Jerry Ghionis and Bambi Cantrell did a great workshop tour that was extremely helpful to me. I've got a Fershop coming up that I am really excited about. I've attended a lot of workshops from "rockstars" and I must admit that I almost always regret going and don't get my money's worth. Actually some of the best workshops I attended were by local photographers who weren't hugely popular in the photography world but are VERY successful in their own markets.

One thing you have to decide is what you want to get out of it. Do you want to learn how to shoot better? Do you want to learn how to pose better? Do you want to improve your post-processing? Do you want to improve your sales and business skills?

There are definitely workshops that touch on all of these things, but they typically suck ("jack of all trades, master of none"). The best experience you will get is a workshop specifically focusing on the thing you most want to improve.

Yes, I use Exposure Manager to handle my proofing and print sales.

Well I didn't handle it well, I can tell you that. I was very much unprepared and delusional, thinking that I could manage it all on my own, and things went badly as a result. For awhile, I was in a really bad place. I was incredibly behind on everything (at one point I had 30 weddings in the album design queue) and burnt out from working every minute of every day. I was miserable, and I wasn't giving my clients the kind of service they deserved.

What I learned is that I had to make some decisions. I either had to bring in some employees to help me out, or I had to cut down on my bookings substantially. I think every photographer gets to that point eventually. It's just almost impossible for one person to do it entirely on their own. I tried bringing on employees, which helped a lot, but then I realized I was hardly ever seeing my husband because I was working so much. When you're that high-volume, you kind of have to work nights and weekends all the time.

So, I jacked up my prices really high, and I started becoming really selective about who I booked. I completely stopped advertising myself. Business has dropped way down, thank god, but the foundation I created for myself with my past clients and coordinators over the last five years still provides a steady flow of awesome, qualified clients who are willing to pay my prices and who fit the mold of the type of clients I like to work with. This year I shot about 18 weddings, which is about half of what I did in years past, but I'm making only slightly less thanks to my prices. In the future, if business drops too much, I may have to kick things back up again, but for now I feel like I'm in a good, manageable place for the first time in my business.

I guess what I'm saying is, work your butt off those first few years and shoot as much as you possibly can. Book as many clients as you can get. Accept the burnout, push through it, so that eventually you can sit back and let the foundation you created work for you.

SMP has a very specific look that they like - bright, pastel, colorful, light, vintage, soft, rustic, etc. They almost never post anything with flash, they rarely post anything indoors. They favor outdoor weddings heavily. There must be a LOT of details. They post about 5-6 detail shots for each person shot, so your submission should be heavily details with just a handful of portraits and candids thrown in.

You'll lose a lot of people that may not want an album. Plus you can make just as much money and not have all the extra work of an album. Plus I think it makes you look cheap compared to other photographers. I don't know why, it just seems to be a tactic that only very low end photographers use. I'm sure there are exceptions, but still.. If you really want to make money, set your base package (the one you were going to put an album in) as a shoot and burn only, then make your album package $500 more (but price the album at $2000, and call it a $1500 discount). People will jump all over the album package because it looks like such a great deal, and you will make $500 more than you were going to for the same thing.

Google, coordinators, venues, other photographers, Facebook, working your current client network, bridal shows, blog features, styled shoots, TFPs with other wedding vendors. The possibilities are endless.

500-700 is the norm but it's not uncommon to deliver between 800-1000 for really unique or well-planned weddings.

I shot my first wedding for 2000 (time + two sessions + negatives) and went up slowly from there

Getting ready time depends on their wedding schedule and what time they have me arrive. Approx. one hour for pre-ceremony photos, 30 minutes for post-ceremony family formals, and 30 minutes for wedding party and bride/groom formals.

I have a formula I usually stick to for group shots. First I will line them all up in a row and do that shot (if it's a small group, I'll then have them all lean in close to the middle and do another shot of that). Then I do the "look at each other and laugh" shot. Then I'll bring the most important person(s) forward and do a shot focusing on them, with the group in the background. Then I'll do the "flying V" (where they form a V with the most important people closest to me) and take a shot of that. Then I'll do a scattered shot, where they're all scattered into different places. Then I'll do a walking shot. Then I'll do another line shot but with each person in a unique pose, interacting with the people beside them. Then I'll do a layered group shot, where some people are standing on a step, some are standing on the ground, some are kneeling, and some are sitting. if it's a very large group, I may do two or three layered shots and skip one of the earlier poses I mentioned.

I really really like layered shots, not only because they gets lots of attention (brides and photographers love them) but also because it allows you to get closer up on the wedding party. Negative space is great, but sometimes you just want a nice shot with the subjects filling the frame, and with big wedding parties, often a layered shot is the only way to go.

The biggest problems I see with people doing group shots are 1) Not putting people close enough to each other (nothing worse than a big huge gap in the middle of a group shot), 2) Not enough variation in posing, 3) Symmetry (it doesn't have to be exactly symmetrical, but if you've got two people sitting on the left side and no one sitting on the right side, it's going to look off), and 4) Putting people in uncomfortable or awkward positions for their gender. For example, a girl is not going to look good down on one knee, and a guy is not going to look good sitting on his hip. It's important to learn how both men and women look best sitting, standing, kneeling, crouching, leaning, hugging, etc, and utilize those poses appropriately.

I only sell flushmounts from Forbeyon and WHCC hinged page pressbooks.

I use a tweaked VSCO preset on import and then I go through all images one by one again for tweaks (if needed). Most of the time, I don't do much else to the images after import.

As wrong as I think you are, it's an interesting subject. When I started shooting weddings (especially), I looked at other wedding photographers for inspiration. I tried to break down exactly what they did to their images, but no matter how close I came to their magic recipe, my images always looked like my images. It was extremely frustrating. I wanted my images to look like theirs, not mine.

But slowly I started to realise that the thing that made my images look like my images was something under the surface, something very hard to define.

Some call it voice, some call it vision, others expression.

Whatever it is, it's something all photographers need to learn how to cultivate. I did the same thing to my writing over my ten year career as a writer.

Over the few short years I've worked as a wedding photographer, my post processing has changed over 100 times. And yet people tell me they can recognise an image of mine from far away. The same way I can recognise an image by Sean Flanigan or Erik Clausen.

Good photographers are intuitive, they have learned to listen to that inner voice or whatever you want to call it. They are in tune with something beyond shutter speeds, apertures and post processing and they keep shooting from that place rather than the obvious.

Getting there is a long journey, personally I think I've only scratched the surface, but that's the beauty of photography, as much as we think we're shooting a picture OF something, we're really just trying to mirror something we have within.

And that thing is what it is no matter what photoshop action you smear over it.

I would love to be a funny person and just be able to naturally get this out of people, but I am not, so I have to just say to them "Okay now I want you to laugh for me." Most times people aren't very good at laughing (in a way that photographs nicely and doesn't make them look bad), so I give my couples a little tutorial on how to laugh in a pretty way at the beginning of the session. It's hard to describe, but basically I explain to them that when you laugh naturally, you don't just stare at someone and open your mouth (which is what so many people do when you tell them to fake laugh), you actually look around, look down, look off to the side, etc. I tell my clients not to look up, because then I will get the underside of their chin, and everyone hates that angle of themselves. Often I will say "Okay, Bride I want you to stare at his shoulder and laugh and Groom I want you to stare at her and laugh" and that usually results in a really pretty shot.

As I'm typing this I'm thinking of a bunch of my photog friends who would say that this is awful and against everything they stand for and how fake it is to force laughing, and I understand that. However 9 out of 10 times the laughing shot is one of the clients' favorite images. They look at it later and smile, because seeing themselves looking so happy in the photo makes them happy in the present, and that's all that matters to me!

I mean no disrespect, but if you think post production is the main factor in my success, you really have misunderstood most things about my photography, storytelling, emotion, how I frame, expose, etc, etc.

If you go back and read the questions I've answered you'll find examples and befores and afters. My post processing is very light, I'd say my post processing has played almost no role at all in my success.