Day in the life of
Wedding Photographer – Emma Thurgood
My name is Emma Thurgood, and I am the sole owner and operator of Emma Thurgood Photography. I’m a full time wedding photographer and photography mentor with five years of experience in the wedding photography industry.
Most days are spent on administrative work at my desk, such as following up on client communication, marketing, back-end workflow management, etc. Once all those things are taken care of for the day then I can get into the more artistic side of the work, like editing my clients’ photos. I very rarely spend time photographing. In the busy season, I might have a wedding and engagement session per week, but usually, there’s only one day a week where I’m on location shooting and in the winter I’m only shooting my passion projects. The rest of the time I’m in my office, at my desk.
My typical day
One of the things I love the most about being a wedding photographer is that it never feels routine and I get to set my own schedule. Some days I’m on location scouting or photographing, most days I’m in my office handling administrative tasks like emails, website, and marketing, and other days I’m being more creative by editing or learning new photography and marketing techniques. It’s the ideal job for someone like me – I had an admittedly amazing 9-5 in non-profit arts previously, but even that was a lot of the same thing day after day and I stopped feeling challenged. Now my personal and professional growth is only limited by my imagination for the job and I can truly be the kind of photographer and entrepreneur I want to be, with the values and cultures I want to represent, without ever feeling like I’m stuck on a hamster wheel of the same tasks day after day.
Most days I’m at my desk and it’s usually a mess of papers and photography gear. I have notebooks that I am usually writing down different thoughts and ideas in about what I want to do next in my business, like blog topics, pricing changes, marketing techniques, new service offerings, locations to scout, etc. When I’m on location, my clients joke that I look like some sort of wild west shooter because of my harness with a camera on each hip. And on photo days, I need to be prepared for anything to happen and leap into action for anything. At a recent elopement, the couple and I were joking that “I will risk Lyme disease, fatal falls, and venomous snakes for you!” should be my new slogan because I was riding the chair lift up a mountain, wading through waist high grasses in summer, and almost stepped on an unidentified brightly colored snake. But as the photographer, I generally joke that I’m also a therapist, emergency seamstress, planner, boutonniere and veil expert, last-minute detail fixer, time keeper, carrier of all the things, and the list goes on.
As a wedding photographer, I also choose to focus on intimate weddings, which means I spend a lot of time pre-planning my clients’ weddings with them. This means I get to go scout locations with them, I’m following up with preferred vendors (like venues, florists, hair and makeup, catering, etc), and I really get into the thicket of details about their wedding day details, helping them define, develop and bring their wedding vision to life. Whether it’s an elopement, a family-only wedding, or a wedding with up to 100 guests, every wedding is as unique as the couple getting married, so planning and participating in the wedding is always a fresh experience. My goal is to help couples feel like they’re having the best day ever in a stress-free and fun way that reflects who they are.
My favorite part of being a wedding photographer is getting to connect with the couple and witness their wedding ceremony. Being photographed is a vulnerable experience – you’re placing a lot of trust in your photographer to capture you and your personality authentically in a way that makes you feel comfortable. I always try to get to know who my couples are and the things that they enjoy so that we create a personal connection, and then getting to be there to witness and document the highest culmination of their love story is always a super special moment. When you’re a wedding photographer, you are spending a *minimum* of a 40-hour work week spread across several months planning, preparing, photographing, editing, and delivering on a client’s wedding images. You’re there with them all day for all the important moments of their wedding day, experiencing an emotional rollercoaster and charged with the weighty responsibility of documenting all of it with love and care.
Being a wedding photographer takes a special kind of person – it’s not all happy joys all the time and there are some drawbacks, so you have to really LOVE being a wedding photographer to succeed. When you’re a wedding photographer, you’re signing up to sacrifice your weekends, which is basically when everyone else in your life is enjoying their free time and planning all of their special celebrations. You’re planning your life two years in advance sometimes and finding ways to balance personal wants & obligations with business wants & obligations is like playing 4D chess. Not everyone in your life gets it. You are also putting your body through a stressful experience, both because of the physical toll you put it through on a wedding day and because of the added mental and emotional stress that affects your body. And sometimes our clients and their families can be challenging to work with (who isn’t, I know I can be ?♀️). Wedding days are stressful for all involved and can legitimately make people crazy (also guilty), but a good wedding photographer knows how to manage those challenges with grace and integrity.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions people have about wedding photographers (or just photographers in general) is that we can buy a nice camera, charge a butt-ton of money and just show up on the day snap-happy and deliver a gallery of 1000 images a week later like it’s no big deal. The truth is that a wedding photographer worth spending money on has invested upwards of $10,000 in equipment, and thousands more into software, accessories, systems, and education to be able to properly capture, store, edit and deliver a wedding photography experience and product that will stand the test of time. Anyone can go grab a $600 DSLR and shoot a wedding in AUTO mode and produce hundreds of kinda-sorta-okay images that a couple will appreciate in the weeks after their wedding. But one year, five years, and decades later the regret of not having a professional document the day will set in, and there’s no going back and redoing the day. A true professional knows how to use their equipment and is educated on creating an experience with the couple in order to create art, and they know the value of “less is more” when delivering a final gallery to a client.
Pros
The biggest pro for being a photographer is getting to work for myself, set my schedule, and define my work/life balance and workplace culture as I desire. It’s so freeing to work with clients who are attracted to and book me because of the way I represent myself through my company brand and then fulfilling to make them happy as a result of the work that I truly enjoy creating.
Cons
The biggest con to being a photographer is dealing with the oversaturation and devaluation of the market. Throw a penny and you’ve probably hit three photographers who are undervaluing themselves, it feels like most days. It becomes hard not to let that get to you and continue working on yourself and your business to be better and stand out from the crowd. But if you can keep your focus, the payoff for you becomes so worth it.
Other Notes
Many people think that if they have a passion for photography, they should turn it into a business. I disagree. As someone who has been mentoring young artists for over a decade, I can confidently say that there’s no quicker way to kill a passion than by turning it into a business if you don’t have an equal passion for running a business since that’s what you will end up doing more of in order to succeed. There’s nothing wrong with keeping your hobbies and passions as just that – creative outlets that feed your soul.
