The Secret Sauce of Running a Wedding Photography Business

It’s no secret that I wasn’t always a photographer. In fact, I never grew up wanting to be a photographer (I actually wanted to be a writer). I’ll be the first to admit that this whole photography business was the result of some fortuitous coincidences that were carefully navigated and managed by my previous experiences failures in life. Folks don’t believe us when we tell them that “it just sorta happened on its own”. But it’s (mostly) true, and we’re all very grateful for it.

Wedding photography is a market where the competition is fierce and one’s reputation can be beneficial just easily as it can be unforgiving. While I’d like to attribute skill and vision for my inconceivably rapid growth from a relative unknown shlep with a camera, to doing 40+ weddings a year, I know for a fact that this is absolutely untrue. Over the years, I’ve committed every type of photography faux-pas you can imagine, from Uncle-Bobbing weddings to spot-coloring images for final delivery. So for sure, my (sometimes questionable) prowess with a camera has never been the secret ingredient to our rapid growth. And yes, I just used the word shlep.

We get many inquiries from many up-and-coming photographers asking how we got started in this business, and how we managed to become as busy as we are today. I only hesitate to respond because I know they’re looking for a magical set of instructions that they’ll try to mimic in their own businesses (with varying rates of success). I’m here to tell you that there are no secret ingredients, and there’s no sorcery going on here either. It’s simply just doing the work, staying humble, ignoring your critics and never losing sight of your dreams.

Practicing your craft certainly helps. And being a genuinely nice, good human being doesn’t hurt either :).

Bride and groom poses for their portraits on their wedding day.

I just wanted to share a photo from my first “official” wedding where I wasn’t the Uncle Bob.

We will always be thankful to Laurie and James for believing in our vision, and for planting this crazy idea into our heads that we could one day even think of becoming professional photographers :)

Always thankful,

Ben & Karis

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Northern NJ, NYC documentary Wedding Photographer, Educator & All-Around Nice Guy

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