Geoff Thompsons Blog: Reviewing your Photography Career

Shot on film, Pentax Super A

I first started taking photos in 1970.
That is apart from maybe one or two rolls of film when I was very young.
I started weddings in 1975, strictly as an amateur and progressed to charging for my work as well as the materials.
I last shot a whole wedding probably about 3 years ago.

Just lately I have been archiving a lot of my wedding and other photography.
Some of it shot on film, some on both film and digital and some just digital.
It has been an interesting exercise.
Some weddings,where my memory said I probably didn't do too well,
they weren't so bad.
Likewise some were pretty low in overall standard but usually had some good thrown in with the bad.
Enough to save the day.
By today's standards, and if I was critically honest with myself, overall I would give myself an average score of 6 out of 10.

In the latter years with the benefits of digital capture I probably progressed to about 8 out of 10.

As far as what I have learnt over the journey there has been heaps.

Mastering film shooting and manually setting cameras.

Using an incident light meter.

Using bounce flash and fill flash.

Creative posing of people as couples,singly and in groups.

Shot on digital. Canon 400D

Interacting with customers and people.

Working out a timetable system that works on a wedding day.

The business side of photography.

Mastering digital photography and the necessary post processing.

If you want to learn some of the things I have learnt in more detail then visit my youtube channel and pick out the posts in particular on wedding photography.

I am available for teaching 1:1 or in small groups.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATgCH2ByWdE

These posts are sourced from my course in Wedding Photography that I have taught to many over the years.

Also there are similar posts on this blog and my photography blogs if you search the archives.

https://geoffthompsonsblog.blogspot.com.au/search/label/wedding%20photography%20training

What would I have done differently in hindsight?

1. Possibly used better lenses and cameras.
2. Improved my photography and charged more.
3. Not given away negatives which I did for some time.
4.Supplied more upmarket albums with my packages.

Looking back I think my decision a couple of times to stay part time and continue my day job was a wise thing. The desire is to be totally self supported by photography but that is a very hard gig if you have a family to support.