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Recommended Reading- Digital Wedding Photography Secrets

Chris Gampat
No Comments
03/03/2010
3 Mins read

Last Updated on 03/03/2010 by

Besides reading blogs for tips and tricks, it’s sometimes also great to refer to handy guides. If you’re looking to get into wedding photography or if you’re already one but always looking for ways to improve then Digital Wedding Photography Secrets by Rick Sammon is a great book to pick up. The book is truly as versatile as wedding photographers need to be and will serve as both as learning guide and refresher to photographers. It’s a great time to talk about it with WPPI happening soon. My review is after the jump.

Sammon is not a wedding photographer, he’s more from the studio world: but he did create this guide using his studio knowledge and that of many wedding photographers. Nonetheless, the knowledge in the book is invaluable, tried and true, and still all very useful.

The book has nine chapters and expands on particular subjects through talking about pointers/tips and briefly expanding upon them all. For example, he starts out with his own recipe to success. In this recipe, he talks a bit about knowing your gear and focuses on particulars with examples. This process continues with other tips as well. For reference, his gear list is essentially the same as mine. When it gets into studio shooting though, he got a whole different set of toys to use.

The book is filled with loads of photos and examples which is really useful to illustrate the points Rick talks about. For example, as we know, most brides prefer the photojournalistic approach to shooting weddings vs the studio approach. Rick shows us just how important getting the correct lighting is in the studio by using reflectors, stands, etc. He also says that you need to get it right the first time and not try to play around as the bride and groom don’t want to see you mess around with lighting.

A way to do this: Rick suggests working with a dummy first.

In addition to that, there’s also loads of post-processing tips. Rick uses Aperture and Camera RAW mostly as well as talking about a couple of Photoshop techniques. All of this is talked about before the actual documentation process is expanded upon.

Chapter 4, Weekend Wedding Photographer, is perhaps the most essential chapter of the book and also the longest. It details everything in the wedding documentary process and gives tips, new approaches, angles of thought, etc. to it all. The excellent thing is that it also promotes creativity in your photography skills. This is always an essential skill to develop so that you can constantly reel in new clients with your portfolio.

After this chapter, it’s mostly photoshopping skills that are detailed.

So what makes this book different than all the others? Well, it’s affordable, fits well into a messenger bag when on the subway for reading, can serve as a reference guide in your bag if on a shoot (and you have a spare couple of minutes) and can also help you with everything you need to know in terms of actually shooting a wedding and getting the finished products out to your client. Where it lacks though is the actual business side of shooting. For that, you’re better off finding another book.

Either way, I totally recommend it.

books digital wedding photography secrets guides learn to shoot Photography rick sammon weddings WPPI
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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