ tears. They are also useful for cleaning spilled wine. Handy hint: good quality tissues don’t break up when they get wet.

How Well Do You Know Your Camera?

Photography and operating equipment must become second nature, so you are not dithering on the day and stressed about whether you will get the shot. Can you put your finger on the menu button without looking? Do you remember how each of your custom modes is set? Do you know what shutter speeds freeze and blur dancers’ movements? What is the maximum ISO you are happy to shoot at? At ISO 25,600 how far from your camera can a face be before definition is lost when you apply Lightroom’s noise reduction?

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

That’s a polite version of an old military adage, and it applies to most things in life. Just turning up on the day is not the way to do a wedding. I meet with the couple and sometimes their families, and I usually do a pre-wedding shoot too. I have a contract that I go through and get the clients to sign, as well as a form for them to fill in that tells me what they expect. You get some unusual requests – more than once I’ve been asked for relatives’ partners to be stood at the edge of group shots so they are more easily removed from the picture after an anticipated break-up.

Four days in advance of a wedding, I check and prepare all my equipment. Four days is long enough for me to replace faulty equipment if necessary.

What if My Equipment Fails?

Many worry that the camera, lens, or memory cards will fail. That doesn’t bother me. I’ve never had camera equipment fail during an event, and I carry spares. However, other photographers have suffered disasters.

I don’t have empirical data to back up this anecdotal evidence, but I know of one brand popular with wedding photographers whose cameras fail regularly and worryingly often. I’ve also met a photographer who had both memory cards in the camera fail; he lost the entire wedding shoot. Using reliable equipment and backing up your photos as soon as possible is essential.

Protect Your Lenses

At a recent wedding, I was shooting on a gravel driveway in front of a stately home. A group of children decided it would be fun to kick the stones, so consequently, I quickly covered the front element of my lenses with my palms just in time as the grit bounced off the back of my hands. At a previous event, I had a child grab the front of my lens with sticky fingers. Another photographer I know had the front element of his new lens sprayed with hair lacquer. I know it is a contentious issue, but I recommend protecting the front of the lens with a good-quality UV filter. I use Urth Plus+ filters because I can’t see any difference in my photos between them being on or off the camera.

The Best-Laid Schemes of Mice and Men Gang Aft Agley

Things go wrong. Last year, I was shooting a wedding at an 80-acre country estate. The wedding chapel was a converted boathouse down by the river. I had agreed to meet the bride in the car park next to the stately home. An employee of the estate sat with me in a four-wheel drive utility vehicle, where he said we would see them arrive; he was going to drive the bridal party and me to the chapel.

After a long wait, I got a panicked phone call asking where I was. The limousine had bypassed the car park and, unadvisedly, driven down the steep dirt track to the wedding venue. I was taken there at speed. The wedding otherwise ran smoothly. So, always have a phone with you but remember to put it on Do Not Disturb before the ceremony starts.

Be Everybody’s Friend

When I shoot a wedding, I treat my clients and the wedding guests like friends that I want to help.

At a lot of weddings, there seems to be nobody coordinating the day. Often, the bride has organized everything. But on the big day, she has other things on her plate. So, sometimes I end up directing the event.

There are always little things that need to be sorted, and I find myself helping in different ways that are unrelated to photography. I have no objection to that, as it is in my interest to see the day pass by as painlessly as possible. I want the subjects of my photos to look happy and not stressed. Furthermore, a wedding day shoot can mean 11 or 12 hours of work, and there are big lulls between photography sessions that can become boring. Helping the wedding party breaks the monotony.

What Do I Do About Others With Cameras?

Other people like taking photos at weddings, especially group shots. I’ve seen some professional photographers deliberately get in the way of those doing that, but I do the opposite and invite others to take their snaps after I have taken mine. It doesn’t lessen my work, and I prefer to be seen as friendly and be remembered for future events.

To Be Continued

So you have done all the preparation and taken thousands of photos. So what comes next? The hard work! That follows in my next article.

Do you photograph weddings or events? Are you successful at it? Is it something you want to try? Is it something you attempted and gave up? Let’s hear your thoughts about the preparation and shooting the wedding in the comments.

The Sony World Photography Awards is arguably the most prestigious and largest photo contest. The 2024 edition is open to entries and some of its rules are under fire.

Over at Fstoppers, Kim Simpson writes that the Sony World Photography Awards’ Student category doesn’t adequately cater to all photography students. At the heart of the issue is that the contest has age limits in the category, preventing photography students over the age of 30 from entering.

Specifically, the Student category is open to anyone aged from 18 to 30 years old who is in a full-time photography program. Students answer a set brief with five to 10 images, and the judges will select up to 10 shortlisted photographers. An overall winner receives the “Student Photographer of the Year” title, a massive boon to a budding career, and a significant prize package of Sony digital imaging equipment worth €30,000 for them and their school.

Winning the competition is a huge deal for a photographer, and Simpson argues that not all photography students fit neatly into the box the World Photography Organization and the Sony World Photography Awards have crafted.

“A student competition should extend beyond age brackets and celebrate diverse experiences, perspectives, and creative journeys. By imposing an age limit, the competition inadvertently perpetuates a narrow definition of what it means to be a student photographer. Photography is not confined to a specific age group, and the restrictive policies risk sidelining the rich contributions that mature students can bring to the table,” Simpson writes.

Simpson herself became a photography student in her late twenties after she had already entered the field professionally. “The exclusionary nature of these competitions not only affects individuals who, like me, ventured into photography later in life, but also undermines the diversity of perspectives that could contribute to the richness of the artistic discourse within the student community,” the photographer explains.

As an aside, it seems unfair that someone who has been working professionally in the field can enter a student competition, but there is seemingly no restriction about that in the Sony World Photography Awards.

For those who have aged out of the Student category, their only option is to enter the Open category, which is full of amateurs and professionals of all skill and experience levels. Further, the Open category winner receives $5,000 in cash rather than the bundle of Sony imaging equipment for the student and their educational institution.

For Simpson, this is not a truly viable alternative for older students. “To even the playing field, student photography competitions should consider adopting more flexible age policies. Eliminating the upper age limit would acknowledge the varied life trajectories of students,” she concludes.

While it is far too late for the organizers to change their policy for this year’s competition, it is something that the World Photography Organization may want to consider for future editions of the very popular Sony World Photography Awards.

However, is Simpson making a mountain of a molehill? And further, should every category in all photo contests be for everyone to enter? Of course not. Reasonable rules restrict who can enter photo contests. That is nothing new.

Simpson has raised some excellent points and made a strong case that a “photography student” can be of any age, whether a traditional student in their late teens or early twenties or a non-traditional student in their thirties or forties. Undoubtedly, a 46-year-old photography student is just as much of a legitimate student as someone fresh out of high school.

Further, as Simpson says, allowing students across a more comprehensive age range to enter a photo contest will increase the diversity of perspectives in the entrant pool, which benefits the competition at large.

The Sony World Photography Awards argues at the top of its Student category page that it is “providing a platform for photography students worldwide.” If that’s the contest’s primary objective, its age restrictions are counterproductive.

However, if there are other concerns, perhaps the rules make sense. While Simpson argues that pursuing equality would mean removing the age cap from the student category, I think equality could be understood differently.

The same expanded life experience that Simpson believes adds to the student photography competition, I’d argue, unfairly disadvantages younger students who have had less time to gain important perspectives and, perhaps more importantly, literally have had fewer chances to take photos and enhance their skills.

If the primary, or only, concern is showcasing the most diverse range of skills and narratives, then that’s what the Open category is for. The Sony World Photography Awards has different goals for its student category, which is perfectly reasonable.

Simpson is right that photography students aren’t exclusively aged 18 to 30. By operating within this constraint, the Sony World Photography Awards are inherently exclusionary — as is every photo contest, as they all have rules that prevent some people from entering.

The question is not really if the rules should be more inclusive, but precisely what the intention of the student category is, and what the organizers hope to achieve. How the World Photography Organization answers those fundamental questions will determine the most suitable rules and regulations.

Besides, I am way less concerned with the age bracket than that the competition is restricted to those undertaking a “full-time photography program,” which must be a formalized photography course/credit/module/foundation within a diploma/Bachelor of Arts/Master of Arts curriculum. If the goal is inclusivity, a noble albeit always somewhat unattainable aim, the competition should open its student category to part-time students.

Not everyone can afford to enter a full-time college program. Frankly, I’m more interested in seeing the diversity of perspectives that are left out because a part-time student doesn’t count than I am about older full-time students. Further, someone who must juggle improving their educational goals against maintaining a job and possibly raising a family may benefit significantly from the attractive prize pool.

There is no perfect solution and no set of rules that will satisfy everyone. However, that doesn’t mean the Sony World Photography Awards shouldn’t always strive to improve. Does that mean changing how it operates its student category?

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For the first time, scientists have photographed a large, elusive rat that’s on the brink of extinction. Called the Vangunu giant rat (Uromys vika), the critically endangered species lives on just one island in the South Pacific, where logging has decimated much of its forest habitat.

Researchers hope the new photographs of the mysterious creatures will encourage local government leaders to protect the last bits of intact forest on Vangunu, which is part of the Solomon Islands, located northeast of Australia. They shared the images in a new paper published this month in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Indigenous people in the Zaira community on Vangunu have long known about big rats that dwell in the trees and are capable of cracking coconuts with their teeth. However, researchers who visited the island were never able to observe or capture one, though they did find a large fecal pellet they suspected came from a giant rat in 2011.

Then, in 2015, loggers cutting down a tree captured an injured Vangunu giant rat, which died not long afterward. They preserved the body as well as they could, then sent it to the Queensland Museum in South Brisbane.

From that specimen, researchers confirmed the existence of the mysterious creatures, which are at least twice as large as a common rat. They also formally described the rat in a paper—the first new rodent species from the Solomon Islands to be recorded in more than eight decades.

But as commercial logging continued to fell trees on Vangunu, the scientists knew they needed more information about the giant rats.

They worked with the Zaira community to set up camera traps in tree species the rodents prefer and used sesame oil to lure them. In the past, researchers had tried using peanut butter, but those attempts were not successful—it only appealed to non-native black rats.

In the end, the team captured 95 images of four individual Vangunu giant rats—three females and one male. All the photos were taken at night, with most centered around midnight.

Collaborating with the Zaira community was critical to the project’s success, the researchers say.

“The knowledge is with the people,” says study co-author Kevin Sese, a researcher at Solomon Islands National University, to the New York Times’ Rebecca Carballo. “They are the custodians of the local knowledge… If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have known where to place the cameras.”

The photos are “extremely positive news for this poorly known species,” says study lead author Tyrone Lavery, a mammalogist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, in a statement. “This comes at a critical juncture for the future of Vangunu’s last forests—which the community of Zaira have been fighting to protect from logging for 16 years.”

The Zaira community wants the government to declare their part of the island, located on the southern side, a protected natural area where mining and logging are prohibited. However, the Solomon Islands Environment Ministry gave a logging company permission to operate in the area late last year, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Liam Fox reported in May.

In addition to the 200 people and the giant rats that call Zaira home, the area provides habitat for leatherback turtles and New Georgia monkey-faced bats, which are both vulnerable species.

Documenting the presence of the endangered rat was “considered a vital part of conservation efforts” for Vangunu island, per the statement.

“We know this species doesn’t live in logged forests, so we needed to try and prove it still survived in the remaining forest on the island,” Lavery tells Newsweek’s Robyn White. “Our photographs were only the second time scientists have documented the species. We showed it still survives, and we highlight the importance of the last remaining tract of forest on Vangunu.”