First PAYING photography gig...

I went to a wedding in August (not my own unfortunately, or maybe fortunately ...) and offered to take pictures and put together a Wedding DVD-- mostly to practice and because I really like this couple and thought they might enjoy it.  I wasn't the primary photographer and so the pressure wasn't on to make sure the pictures turned out great, but I was pleased with them anyway.  I finished the DVD this weekend and had a premiere showing last night.  The best compliment that I got was that I "caught the feeling of the weekend".  That is exactly what I was planning to do and worked really hard on personalizing it for the couple and creating a memory that brought back all of the feelings of the event!  Luckily, the wedding was up at Snowbird and most of the wedding party went up for the weekend and it was SO MUCH FUN.    Don't know why everyone doesn't just have a party for their wedding, or at least their reception,  instead of having a formal reception/line...

Anyway, I've been doing practice DVD slideshows/movies for a while but my intent was to learn the skills so that I could eventually do this professionally as a side job.  The hardest part is finding the perfect music... and that's the most fun part too.  Once I have the music picked then the rest of the project just seems to flow.  I listened to a playlist of all of their favorite songs for a few weeks before I knew which songs to use.  Cool thing is that I got to hear a lot of music that I wouldn't normally listen to.  Same thing happened with the Alpaca DVD, and really with the DVD's that I have done for work events as well.  Although, for the 2010 Wellness Race, I paid for royalty-free music so that we could use it on websites, etc to advertise the race.  That music wasn't quite as fun to listen to but I was pleased with the result.


The big news is that I was asked to make a Life Story DVD and will get paid for it.  First paying gig!!  Not planning on quitting my day job anytime soon (cuz it is a good job), but still really exciting!