081: Lucy Millet – How To Get More Second Shooting Jobs & Why You Shouldn’t Shoot In Manual Mode

I’m going to go in, I’m going to get different angles, different lenses sometimes, get the details, all that, just to kind of build emotion. So it’s not just, “Oh, a couple of landscape photos of the venue and everything,” then you go straight to prep. It’s just got that kind of transition from one scene to another. And it’s not just about venue shots, detail shots, all of that. It’s also about, so different angles of the same scene. So say you were shooting a scene doing bright prep, something’s happening. It’s not about just capturing that one image, it’s also moving around, getting you from a different angle. Also composition – it’s quite handy for sort of storytelling in the sense that I use a lot of things in the foreground or even people to use my, like frame my shots.

So you’ll have, I don’t know, the brides, having your makeup done, rather than just get the photo of her having your makeup done, I’ll go behind the bridesmaids and use her shoulders or this to kind of frame where the bridesmaids will be in the foreground, blurry, and then the bride will be in the background, you’ll see her, usually interacting with the bridesmaid stuff.

So it kind of sets the scene, it gives you context of with what’s going on, and it is a really great way to kind of link moments together in the gallery. So even, for example, the wedding dress. So if you’ve got a bride and she’s got a wedding dress, you’re going to take a picture of the dress. But I don’t just do that. I also ask, either ask or see if it happens naturally, either the bride or one of the bridesmaids to go and reach for the dress. And I take that picture, and then in the gallery it flows nicely from having the bride getting her makeup done. It doesn’t just jump to her being in her dress. You’ve got that kind of context, that kind of link of her reaching for the dress, grabbing the dress. And I just feel like it adds more to the story. And it’s really the best way to get amazing reviews from your couples and to get clients to refer you to other clients.

And I don’t know exactly when I kind of made the switch. I think it was from doing a lot of second shooting and being able to … Obviously as a second shooter you you work for someone else, you do, you help them out, but you can get your own shots and everything. So I was kind of like, “Okay, how can I better myself? How can I have better galleries, better pictures and everything?”

And that’s when I took the time to actually work more on that and try and just get random new details. Things like, sometimes it’s like, one picture I’d really like to take is if I’m shooting a London wedding is wherever we’re having the prep from, is going to be shooting through the window, but not just the window, having the window frame, and then shooting whatever the view is. Because that really sets the scene of that’s the London wedding, that’s the London view. So I started doing these random things like that, and then I kind of decided that was something that needed to be part of my branding and part of what I do.

But that’s a very, very long process and it took me a long time to learn everything I know now. So if I went back, I’d probably just, rather than do that and not waste time, but spend all this time doing that, I’d just invest in education. Couple of courses, it’s a bit of money, but it brings you so much, I think it’s worth it.