How to practice your photography skills to be ready for any wedding
Wedding photography is one of the most complicated genres because of the complexity of the wedding day – there is a preparation part, ceremony, bridal shoot, reception. Usually, all these parts happen in different locations, and each of these parts requires different photography skills all on a high level. If you’re just starting your journey in wedding photography most likely you need to practice as much as you can, and it’s really complicated to find models for creative shoots, or book a studio for your practice since it may be costly, or time-consuming when you need to find props, models and location altogether.
There is one particular genre of photography that can help you to get better in fast camera adjustments, light, composition and social skills. This genre is street photography, and I found it to be the best option if you don’t want to create shoots but just practice and get better visually.
Street photography requires you to:
Go on a street, to the people you don’t know and eliminate the fear of the crowd (shy) that most of the new photographers have – your goal is to shoot strangers, and when you will get used to shooting random people you will be super comfortable shooting any of your future clients, you won’t have any strange situations when you need to say something or do something with your clients and don’t feel confident enough.
Quickly adjust your camera settings since street is continuously moving – light, objects and mood and you need to get to the level when you adjust your camera automatically not thinking about what you’re doing, just because you don’t have any extra time to figure out what aperture, shutter, iso or angle to choose.
Shooting street photography requires to see the light right away and work with only available light. This will lead to the skill of creating excellent wedding photography under any light conditions on any location.
Street photography requires you to move. Move from one side of the street to another, move your camera from low to high angles. Move around to find objects to shoot. Continually moving with your camera requires you to find a good composition, not wasting your time on it. It will become your second nature to see the location and the best angles for any particular shot.
As you see, street photography is not just a fun hobby or an opportunity to get some fresh shots, but a way to train your eye and technical skills almost in an army mode when you don’t have time to waste but need to produce great results right away. I find this genre as the best way to practice for wedding photography since 80% of any wedding is some sort of “street photography”.