How To Get Hired As A Second Shooter For Weddings With 0 Experience
Shooting as a secondary photographer will help you gain valuable experience, work alongside different types of photographers, and make some weekend cash.
As a secondary wedding photographer, you will likely be responsible for photographing the groom getting ready at the same time as the primary photographer is photographing the bride. During the ceremony, you will be positioned at a different angle to help make up for the shots that the primary photographer is unable to capture.
If you are working toward becoming a primary photographer, I highly recommend photographing as many types of weddings as you can, including different ceremony types— Hindu, Jewish, Catholic, etc. There are so many different kinds of wedding ceremonies that all have different timelines, and the more ceremony timelines you become familiar with, the better. I always suggest photographing at least five weddings as a second photographer before you take on your own.
Your role as a secondary photographer boils down to this: you are there to help the primary photographer get the images they are unable to physically capture because they are focused on other images.
Let this blog post be your one-stop shop for everything you need to know to find, land, and prepare to be a professional second shooter.
First thing’s first— you need to find a job.
Here are two ways to find secondary photographer positions in your area and beyond:
1) Join a local second shooter Facebook group.
By joining a photography Facebook group, you’ll be able to see job postings by primary photographers (aka the main photographers) saying that they are in search of a secondary photographer. These posts can be pretty vague or very specific. For example, a specific job listing might say, “I'm looking for a photographer who can drive to Tampa and who photographs with a Nikon.” You’ll soon learn different photographers have different requirements for you as a secondary photographer. We’ll get more into that in a second.
2) Pitch yourself to other wedding photographers via email.
If you don't know what to say in this pitch email, I have you covered. I've actually created a Photography Pitch Second Shooter Email Template where you can easily add-in, adjust, and arrange your own pitch for your local photographers. This is what I personally would do when I was pitching myself to photographers in the Seattle and New York City area.
Download your pitch email template and testimonial request email template.
Now that you’ve landed a job, it’s time to get ready to shoot. Before the big day, there are a few important pieces of information you need to gather from the primary photographer in order to do your job properly.
1. Ask if you own the rights to the images.
This is going to depend on each photographer.
Some wedding photographers will give you free rein— meaning you get to keep the images, edit them, and even make a blog post as long as you credit them and make it clear that you are the secondary photographer.
Some will allow you to post the social media as long as you don’t tag the client, and it has to be after the primary has delivered their images to the client.
Some photographers will say no, not at all.
Whatever the primary photographer chooses to do is fair. Why? They have paid you for your time and your purpose was to photograph and work under them the day of the wedding. This isn’t a chance to use the images as an advertisement for your own wedding clients.
With all of this being said, it boils down to clear communication. Ask the primary photographer before the wedding so that you know if you do or do not have the rights to the images. This isn't a time to negotiate because they will be able to find a secondary photographer who will be okay with it. From my perspective, second shooting is for the experience and not for the final result. You are there to work and to gain wedding photography experience.
You might be wondering that if you don't have the image rights, how are you able to show your work? What you can do is you could create a private gallery aka a gallery that only the people you are pitching to are able to see and share instead. This could even look like a sampling of images in a folder, as long as it’s not public.
2. Create an SD & photo delivery plan.
You’ll be shooting RAW files, so they’re going to be large, and trying to email them will not be very efficient.
Typically, at the end of the night, you'll hand over your SD cards to the primary photographer and they'll transfer the images, or they might have their own SD cards that you can use to shoot on. Before you start shooting, converse with the primary photographer and ask about whether they are expecting you to shoot on your own cards, which is very normal.
However, if you don't have enough SD cards to cover the wedding without having to transfer the photos in-between, you are going to need to communicate that to the main photographer and ask them to either accommodate those SD cards for you. Otherwise, you need to buy your own.
3. Establish how long you’re required to work.
In my experience, I'm not there the entire wedding day.
Let's say that a private photographer has been hired for a 10 hour day. Chances are you will only be there from the beginning to the start of the dancing during the reception. There are only so many photos that you can capture during the reception, as you all know. The primary photographer might have you take photos of the guests but once everybody's dancing, you most likely will be excused and allowed to go home.
I do recommend having a conversation about how many hours you will be working with the primary photographer, but keep in mind that wedding days change schedule and are very flexible, so they can really only give you an idea. Don’t make any dinner plans and set aside the whole day to do this job!
4. Communicate your camera gear.
For any secondary photographer just starting out, I recommend:
A Zoom Lens
Used: Canon 24-105mm f/4.0 IS USM
New: Canon 24-105mm f/4.0 IS USM
A Prime Lens
Most Expensive: Canon 50mm f/1.2
Cheaper: Canon 50mm f/1.4
Cheapest: Canon 50mm f/1.8
A speed light flash.
This hooks onto the top of your camera (especially if your camera doesn't have flash built-in.
If you click on each of the three items above, it’ll take you to my gear suggestions. For the prime lens, I have a few different options depending on your budget. For the zoom lens, I have linked a used and new version of my favorite, which is also at a very friendly price point. I’ve used speed light flashes that were a couple of hundred dollars but the $30 speed light flash I have linked here does the job.
5. Request a testimonial.
The last thing you’ll want to gather from your primary photographer is a testimonial.
Unlike the other points listed above, this one happens a few days after the wedding. Reach out to the primary photographer, thank them, and request a testimonial from them. To download my Testimonial Request email template, which is also included in the second shooter pitch email template that I mentioned earlier, click the button below.
You’ll want this testimonial for two reasons:
First, it’s a great tool in order to leverage yourself when working with other wedding photographers, especially if you’ve only done one or two weddings.
Second, you are going to need this testimonial to ensure that you can continue to book more and more shoots in order to guarantee that snowball effect. The more we have in our portfolio as photographers, the more we optimize our website, and the more we're going to get booked.
However, when you're just starting out and you only have one or two weddings to show for it, you are going to be able to lean into this testimonial as a way to ensure being hired again by other photographers.
I hope this blog post gave you the confidence and charisma to become a professional second shooter. Like I said in the beginning, it’s a great way to make some extra money while networking with other photographers and learning valuable information every step of the way. Don't forget— that you can grab your pitch email template and testimonial email template by clicking here.
Resources:
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