Esteban Gil is a wedding photographer based in Guilford, Connecticut. He is also a teacher and mentor to scores of wedding photographers through his website, Steel & Flint Society.

The Wedding Photographer's Portfolio

Here are some of Esteban's exquisite wedding photography:

The Interview

Esteban and I spoke several months ago and I have finally got this interview with him ready for you to check out. So, click the graphic below and give this a listen now.

At 12:37, I ask Esteban about his next workshops. Please disregard the dates as these have all long gone past us.

The Steel & Flint Soceity

STEEL + FLINT is an interactive, community-based resource for wedding photographers, with the goal of instilling a sense of “community over competition” among its members.

While Esteban started the Steel & Flint Society, he is joined by Nicole Apuzzo, Roxanne Gil, Mike Musto and Drew Hines when it comes to leading other photographers through in-person workshops.

Want to learn step by step instructions on how to use a Godox AD200 and a Westcott Rapid Box together? There is an online tutorial for it.

It's a learn-by-doing environment. Check out the weekly challenges that you can participate in as well.

But if you are really intent on meeting up with Esteban or any of the other Steel & Flint Society leaders, keep an eye out for their workshops here (just don't be surprised if they are all SOLD OUT, so you do have to jump on the opportunity as soon as it presents itself!)

For Wedding Photographers

If you are a wedding photographer, what would like to learn at a Steel & Flint Society event?

G.E. Masana, a New York based wedding and portrait photographer has a boat-load of real-world experiences and advice on sales and marketing. If you are a wedding or portrait photographer, this post is for you.

I had the pleasure of speaking with G.E. Masana several months back about six specific strategies for wedding photography success:

The 6 Strategies For Wedding Photography Success

1. Be Strategy-Driven Rather Than Tactic-Driven
2. Strategy: Mean Something Significant To A Significant Number Of People, And For Which They'll Pay You Significantly More
3. Strategy: Responding To Inquiries – Stand Out From The Rest and Get Results
4. Strategy: Purpose Of The Phone Call Is To Set Up The Consult For Success
5: Strategy: “Just Get The Booking” and why
6: Strategy: Sales Without Pressure – Gently Guiding Your Prospective Clients To Sell Themselves On You

Mentoring & Courses

Click here for Mentoring, Coaching & Consulting Options

Maximum Wedding Album Profits contains business nuggets, aha! moments, insights and principles as well as a complete system for selling more wedding photos to place into your clients' wedding albums. A few booking strategies are thrown in for good measure.

Instead of a few hundred, you'll know how to set the stage to make thousands. I've averaged adding another up to $15,000 per wedding from regular every day couples with this system.

G.E.Masana's courses (yes, I bought these) are well-produced audio presentations that will help you move beyond the blocks you have:

How to Raise Prices, Increase Profits, Even When You Think You Can’t – Especially If You Think You Can’t

How To Turn Phone Inquiries Into Paying Clients

Other Resources

Listen to G.E. Masana's tips on sales or selling in Ben Hartley's Six Figure Photography podcast.

Buy the book: When They Say That, You Say This: For Wedding and Portrait Photographers – The Strategy for Handling Sales Objections

A Very Special, Time-Limited Offer

From G.E. Masana:

“So as you know, I'm playing with the idea of teaching wedding photographers my complete systems, strategies and tactics, which would cover everything from marketing to handling inquiries to getting bookings to after the wedding sales: the entire what to say, what to do and how to do it. No fluff and no cheer-leading, no theories, just solid info, everything 100% tested, proven and true.”

If you are interested in learning the strategies from booking to marketing your wedding photography clients, contact G.E.Masana right away. This offer is only for 5-10 wedding photographers, so you must act quickly.

Please include your name, location, how many weddings you do now and how many you want to do in the future, and how much money did you make photographing the weddings you say you have photographed.

If you enjoyed the interview and this post, would you please do me a favor and share it among your wedding photography friends please? Thank you!

A Different Genre

I must have stumbled across this quote about wedding photojournalism several years ago, when I was starting to transition from being a photojournalist to a wedding photojournalist:

“The hallmark of the concept is both perspective and attitude, based on a mandate to be truly reactive rather than proactive, and a dedication to record events as historian rather than director. Content with reality, the wedding photojournalist quietly documents while anticipating action, sensitively observing details and nuance, capturing moments without subjects actively aware of the process.” – Denis Reggie, the Godfather of Wedding Photojournalism

And it took my breath away.

If you ever pursued anything without knowing that it was valid and that there would be a demand for it, you'll also know that sense of calm that washes over you when you know all will be well.

No one had so succinctly defined the kind of photography I wanted to deliver for my wedding clients. That someone had enunciated it so lucidly assured me that I was on the right path.

So began my pursuit at studying Denis Reggie‘s work. To be honest, I wasn't attracted to it because he had photographed the Kennedy's or that he comfortably commanded five figures for his services. No, it was this “hands-off” approach that captured my imagination. I'll bet you see it in my work at Amata Pictures. Take a look!

The Interview

It was on Facebook that Denis Reggie and I finally connected. I must have asked him a question or responded to something he had posted about wedding photojournalism. What follows is a short interview with Denis Reggie about wedding photojournalism:

We talk about:

– Photographer as a witness, not a director on the wedding day
– How to blend in as a wedding guest to photograph weddings as a photojournalist
– Photographing people without them being aware of the camera
– Why documentary weddings are specific to a particular age group of clients
– How Denis doesn't really use Photoshop to create fantasy photographs
– The Achilles Heels for any new photographer
– Creating consistent lighting, understanding flash to create quality light
– Producing matted albums vs. flush albums for high end clients
– Knowing your client's needs and experiences and delivering on it
– How wedding photojournalists are historians with a camera
– Getting started in the business of wedding photojournalism
– How Denis literally starved for 7 years before making it in his 8th year of business
– Working with wedding planners, banquet managers
– Time, education, practice, staying current all cater to a photographer's progress
– Whether we are sitting in a wedding photography bubble or not; will prices come down?
– There is a market for excellence in wedding photography
– Creating original works of art for discerning clients

The Wedding Photojournalism Gallery

Check out some of Denis Reggie‘s work below and visit his website:

Where Do You Stand?

Are you a photojournalist looking to enter the wedding market? Would you abandon all that you know about narrating visual stories and pose people all day long or would you prefer to work with clients who will respect your work at the end of the day? As Denis Reggie said in the interview, there is no right or wrong approach to wedding photography. If your clients expect (or even demand) a certain approach, then you are in essence only delivering on that promise you are making them at the very start of your relationship.

Gavin Wade had an idea and he ran with it.

As a photographer, he wanted to quickly and painlessly deliver his client's photographs. He wanted to upload his images once and then be able to deliver different versions to different clients. His solution: Cloud Spot.

I trust you have affiliates or business partners who simply have different needs for your photographs and they don't all fit neatly into one standard dimension. Imgaine you are a wedding photographer who has just photographed a Jewish wedding and you have some photographs of the huppa. Some of your wedding vendor friends will only need a postage sized version of the images, while the wedding planner you are wooing might want the photographs with your watermark to display on her Facebook page.

Do you sit there scaling up and scaling down the same photographs as and when someone requests it? It wouldn't be very efficient use of your time, right? That's where Cloud Spot excels.

I spoke with Gavin Wade about Cloud Spot and how it has saved his wedding photography business tons of time. Give this interview a listen and see if Cloud Spot is something you want to consider using for your photography business as well:

Setting up your Cloud Spot account is super easy:

Ever wanted to send some of your special clients discount codes? Well, you can now with Cloud Spot:

Your online store's back end should look this easy to manage:

There are six pricing options, including one that is totally FREE (jpeg imaages only). The Entry option is only $4/month and allows you to store and share JPG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, PSD, AI and PDF files. Granted you only get 5gb of space, but if your photography business is just starting up, this should do really well for you for now. You can always scale up!

Gavin has generously offered all Tiffinbox readers a special discount code. Use: tiffin10 – good for any monthly or annual plan when you sign up here.

How many of you don't offer portrait or wedding albums because you either don't know how to design them or you believe they are too cumbersome to lay out?

This is what I believe: You aren't truly serving your clients if you simply photograph their event and hand them their digital files (don't do that, do this instead)

You can easily overcome your fear of designing and printing your album because there are new tools today, like Fundy Album Designer, that make it super simple to do so. Yes, design and send the files to your favorite album manufacturer.

Look, years ago, I stumbled upon a free option. I was new. I like the sound of free like the next guy and so I dove in. I created a 56 page wedding album from scratch. The software was buggy, the support was spotty at best and my client was PISSED.

To top it off, some alignment had shifted and a bunch of images were somehow sent off-kilter on a bunch of pages. Yikes! Green behind my years, I was panicked and frustrated of course. I didn't want to lose the confidence of the client even though the emails back from the groom (the bride had given up on me) sounded angrier and angrier.

So, the album arrived and yes, it was full of errors and mistakes – some caused by me but some also caused by software that simply did not work. As I held the errant album in hand, I learned a lesson that day. Trusting a free app to do your work is extremely dangerous. While the buck stops with you, the photographer, seeking out an album design company that will stand by its product was paramount.

This was about the time that I heard Andrew Funderburg was going to launch a new product that would solve the very problem I was having. That product was of course version 1.0 of Fundy Album Designer. Since then, the app has morphed into something truly fantastic. In addition to designing albums, it is now closely integrated with a bunch of labs and album manufacturing companies. Anytime something is “off” and I am notified right there on the screen.

For a portrait or wedding photographer, this is truly a wonderful time to get into quickly designing and printing your client's family heirloom. Let that sink in a bit. You are responsible for creating a piece of art that will remain with your clients for ages and will likely get passed on from generation to generation. Wow! Doesn't that create the warm and fuzzies inside of you? I think of my clients as grandparents showing off their albums to their grandchildren. An awesome responsibility but the work it takes to put those albums together should not stress you out.

I spoke with Fundy (as he is known to his friends) about this and other topics dear to our hearts:

Now, I didn't speak with Fundy about stress-free album designing because our connections run deep or because I am being compensated (I am not, except for receiving a copy of his program to review).

I spoke with him because I believe Fundy Designer can radically change your business, giving you more free time to spend with your family and making your clients genuinely happy with your service.

Want to learn more about easy-as-apple-pie album designing? Check out this free webinar on November 4th, thanks to ShootDotEdit. Register for it now. Even if you can't make the live call, the recording will be made available to you.

Be sure to bookmark ShootDotEdit‘s free content page where you can find guides, webinars and case-studies that are extremely useful for photographers just like you.