Trust your photographer

But verify!

I recently spent some time with a woman who has photographed weddings in the past.  She recounted a story where she was shooting a wedding, with her daughter.  She was using her favorite camera to shoot during the ceremony, mostly overall proceedings, while her daughter photographed wide shots.

She went on to explain that during the ceremony, she changed a setting on the camera, unintentionally, and the images began to show up on her rear monitor as very overexposed.  For the next several minutes, she tried a variety of things to overcome the problem and get back to shooting the ceremony.  This included changing camera settings, using a different lens, and more.

After she was done recalling this worst day of her wedding career, I asked "why didn’t you just grab your backup camera?"  Her response was "my daughter had it."

I was somewhat shocked.  Not from the standpoint that her daughter had a camera, but that her daughter had the ONLY OTHER CAMERA, and that the primary photographer had no backup.  Please understand I’m not picking on her, because for all intents and purposes everyone has to start somewhere.  But this woman is a professional photographer, and accepts money for her work.  To be this unprepared means that the level of professionalism suffers considerably.

Well… it comes down to this…

After 25 years as a wedding professional, it has become a personal mission to make sure I am always prepared at a wedding.  This means having backup equipment with me wherever I am at the wedding.  During the ceremony, at least one backup camera is nearby or around my neck or shoulder.  That’s important to me in case something goes wrong with my main camera.  I also carry spare batteries, cards and lenses.  And I won’t waste any time trying to figure out what went wrong with the camera in my hand… I’ll immediately switch to the other camera.  It’s THAT important not to miss anything.

After all, it only happens once.

Ask your photographer if they have backup equipment.  In fact, ask them if they have backup everything.  They may think you’re just checking off a block, but reinforce to them that your wedding images are very important to you and that you only want to make sure that there’s little chance anything will happen to your photos.  It’s important.

Trust your photographer… but verify that they are ready for a camera failure.  It WILL happen to at least one of you.