Catch Parts 1a & 1b of this 3-part series with Jasmine if you missed them! In this episode of the PBH podcast, we continue wedding photography for beginners with Jasmine Fitzwilliam. We dive into how to prepare for a wedding day.
This is part three of a three-part series I am doing with Jasmine Fitzwilliam of Let's Frolic Together. We both have about 10 years shooting weddings professionally and thought it would be a fun thing to address some of the issues that new wedding photographers have. Meaning you're aspiring to shoot lead on your own. You're curious about it, or you just started shooting the last couple of seasons and you want to improve your process.
So thanks for being here, Jasmine. This has been a lot of fun so far. If you haven't gone back and listened to the other ones, you might want to do that before you dive into this one.
Today Jasmine and I are going to talk about lifesavers that we kind of can't live without when we're shooting weddings. We're not really sure where this one's going to go. We have a few ideas. But Jasmine, do you want to introduce yourself? Where people can find you online and anything else you want to add?
“Absolutely. I mean, I don't know what else is left to say from previous episodes. But I'm Canadian. I live in California. I love wedding photography and I love entrepreneurship.”
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
So thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here and for anybody who wants to see my work or just reach out to me I'm letsfrolictogether.com or at @letsfrolictogether on Instagram or Facebook.
Natalie Jennings
Thank you. Thank you for being here.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Thank you.
Natalie Jennings
Let's dive into some life-saving things that we both can't live without. I think I can speak for both of us from the last episode in saying that having a clear outline of the wedding day before going into it is a must.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
That is a must. Absolutely. Especially back in the days when I was a second shooter and sometimes I would work with people who weren't super-duper organized as a lead. I wouldn't be given any information at all. I just went into it blind. I mean, you can do it and make it work, but my goodness, how much more helpful it would it have been if I had more information?
For me, how I approach the wedding days is not only do I want to be armed with all the details and info that I can get my hands on myself, but I like to ensure that my second shooters are armed with that as well. Having good communication with my seconds is kind of a baseline for me of, me getting valuable information and me passing that along to my teammate who I totally rely on.
I send my seconds a cheat sheet for every wedding about a week before the wedding.
It's the basics: addresses, the names of people, a link to photos of those people. My goodness, that one's a valuable one. Back in the days when I was seconding, I often showed up and said, “Well, who's the groom?” Like, who am I looking for? And it's awkward and felt mildly unprofessional to do so.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
It's little details like that that I include as just a basic email with the basic resources of information. I link to their session arrival times, start times where we should meet, etc. And then, of course, I link to the worksheet that I've had clients fill out and I link to timelines and so on. As my seconds prefer, they can be as informed or uninformed as they want to be. But at least they have the information there and we can get on the same page.
We always arrive a little bit in advance of our official start time.
We can just like go over our plan for the day together, we can scout some, you know first look locations. And we can hand off cards for them to shoot on. And we can sync. Although, these days when I reach out to my seconds I remind them to sync to time.gov that way we're just both synced. Arriving with our cameras synced, it's one less thing you have to do on the day.
Natalie Jennings
I love that you brought up the syncing because that's a huge one. If you're getting a card from your second, or you are the second, and your camera's set to a whole different hour or timezone it can be so difficult when you aren't able to edit all the files in chronological order. So thank you for bringing that one up. That is definitely a lifesaver, lifesaver.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
It is transformational. I will say this: in a worst-case scenario, you can use tools like Photo Mechanic or Lightroom to reset the timestamps of your photos. But it's inconvenient. And then you have to try to match the right photos up and so on. It's so much easier if you just are both synced from the start, especially if you've synced to time.gov so you can sync in advance. You don't have to be side by side holding your cameras trying to match your times.
Natalie Jennings
Totally. So we've got over-communication and preparation. Just being very clear, syncing cameras.
I'm curious, you know, weddings are long and most of the time you're on your feet eight or nine hours. I have weird, gluten-free diet stuff.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Oh, you know, I do too, girl.
Natalie Jennings
Oh yeah. So I'm a huge fan of snack prep. What kinds of things do you do to make sure that you're not dying for nine hours?
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Well, I'm a granola bar girl for sure. But because I do have these weird food digestion-related issues, I actually have some like timing things about what I eat. I eat very early in the morning before our wedding I don't like to eat right before a wedding. Because if my digestion gets weird, which I've had happened in the past, it can be complicated when you're actually in the middle of a wedding. So I eat really early to ensure that I'm, I'm digested already. Then it's wedding go time.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
I bring snacks that are, you know, obviously safe snacks that are gluten-free and that are simple. And for me, granola bars just packs the most punch in terms of filling you up if you're hungry and being easy to pack and so on.
On my end, it's more important that I'm hydrating right. So I always bring both water and electrolyte-something, like Gatorade or Smart Water or something.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
That way I am well hydrated, and then I actually told my second shooters to remind me to drink it because I absolutely am guilty of forgetting.
Natalie Jennings
So that's such a good point. I love making sure to have enough water. I mean, you're running around and if it's a hot summer day and you're out in California, I mean, you really need to stay hydrated and pay attention to that. I love shakes, like meal shakes or whatever. That's really, really easy. Good nutrition, stuff like that. But just remembering to be prepared in case you're at a wedding where you're either unable to eat the meal that they provide or the day gets crazy and you get hungry. You just want to have your energy. So that's, that's a good one.
What's another topic that you jotted down, Jasmine, about lifesavers or must-dos?
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Life savers are pretty broad because there are like gear-related lifesavers, they're things that save the day. A gear-related light saver that might be underwhelming is for me my 16-bay battery charger. When I am prepping for a wedding, it's really nice to be able to charge all my batteries at once. Especially–I know we talked about gear in the first episode–flashes, they take a lot of batteries.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
And so as you dig deep into flashes, you're going to want to be able to charge those batteries up in a big way. I have generally four flashes come to every wedding with me. So that's a lot of flash batteries to charge as well as remote triggers to charge. My 16-bay charger can do them all at once. That's a big lifesaver for me.
If you are somebody who has a lot of batteries and you've been charging them in batches in your small charger, it's time to upgrade, for sure.
Natalie Jennings
That's a really really good one, for sure. Batteries can be a good big one. And if you're not, you know using a lot of flash that's just another thing to add to your lifesaver list. Always have batteries handy. I always have an extra package in my bag.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Yeah, like have a lot of spares. Not just like a small spare set, because you just never know. As somebody who's really pretty handy with flash, every so often I can't figure out what's going wrong. I have charged batteries in there and still it's not working. So I have backup batteries for my backup batteries. Just in case, you never know. Yeah, it's it's important to be able to adapt and have extras at the ready. And so that's just generally a good lifesaver resource.
I think some of the lifesavers that are the most valuable aren't necessarily my lifesavers. They're actually my client's lifesavers.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
So there's a lot of stuff that I carry in my bag. That's so that I can come to the rescue if something happens with my clients or their outfits or who knows what. So, some of that, that I have used that has been very useful to me would be: I always bring a hanger with me. I think few photographers do this because pretty much everyone comments on it when I do it and they're like, “Wait. Whoa.” I bring a hanger and that way I don't have to rely on the idea that my client will have invested in a nice hanger for her dress. I have seen a lot of like those, you know those horrible paper and wire hangers from the dry cleaners?
Natalie Jennings
Yeah.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Back in the day when I didn't bring a hanger I would have to sometimes photograph a dress on one of those because that was all that was available. Some hotels, they have hangers that don't come off of the bar in the closet. You can't remove those hangers, you can't use them and then you're stuck with this ugly hanger to hang a dress. I always bring at least one hanger, maybe even two, because I like to hang a suit.
I like to hang whatever there is to hang.
Natalie Jennings
I love that. I really never thought to do that.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
I tell you what is so useful. It's probably the most useful non-gear thing in my bag.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Another thing that's super valuable is fashion tape. Usually, I think that brides and bridesmaids tend to have fashion tape handy. Sometimes they don't, or they can't find it, or they've run out. Me having fashion tape handy for when something's showing and you don't want it showing… Not only that, but fashion tape, essentially, it's just double-sided tape that people are going to put on their bodies, but that's useful for me too. I have secured flimsy bridesmaids dresses to hangers with fashion tape. It's invisible, you know, it's simple. So that's it. I think fashion tape is a really useful little tool.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
I also carry a sewing kit, just in case, lint rollers, gaffer tape, which is really strong, straight pins and bobby pins. Straight pins are so helpful when you have boutonniere that doesn't have enough pins, bobby pins, my goodness. So often people are like, “Where did the bobby pins go? I can't find anything.” This is a chaotic hotel room, making sure you have those handy things can really help your clients out.
Natalie Jennings
Client lifesavers. I like that.
We're going to have to wrap up here in a couple minutes. I'm wondering, do you have any others that are, for you as a photographer, total lifesavers that you cannot live without on wedding day?
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Things that I can't live without on the wedding day? Can I say workflows? Is workflows an okay answer for that?
Natalie Jennings
There's no wrong answer. And I think that's great. I'd love to hear more about that before we get out here because that's a good one.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
I know it's not like a gear-related thing. And so that might not sound as sexy to a photographer who's looking for some physical object they could put in their bag.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Workflows are the thing that help keep me sane, so that wedding days are streamlined and simple and that I know I'm all on top of all my stuff. And my workflows are applied to every wedding. So those are the things that helped me ensure I haven't missed one step in the lead up to the shooting of or the aftermath of a wedding day.
Jasmine Fitzwilliam
Because I have a CRM, we talked about CRM previously, as really great resources to like manage your business. Within my CRM, I have a workflow that I apply to every wedding and that becomes a checklist that you can go through and make sure you're accomplishing tasks. You know, within a CRM, it applies dates and deadlines to those things so that you can be on top of those things when you need them.
For me, it's so easy to leave something out if you don't have this orderly, organized system.
Workflows help me ensure that I've never missed a step, that every client is getting their welcome packet, that every client's session has been scheduled, that not only did I back the images up to my computer, but I backed it up to my server and my off-site storage. It's every item that you do for an event, even the things that you kind of think it takes for granted minor things, those should go into workflows and ensure that you're not missing a step. And that way, you're a little bit more on top of everything, and it's one less thing that you need to have taken up brain space.
Natalie Jennings
I love that. And I love just the idea of a checklist in general. So if you're new to photography, whether you're talking about snacks or the shoes you're gonna wear, the gear you're going to bring, or the process that you need in order to continue clear communication with your client.
Natalie Jennings
I think maybe sort of an overarching theme here that I didn't intend, but that just came up is just checklists. So start writing down the things that you're doing.
Natalie Jennings
Pay attention to what your lead photographers doing, if you're just seconding and come up with, you know, a way to keep track of stuff that doesn't, you know, overuse your brain too much because the day is already busy enough as it is.
Natalie Jennings
I think that that's a really great place to leave this topic.
Natalie Jennings
You know, write it down, keep track of it and your process will surely emerge the more and more you do it. And we all kind of have our own ways of doing of doing these weddings.
Natalie Jennings
So thank you, Jasmine, this is was really fun.
