hello I am doing a series called obvious not obvious things this is part 5 it is a series of things that are obvious if you think about them but you just might not know to think about them especially when it comes to weddings and wedding photography so today’s thing I was at a photo shoot the other day and I was on the beach with a couple of mine we are just doing an engagement shoot we looked over and there was a styled shoot happening with a bride and a groom and probably 8 to 10 photographers and they *my client* looked at me and they were like why are there so many photographers and I was like oh that’s a styled shoot probably a content day of sorts they’re probably shooting for content and they were so confused and it just made me realize that people don’t know about this when you’re not in the photography world and it does make sense and it is somewhat obvious if you think about it where if a photographer needs to practice or demonstrate something new that they’re introducing to their clients if they’re a newer photographer they’re probably not going to be getting a lot of clients unless they have the work to demonstrate what they can do first you need the work before you can have the clients and so all of these things make it so content shoots and styled shoots are necessary as a photographer it just happens it’s not a negative thing in any way but what I think gets to be negative or dangerous when it comes to content days is just that when you are looking at a photographer online on their Instagram or whatever and these are incredible shots these are incredible poses I cannot believe they got to do that on a wedding day this is insane I need that… when it comes time to them actually performing those skills in a wedding day it’s not going to be a very adequate demonstration if that makes sense so when it comes to like physically doing something on a wedding day you do somewhat need the practice of actually having done that on a wedding day rather than in a staged set up situation so when you’re looking at a photo online and it’s perfect it’s pretty rare that that was shot on an actual wedding day unless that is like one of the few perfect photos from that wedding day if there is several several perfect staged beautiful perfect lighting amazing situation photos they’re probably not actually fitting into a wedding day they’re probably from more of a stage styled photo shoots and that’s great and those photographers are clearly capable of taking the photo editing the photo in that way all of those skills surrounding it but the thing where we need to be careful is as clients booking a photographer realizing that the situational skill is not necessarily (demonstrated) there as much so when you’re looking through all of your vendors let’s make sure that they have this the skill set and the content that you want when it comes to an actual physical wedding day and all of the stresses and schedule restrictions and things that come from a real wedding day um because that is going to be a more accurate depiction of what you are going to get from that Bender on your wedding day styled shoots are great!! but let’s just be aware