Over the last five years, Sarah and I have been on more than 150 wedding days with our cameras in-hand. But during those same five years, we’ve also attended a handful of weddings as members of the wedding party, or just as wedding guests. Kind of like the old saying, “doctors make terrible patients,” when it comes to Sarah and I, these wedding photographers make terrible wedding guests 😂 After so intimately associating wedding days with work, it’s hard to just kick back and relax on a wedding day, especially when we see some pretty rough wedding photographer mistakes before our very eyes!

 

The interesting thing we’ve noticed is that the mistakes we saw other photographers make are things we would never have warned our photography students about. They’re things we never even imagined that a professional wedding photographer would do until we saw them with our own eyes! We know that every photographer does things differently. And we understand better than anyone that we’re not perfect wedding photographers! But today we’re sharing 10 wedding photographer mistakes that we’ve seen over the years.

 

 

Wedding Photographer Mistake #1: Not Dressing like a Professional

All weddings vary in their level of formality, from the barefoot oceanfront elopement to the most formal black-tie wedding. Because of that, there’s no hard-and-fast rule for how to dress for every wedding day. However, Sarah and I feel like a totally reasonable rule of thumb is to dress at least as formally as the guests will be dressed at the wedding. To help navigate this, we have a whole blog about how to dress for photoshoots and weddings here!

 

If the wedding is typical wedding formal, as a photographer, you should dress at least to that level. On one nice wedding day, Sarah and I witnessed a wedding photographer in hiking boots, chinos, and a short-sleeve shirt. He looked more at home on a casual day-hike through Shenandoah than on a high-end wedding day!

 

Mistake #2: Disrupting the Ceremony for Photos

While it’s our job to “do anything for the shot”, there’s definitely a point where photography can become disruptive. This is especially true during the ceremony which — at the end of the day — is what every wedding is truly about! We once saw a wedding photographer walking backwards as she was photographing her bride walking down the aisle. As the photographer approached the edge of the covered patio that the wedding party was standing on, she saw that the maid of honor was standing in her way — and pushed her off the patio in order to get a few extra photos of the bride! 😲 Maybe photographers shouldn’t do anything for the shot.

 

 

Mistake #3: Wearing Sunglasses While Photographing

Sure, this is a relatively minor compared to some of the other wedding photographer mistakes in this list. But the next time you’re outside on a bright sunny day, try to look down at a photo on your phone while you’re wearing sunglasses. You’ll notice right away that the colors are all out of whack, and it’s difficult to see details in the brightest and darkest parts of the image. So I probably don’t have to tell you how confused I was when we saw a wedding photographer shoot an entire wedding day wearing sunglasses and shooting using his camera’s LCD screen (not looking through the viewfinder)!

 

Wedding Photographer Mistake #4: Not Reading the Crowd

Wedding photographers wear a ton of hats on a wedding day, two of which are crowd-organizer and people-pleaser. Emotional intelligence and social awareness are super important for a photographer who wants to get good results, and keep people comfortable in front of their cameras! So you can imagine how hard Sarah and I were cringing as we overheard a wedding photographer cursing (a lot) and trying to use sexual innuendo to get laughs out of a bride and groom, their wedding party, and their families… at an extremely conservative Christian wedding 😬

 

 

Mistake #5: Not Making an Effort to be Personable with the VIPs

When you run a business so dependent upon your personal brand, every time you interact with someone, you represent your business. Plus, you never know which mother-of-the-bride or groomsmen or bridesmaid could be your next client (or source of referrals for new jobs). So you have to imagine my perplexion when, a few years ago I was a groomsman in a wedding and the photographer interacted with us like we were being photographed for a police lineup.

 

No introduction, no jokes, not even a smile. With a total stone face and utter lack of emotion: “Okay guys, stand together with your arms around each other.” *Snap* “Okay now put your hands in your pockets.” *Snap* “Okay now each of you with the groom.” *Snap* “Okay good. Next… Okay next… Next… Okay next… Great we’re all set.” *Walks away.*

 

Mistake #6: Not Accounting for Cultural Differences

We understand how easy it can be once you’ve shot dozens of weddings that follow a similar flow to assume that all weddings will follow that same pattern. But wedding traditions vary wildly the moment you step outside the culture that you’re used to photographing. Jewish weddings, African weddings, Indian weddings, Catholic weddings, African-American weddings, etc. all have different nuances during many portions of the day.

 

Once, during a Jewish wedding ceremony, we noticed the photographer changing lenses (and therefore not taking photos) during an extremely important part of the ceremony because they apparently were unaware of the cultural and religious significance of it. If you’re afraid that you might be unfamiliar with something, ask your clients before the wedding day!

 

 

Wedding Photographer Mistake #7: Fighting with Other Vendors in Front of the Bride and Groom

One of the biggest wedding photographer mistakes that a vendor can make is adding stress to the day for their clients. Several years ago we were at a wedding during which the lead photographer and the videographer got into an argument about something relatively trivial (the placement of a tripod during the ceremony). When they seemed to reach an impasse, rather than compromising, one of them conceding, or them asking the person who’s job it is to handle these kinds of differences (the wedding planner), the videographer brought the question to the bride while she was getting into her dress!

 

It felt like the way a toddler tells on their older brother who isn’t sharing their toys. Of course, the photographer then felt the need to defend himself, and the bride was visibly flustered at the sight of her professional vendors arguing in front of her. You cannot control how professional others will act. But you can control how you respond. 

 

Mistake #8: Making a Bad Photography Timeline

Sarah and I sat in ceremony chairs outside a vineyard several years ago in horror. We watched in low-key panic as the sun went down over the mountains just behind the couple in the final moments of their ceremony. Now, we have absolutely no problem with a ceremony perfectly timed with sunset. But we knew from one of the groomsmen that the couple had not done a first look before the ceremony. This means that they had almost an hour of family, wedding party, and couple photos to take… After the sun had gone down! Unless you’re an off-camera-flash photographer with a more commercial style, this is a BIG problem!

 

Apparently, the photographer hadn’t accounted for the big mountain just west of the venue, which hid the sun almost an hour before the “official” sunset. Don’t just go off of what Google says the sunset is on a given day. Do research on the venue you will be shooting at and plan from there!

 

 

Mistake #9: Bringing an Amateur Second Shooter

This one is slightly cheating because we actually heard about this wedding photographer mistake, rather than witnessing it firsthand. We were at a networking event with other wedding vendors a few years ago. We heard another photographer tell a story that she thought was hilarious, but made us feel mortified. She told a story about a couple that hired her to travel across the country for a wedding. But she waited too long to find a second shooter, and couldn’t find someone locally.

 

So she brought her husband along as the second shooter. “Oh, I didn’t know that your husband was a photographer too,” commented one of the other photographers listening to the story. “Oh, he’s not. He had never taken a photo in his life before that day. But he was a second person with a camera in his hand. So they technically got the second shooter they paid for!” she replied with a laugh. 😨 That’s… that’s just not okay.

 

Mistake #10: Appearing Visibly Disinterested

Wedding photographers work really long days. We run from place to place, think fast, direct large crowds, and make split-second decisions. And we often do it for 10 or 12 hours with barely any breaks! So it totally makes sense for photographers to take a few moments here and there to sit. Especially during the slower portions of the day, like awaiting the ceremony to start, or while their other photographer takes dancing photos.

 

However, Sarah and I attended a relatively small wedding years ago with only about 12 young people. The rest of the wedding was older, non-dancing family members of the young couple. So the 14 of us hit the dance floor hard and danced the night away for hours! However, the photographers sat next to each other at the edge of the dancefloor… Scrolling on their phones or chatting with each other! They only made the occasional effort to pick up their cameras and take a lazy photo from 12 feet away. They didn’t even stand up to take the photos! “No…please… don’t get up on our account. We’re just the people that hired you to photograph our wedding.”

 

 

Hopefully you’ll never make these same wedding photographer mistakes! And if you’ve made any of them in the past — there’s no worries. We all will continue to grow and adapt as photographers and as business owners!

 

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