Awe you guys are too kind. Thank you :)

I leave it up to the client. If they ask me for my opinion I'll give them a few suggestions but I want to do something the couple will enjoy and not something that's purely for the benefit of my photographs. With my choose your own adventure sessions, it's all the clients input. They decide what to do and I document.

While shooting the couple, I start to understand their style and sometimes will modify my shooting patterns to fit their personalities so they can have images that truly represent them. But I try to find my vision within their style and liking so there's a happy medium. Does that make any sense? :)

Hey there! Thank you so much friend. Means a lot to me :).

I usually have an assistant but as of recent I've been booking quite a few solo jobs :).

I do wear black unless it's incredibly hot. I've grown up wearing all black, almost all the time :). I don't always tuck in my shirt because I've gained a bit of weight... which means my pants fit a bit snugger than I like and the extra width of shirt tuck won't work. Yes... exercise is in order haha.

I actually have not. But if I were to shoot one, I would try and be very considerate and respectful and document it much like anything else... a story. I don't have any formal PJ training but I'd want to approach it like a true PJ photographer would.

I do indeed.

I haven't but I definitely will. My 50mm tends to front focus a lot. If you shoot wide open often, I would recommend doing it :)

Unfortunately not :(. Or not that I know of. That would be nice though.

Now that you mention it, yes it does seem to hold battery power way better. I've never had to swap out a battery yet for a wedding. Yes, I'll recharge all my batteries to 100% before a wedding :)

Yikes. SEO is not really my thing haha. In fact I had a good friend set it up for me and explain what to do like a step by step recipe. I also rarely check site stats, traffic, etc. I'm pretty bad at business in general. What my friend installed was several plugins from wordpress to help with tagging and ranking your site for a particular market. I use this http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ Not sure if it's working or not because I rarely track stats. Probably not a good thing haha. So sorry. Wish I could help more.

See the question below for original set up.

And no, I pretty much invested all at once. Shooting a wedding is a big deal and I felt that if I was going to be a "professional" then investing in the proper tools is a must.

Think about what someone has to invest in if they want to open their own shop. There's typically a large upfront investment to get it going (spend money to make money). I think having a photography business is no different than opening any other personal business.

Thank you :). I think what helps the most is experimentation. You shoot, you make mistakes, you learn and improve. There's no formula and everyone I talk to seems to have their own path but there's nothing quite like practice. After shooting, sit there and pick apart your images. What do you like about them and what could you improve on.

Find a close friend or peer to critique your work (tell them to be honest and not hold back).

Take a photography workshop or mentor session from someone you admire. I had very little photography experience (pretty much no background in photo) when I started about 3 years ago. I had to start with the basics of aperture and shutter. I wanted to pay my dues and truly learn how to be a professional so I decided to seek the help of those that were already at the top of their game.

My very first setup when I shot my first wedding was a 5D Mark 2 w a 24-70 and a 70-300 lens. Yeah I know... not the greatest. But I quickly feel in love with prime lenses and invested heavily in new gear.

The biggest piece of advice I can give anyone starting out is it's great to be inspired by others but do what you love. Don't feel that you have to meet some sort of set rules or standards. Push boundaries and shoot the way you love to see the world with little to no compromise. A good friend told me a while back that the world doesn't need another replica of a well known photographer, it needs YOUR unique vision. That's what makes photography so amazing in my opinion.

Hope that helps a bit.

I'm pretty close to nailing it all the time. And yes, I use my friend the histogram to figure out exposure. I also look at the back of the camera a lot :)

Keep the editing light and shoot on manual. Focus on getting the image right in camera (exposure, white balance, etc). I know you've probably heard this before but it works out quite well :)

I have worked (and sometimes) still work in those fun conditions. It's a challenge for sure but I usually look for interesting light. You can also suggest to the client that you want to take them offsite for portraits. It helps to work with the couple while they plan their day so you can optimize the conditions when you shoot. Just remember, if you capture amazing moments the couple won't care about the lighting conditions. Focus on telling their story and all will be a-ok ;)

Most likely a 2nd 5D Mark 3 body :).

That tends to happen if the image is really underexposed out of camera. Play with the white balance as well. Like I mentioned in the previous questions, since you've pinpointed your issue, tweak the presets to help you adjust the problematic areas and then create your own modified preset that fits a style you like. There's also a tutorial on the VSCO site that teaches you how to deal with the tint.

how does the histogram look on the images out of camera? If you're not clipping any shadows that's a good start. If the effect is too strong, use one of the tools in the VSCO tool kit to reduce the strength of the shadows or lower the contrast. That should fix your issues.

Haha, I just love that there's something called smush.it. Amazing. To answer your question, I don't do anything else besides "save for web and devices". My files sizes usually come out to about 200 to 250kb.