From Novice Photographer to Wedding Photographer

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I have always had an eye for photography. Since as long as I can remember I have usually carried a camera around with me–often just a point-and-shoot or cell phone camera, but a camera nonetheless. Since my purchase of a Nikon D90 in April of 2009, I have really started to focus more on developing my photography skills.

In the past year or so I started to feel I have the skills to take my passion to the next level. I launched “Photography by Wheeler” on Facebook and got the support from friends and family and eventually started getting offers to do grad announcement shoots, which I gladly did free of charge. However, once I started getting requests for weddings, I was a little hesitant.

What if the shots don’t turn out? What if my memory card fails? What if my batteries die? There are countless ‘what if’ scenarios when it comes to wedding photography. I had basically given up on actively searching for my first client for fear of failure. Fortunately, I have a wonderful girlfriend who didn’t count me out.

When a patient came in to her office and asked if she knew of a wedding photographer, my name came up. I jumped at the chance and everything was basically settled over the phone. Then the nerves kicked in. I decided to call up a good friend, Mike Doyle to hire as my ‘assistant.’ I use single quotes around his title, because he turned out to be more of a ‘rock star photographer colleague’ than merely an assistant. I also ended up purchasing two additional lenses and a second camera (all Nikon of course). This made a huge difference and definitely helped me to get all the shots I wanted.

Though Mike and I have plenty of horror stories about our first time shooting a wedding, we turned out some fantastic photos and are looking to team-up and do more weddings in the future. As Mike said in his blog post, “Doyle & Wheeler Photography” is officially open for business (or should it be “Wheeler & Doyle?” I’m kidding).