John Duder Interviews Photographer Emma Duder

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How did you get started in photography?

I first started photography when I was at college, when I did my BTEC: it was a module in that, it wasn’t a whole course – I did art and design and a module within it was how to use a single lens reflex camera (which was not digital in those days), and how to process film in the darkroom we had at college. And we did things like make pinhole cameras and stuff like that. It was also involved a bit in my degree, though I went more down a modern art route, and then picked it back up a little later in life when I was a graphic designer. My father-in-law has been somewhat encouraging in that department!

When you and Danny started going out, I think I recall you’d built your own darkroom…

That never came to much (we moved) but it will one day.

You do social and wedding photography, among other things. What’s the best thing, for you, about what you do at the moment?

With the wedding photography, it’s definitely how happy it makes the customers. Most of the couples I shoot are just overjoyed at whatever you provide: it’s such an easy job in that respect. It’s their day, it’s their memories. I often get comments that they’re surprised at moments they didn’t see happen, that I did, so they get a sort of second go at their wedding. It’s really rewarding to see that people are happy with what you do for them.

You do still photography, but not video…

I consider video to be a completely different art, and a difficult one: as a stills photographer, you have time – not masses of time, but time – to look where the light’s coming from and work out what you can do to improve that situation. You can move people a little bit if circumstances allow, so they’re standing in the shade rather than in full sun. For the videographer, everything changes so quickly, and you get what you get. I don’t think I can do that!

What are the key skills in your work, technically and socially?

The social ones are really important, definitely. I’ve had a number of people approach me this year about being the second shooter, and it’s made me realise how much my social skills are important in what I do, in setting people at ease, people who are not necessarily that comfortable in front of a camera. Sometimes, you’re working with people who don’t particularly want their photo taking, but they know they should have pictures of their wedding day, so anything you can do to set them at their ease matters. Also, managing a crowd: if it’s a big wedding and they want a shot of all their guests, you’ve got to be loud enough and confident enough to be able to manage absolutely everyone and keep them happy – and not boss them about because they’re at a social event, they’re not there to be bossed about. It’s a fine line, I sometimes think, between coming across as too pushy and not pushy enough, and I do try and check in with the bride and groom – is this OK? Are you happy? Keep managing that situation. Socially, there’s all sorts of things. Generally, confidence and likeability [makes face] are important skills.

Technically, just knowing your camera back-to-front is really important, because you have to work quickly, always being one step ahead of the game. So if I’m shooting outside, as I’m moving inside I’m changing the settings on my camera as I go, because I know my ISO’s going to have to be higher, I know my aperture will need to be wider. It’s thinking on your feet, really really quickly because as a wedding photographer you cover all aspects of photography really quickly. I could be using macro to shoot the wedding rings, I can be shooting candids where it’s quick and fast-paced with a wide aperture, so it doesn’t really matter what the background’s doing.

Post-processing is also important because moving so quickly you don’t always get it right. I make mistakes with exposure all the time, and I would rather capture the moment, make sure they’ve got their memory, than get it technically perfect. So I shoot in RAW so that I can edit to correct exposure, change colour balance. People expect that now – they expect their photos to be well edited. I do colour grading, partly because of my style, how I like my photos to look – I’ve developed a portfolio and I know clients choose me because they like the way that looks – and an individual look sets you apart from other photographers. We’re ten a penny out there, so you have to develop your own style. Part of that comes from the way that you shoot things – are you taking more candid pictures, is it high end. There are lots of factors that will play on why people choose you as a wedding photographer. Nowadays, one of the first things many of my clients do is go and look at my Instagram, and on that Instagram page they’re scrolling down an overall grid, the way Instagram’s laid out, you get an impression of colour and the way colours are treated, and of tone, and of some of the things I’m doing with colour grading to make for that consistency across my images.

So someone looking at your portfolio on Instagram will get an image of consistency, rather than what people reading this see on my Ephotozine page?

Exactly. It’s a different game when you’re taking photos for fun or for pleasure. Certainly in my case, when I’m doing that, I find that those one are far more varied. I’ll play around with black-and-white, you use some bold colours – coloured gels are fun to play with – but they’re not necessarily things I’d put on my wedding portfolio, because otherwise people don’t know who they’re hiring or what they’re going to get. You’ve got to set peoples’ expectations and then meet those expectations. If you’ve got consistency in the images across your portfolio, it reassures people. You draw a line there: you’re going to get people who look and they hate it – and that’s OK. There’s so many of us out there. So there’s a photographer out there for everyone, and if they’re using Instagram as a way to find their photographer, its’ really easy to see who they will like.

I’ve got two highly specific technical questions: one is what mode, or modes, do you use?

Mostly manual, generally it depends on whether it’s an outdoor or an indoor wedding. If it’s an outdoor wedding, I’ll be more likely to use aperture priority, because I know it’s going to be bright enough that I can let the shutter do its own thing, and not have to worry that it’s going too slow and I’m getting motion blur. So if I think there’s enough light, I will use aperture priority. If I’m worried about the light, then purely to make me watch my shutter speed, I’ll shoot in manual, because then I know my shutter speed’s fast enough not to catch any motion blur, and I know my aperture is wide enough to do what I want it to do, in terms of depth of field – or just to get enough light. Sometimes if it’s an indoor wedding and I’ve been specific about those two things (usually I go about 1/250 to prevent movement, and shooting nice and wide because I know there’s not going to be enough light, I will let my ISO go automatic, because I don’t want to change those other two things.

The other thing is a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine – do you use touch screens?

No. The kit I have works really well for me. As I explore photography through some of the other things I’m doing I’m seeing the benefits of having updated kit, but I don’t see any need for it. I’m old school in the way I use a camera, I learned to shoot on an SLR: I often focus with a centre spot and recompose my image, because I’m never shooting that close to anything that it’s going to be that much of a difference in focus, and it’s just what I’m used to. You get stuck in a rut, don’t you? The idea of being able to touch and say THIS is where I want exposure to be correct appeals, but you can’t do that with the camera at your eye, and I’m a camera-at-eye person. I browbeat the photography group I run if I see any of them shooting at arm’s length! Everyone gets the lesson all over again.

How long do you spend shooting and processing, relatively?

I offer three different packages. My full-day package (from getting ready to the evening party) involves shooting pretty much for ten hours, and if I went at it full time (which I don’t, I do it in bits) it would probably be two days’ work. So usually double the amount of time editing that I spent shooting.

There’s one other question that flows from that: the shooting and editing are the parts that I find interesting as a photographer, but there’s a deal of marketing…

It’s the same as anyone who runs their own business, isn’t it? You’ve got all the business stuff to do on top of all the fun stuff. I do enjoy a lot of it anyway, but marketing the business these days is largely online. For me, that means making sure my website is up to date, making sure that I use words within my website that I think people are going to be searching for – so for me it’s not just about having a portfolio on my website, but tagging the locations that I’m shooting in, so that if someone searches for West Mill photographer, my website’s coming up. [West Mill is a rather lovely place in Derby, where Emma herself got married.]

So lots of time on the website, in theory, social media, Instagram in particular – all of the wedding vendors I work with, that’s the primary source of doing things, and I get a lot of enquiries through Instagram. I do have a Facebook page as well, but I don’t use that as prolifically, just because Instagram works as a portfolio as much as anything. Social media’s a big deal when it comes to marketing, and then I’m a member of several wedding directories online as well. Some you pay a fee for, some you don’t. some are better than others: some promote your work just because you’re a member, others you have to pay a little bit extra if you want them to start putting things out in their channels.

I have done some magazine advertising, but I don’t find it particularly successful. And a lot of my bookings do come through wedding fairs – so lots of time spent on that sort of thing. I take my old Mac and have a slideshow running, have a few prints, but it’s mainly about talking to people. You need to catch people’s eyes, and have those social skills.

Please tell us a couple of things an amateur photographer might not expect.

An amateur, and indeed my clients, wold not expect the extent of the editing that’s done on their photographs. There’s a lot of work goes into them that you just shouldn’t notice: I wouldn’t want them to notice. I had a wedding at the beginning of the year where the bride and groom were both very outdoorsy people, so the minute the ceremony was over they were marching out into the fields to have their portraits taken, which was great – but it had been raining and the dress got dirty and it was dirty for the rest of the day! So I ‘cleaned’ her dress on every single photo. And there are always the horrible fire exit signs… Health and safety nightmare! If I look at the picture and I think something is drawing the eye away from where it should be, I will edit it. If there’s a great big red fire extinguisher behind the groom when he’s making his speech, I just don’t want it there. You can’t move someone when they’re making their speech, so you just have to go with it.

So there’s a lot of work goes into editing the pictures people get back, and most of it they won’t ever notice.

Do you do much work on skin, or use any proprietary software on it?

No. I will edit in Lightroom, and take pictures into Photoshop to do the things I’ve just talked about – Lightroom does it, but not brilliantly or with such finesse as you can achieve in Photoshop. I don’t often touch grooms’ skin, but certainly if I think the bride would be happier, I will use the AI tool to select the bride’s skin and just reduce clarity a little. I always tell brides and grooms that I will only edit anything on them if they have asked me to do it.

Is there anything else people wouldn’t expect about the work?

How exhausting it is. It’s also surprisingly samey: once you’ve done one wedding they start to blur together a little bit. It seems very glamorous at first, but the long hours and the sameyness drain you a bit. And not so much now, but when I started out, I think people would be surprised that you don’t need as much kit as they might think. If someone was wanting to start out as a wedding photographer, if you’ve got maybe a 50mm prime and an 85mm prime and a decent mirrorless or DSLR body, you can shoot a wedding. You will see people with lots of kit, and yes, it’s helpful to have more stuff, but it can be done. I know someone who sent off all their kit to be overhauled, and she said that the last wedding she did, she shot the whole wedding on 50. So, you know, it’s not impossible.

What’s your favourite piece of kit?

Apart from the obvious camera itself, it’s not my favourite bit of kit just for photography, but for weddings the Tamron 35-150 has become a bit of a lifesaver because it’s just so flexible. It doesn’t focus quite as quickly or accurately as I would like, or as some of my primes do, but just for flexibility, for speed – I can put that on and I can use that all day long and it’s just easier. It’s quite fast for what it is, and it saves me time post processing, because I’m not cropping.

Networking – do you network with other photographers?

Yeugh! Not in a really enforced way: when I first set up in business it was something I thought I’d have to do, but in reality those groups are very forced and you don’t make the connections, or get the information that you would want to. I certainly network with other professionals from the industry at weddings: I will make a point of going over and introducing myself to the band, to the guy doing the pizza buffet, to everybody, and make links with them, especially on Instagram, and share photos – because if they like them, and you’ve been nice enough to share your photos, then they might just mention you to a couple. Certainly with other wedding professionals. Of course, you don’t see another photographer at a wedding, though there may be a videographer.

I’ve written down SheClicks… I’m obviously not eligible to be a member!

I’m not a member. I follow some female photographers – there’s a Sony Alpha females group on Facebook that I follow, but haven’t participated because their standard is so high! But I love looking at what they’re doing.

I’ve written down ‘synergies’ because you have other skills relevant to weddings. Any thoughts?

When I first set the business up, I’d just got married, and I’d done my own flowers and my own wedding stationery, because my first job out of university was as a florist, and I was working as a graphic designer at that time, for Derby City Council. So they were skills I had in hand already, along with my photography, although not as advanced as it is now – there’s always a journey. So the idea was to set the business up and the streams seemed to fit very nicely together. In actuality, it didn’t really work – couples weren’t invested in that model of hiring one person for three things. Partly because you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket, but mostly because they don’t expect that kind of business model. And I’ve learn that you don’t want to be too creative in the way you do business! People like what they expect, and they expect to go to a wedding fair and book a photographer, not a photographer and a florist and a stationer all in one go. So there’s been a real journey from that model to what do I actually enjoy, and what do I want to push forward the most. Photography ended up on top.

Other photographic activities?

I run a group called Derby Photography Group, and once a month we have a themed meet-up: photographers working at all levels, and we do things like having a black-and-white week, a long-exposure meet-up, or a landscape meet-up, or whatever it may be. During that I will try to impart some information, because if they’re working at amateur level there will, hopefully, be things they don’t know that I do. The other fortnight, I’ll do a beginners’ class for people who’ve got a camera but they’re only using it on auto, so it’s basic instruction on what aperture’s going to do and what shutter speed’s going to do. Derbyphotographygroup.co.uk is the website, and it’s on Facebook as well. It’s run by a group of Australians, and there are groups all over the UK.

What next?

I definitely want to keep expanding the business. I’d love to be a really high end wedding photographer, not just because they get paid more but because you’re dealing with a different type of client. At the moment I get bookings from couples who want the photography to be over and done with as soon as possible, so they can get on with the party, and that’s fine. But I’d love to work with people who really want their picture taking in the best way possible and will be prepared to take the time to make sure it’s done right. I’ve started offering a premium package with the hope of moving the business in that direction. And offering post-wedding shoots where people can get back into their wedding outfits and go somewhere epic to get the mantelpiece shots without the pressures that come with the actual wedding day. I’m also doing a lot of work on improving the customer journey so that I’m offering value to my clients from the moment they book me, right through their planning process, to the day itself. This might be regular, scheduled email contact or brochures with hints and tips. I’m always looking for ways to make the whole experience a better and more memorable one.