Day in the life of
Wedding Photographer – Anji Martin
I am a wedding photographer based in Washington, DC. My husband, Pete, and I co-own Potok’s World Photography, a company that has been offering wedding and engagement photography services to couples in DC and Baltimore since 2014.
My typical day
It depends a lot on the day of the week and the season of the year. Wedding days are very different from non-wedding days. And most weddings in the DC area take place on weekends between March and December.
Wedding days
On a wedding day, we’re typically working between 12 and 20 hours. We’re up pretty early to get ready for the event. We’re charging our cameras and flashes (if we haven’t done that the night before). We’re packing the rest of our gear. We’re going over our photography plan for the day (which one of us will be where when; who is getting which shot from which angle; which more creative, maybe-this-won’t-work-out pictures we’re going to try; etc).
Once the wedding starts, we’re pretty much on the go for the next eight to 12 hours (depending on how much photography coverage our clients have purchased). We specialize in documentary wedding photography, which means we are trying to tell the story of the day and our clients’ love story with our pictures. And that means we are taking pictures constantly because we never know when a significant moment might happen.
After the wedding, our day still isn’t over. Once we get home, we spend several hours downloading the photos we’ve taken and beginning the process of sorting them. We typically post one photo on social media that night and deliver a sneak peek selection of the best images within a few days of the event, so we need to start picking pictures almost immediately.
Non-wedding days
On days when we don’t have weddings (typically weekdays and weekends during the offseason), things are very different for us. That is when we handle a lot of the less exciting parts of our job. We’re editing photos and prepping them for delivery to clients. (I actually love this, but a lot of photographers don’t.) We’re discussing long-term planning and strategy. We’re marketing ourselves (posting on social media, writing blog posts, updating our website with new photos, etc). We’re responding to client inquiries. We’re doing all the back office stuff necessary to run our company (managing our finances, paying our suppliers, prepping our tax returns, etc).
Pros
- We get to make an impact on people’s lives by helping them preserve memories from one of the happiest days. of their life.
- We experience the joy of using our creativity to produce something new (and hopefully, spectacular).
- We get to experience the fun and excitement of being part of a wedding day.
- We get to set our own schedules and manage our own time (for the most part).
Cons
- We don’t get paid regular salaries (i.e. everything we earn, we have to make ourselves), and it can be difficult to make a living through photography.
- We experience big highs (wedding days) followed by periods of normalcy (non-wedding days), which can be a little jarring.
- We work in an industry in which demand fluctuates quite wildly depending on external factors (the state of the economy, unusual events like COVID-related lockdowns, etc), meaning our annual income can be hard to predict.
- We encounter many people who do not appreciate that a) we have real jobs (as opposed to glorified hobbies), or b) how hard we work at what we do.
