The Fstoppers Wedding DVD Is Now Available

After 3 years of planning and 2 years of filming and editing, our newest tutorial: How To Become A Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer is now available. Our goal was to create the most complete and informative video on wedding photography and we believe we have done it with this 14 hours digital download. The world is filled with people trying to turn their passion for photography into a career and I believe that wedding photography is the easiest way to start making money with your camera.

This is the reason Fstoppers.com exists

When Patrick and I came up with the idea for Fstoppers we wanted the site to be a hub for all genres of photography. We knew that wedding photography wasn’t the most exciting genre so we started to film videos on fashion, extreme sports, headshots, portraits, cars etc. While we were filming all of these videos we began to plan out our series on wedding photography because at the time, there wasn’t a single respectful video on wedding photography that we could find online.  Our goal from the very beginning was to create the most useful and complete video on wedding photography available. After we had come up with about 30 mini chapters, we started filming this wedding video chapter by chapter. Some of these chapters we actually filmed and edited over 3 times because we weren’t happy with the finished product or we had to add to them years later as technology had changed. In December of 2012 we finally finished and were shocked to find that we were left with over 14 hours of tightly edited content.

 

Our goal

At the beginning of my career it was so frustrating trying to learn everything from scratch on my own. The information in books or on Youtube videos was a complete joke; it was either completely outdated or worthless generic information. The only way I “made it” as quickly as I did was by assisting other very talented photographers in my area. I learned all that I could from them but I still had to figure the majority of it out on my own. I didn’t know how to legally start a business or pay my taxes, so I had to pay a CPA hundreds of dollars to explain it to me. I didn’t know if magazine ads were valuable in my area so I took a $3000 loss to learn my lesson. Nobody in town had ever made a photobooth so over a 6 year period I created and perfected my own. When I met Patrick a few years into my career I told him everything that had taken me years to learn and within 1 year he went from not owning a camera to being a full time wedding photographer. Our goal was to make this tutorial that 3 year head-start that I gave Patrick. We wanted to cover every aspect of wedding photography, including the most important aspect, business.

 

What does it cover

As I said above this digital download is broken down into 8 chapters that house 27 chapters that equal over 14 hours of content. A basic over view of each chapter can be seen below.

Chapter 1
Intro - What is “Commercial Wedding Photography” - Mandatory Gear - The Importance of Assisting - Composition, Exposure, White Balance

Chapter 2
Advertising - Bridal Portraits: Lighting 101 - Pricing

Chapter 3
Meeting With Potential Clients -The Engagement Session  - Designing Your Website - Music - Slideshows - The Importance of Video 

Chapter 4
On Camera Flash - Getting Ready and Details - The Ceremony - Fusion 

Chapter 5
Formals and Groups - Interview with Pye Jirsa 

Chapter 6
Four Ways to Light a Reception - The Cake - The Rings - The Departure - Taxes, Write-offs, and Accounting

Chapter 7
Interview with Cliff Mautner

Chapter 8
Post Processing - Creating a Photobooth - Photo / Video Slideshow, SmugMug.com - Delivering Your Final Product - Final Words

 

Who’s it for

We have designed this tutorial for photographers that already have a good understanding of their gear. We do not go over the basics in this video so don’t expect to learn about standard camera settings here. Before you buy this you will need to learn all about cameras, lenses, shutter speed, ISO, aperture, and white balance.  We will quickly jump into the basics of single, off camera lighting and then move quickly into  more complex lighting scenarios. Our goal was to make this video helpful for those who have never shot a single wedding and those who are already professional wedding photographers who are looking to take their businesses to the next level. We even added over 4 hours of interviews with photographers that are far more successful than we are so no matter how good you are, there will be more to learn.

 

Money back guarantee 

This isn’t your standard fun workshop on lighting or how to use your camera. This tutorial is meant to make you money, way more money than the $300 we are asking for it. Luckily you don’t have to take our word for it. We will give anyone their money back if they are unhappy with this tutorial for any reason. If you are on the fence about wedding photography we challenge you to buy it and watch it anyway. If after watching it you still don’t want to shoot weddings, let us know and we will still give you a full refund. Due to advertising costs and affiliate programs, our money back guarantee must be applied to sales made within 30 days of the original invoice date.

 

We don’t want to stray away from offering high quality content for free on Fstoppers and so over the next year we will be releasing parts from many of the shooting sections for free here on Fstoppers. The business portions of this tutorial were designed for professional photographers and the majority of them will never be released. You have absolutely nothing to lose. Give it a try and you may find out that wedding photography may be your quickest route to becoming a full time photographer.