In Wedding Storyteller, Volume 1: Elevating the Approach to Photographing Wedding Stories, photographer and educator Roberto Valenzuela delivers what so many of his readers have been asking for: a book specifically dedicated to helping photographers improve their wedding photography. A wedding photographer himself, Roberto built his business from the ground up based on high-quality imagery that tells a compelling and beautiful story of his clients’ most important day.

This is not a standard wedding photography book. In Wedding Storyteller, you will not find a collection of “looks,” which neither inspire nor teach you anything. You will also not find a wedding shot list—at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, this first volume of the three-part Wedding Storyteller series goes beyond the superficial and dives deeply into the truly important topics, themes, and subject matter you need to learn about in order to drastically elevate your wedding photography. Most importantly, Roberto stresses the crucial role that storytelling plays in creating compelling, meaningful, and unique photographs for your clients.

In this book, Roberto has created a unique approach that anyone can learn to implement. Roberto’s “wedding storyteller skill components” system is divided into four sections:

• Foundation Components: Location Techniques. Learn how to conquer the locations you encounter as a wedding photographer. Roberto teaches you how to work with light, context, clutter, walls, depth, and other compositional elements such as frames and reflections.

• Foundation Components: People Techniques. Weddings are often high-energy, high-stress environments; your attitude and behavior have a huge impact on your ability to succeed as a photographer. Roberto discusses the crucial people skills you need to know and also teaches his unique approach to “situational posing” and group posing.

• Storyteller Approach Components. Roberto discusses the five approaches he uses to build a “wedding story” for his clients. These five approaches are: photojournalism, interactive photojournalism, stylized aware posing, stylized unaware posing, and story development.

• Expert Components. The final section builds and expands on everything covered in the previous components, as Roberto addresses such topics as Emotionally Valuable People (EVP), lens choices, helper light, posing patterns (and when to break them), capturing “peak action,” achieving a unique perspective, and creating multi-layered stories within a single photograph.

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At a wedding, each photograph has the opportunity to convey a special moment and contribute to the rich, visual story of your clients’ most important day. As the photographer, you are both the director and the documentarian of that story. With Wedding Storyteller, Volume 1, by your side, you finally have a book that teaches you the skills you need to learn in order to create amazing images and craft masterful stories filled with beauty, emotion, and meaning.

Foreword by Skip Cohen Translating the chaos of the real world into a breathtakingly simple, beautiful photograph can often seem like an impossible task. With busy, cluttered backgrounds and subjects who don’t know how to pose, how can you take control and get a great shot no matter the situation? In Picture Perfect Practice, photographer Roberto Valenzuela breaks down the craft of photography into three key elements–locations, poses, and execution–that you can use to unlock the photographic opportunities lying beneath every challenging situation. Valenzuela stresses the need for photographers to actively practice their craft every day–just like you would practice a musical instrument–in order to master the art of making great images. With chapters that offer practice exercises to strengthen your photographic abilities, you’ll learn how to approach a scene, break it down, and see your way to a great photograph. The Location section features chapters that cover symmetry, balance, framing, color elements, textures, and much more. The Posing section includes the Five Key Posing Techniques that Valenzuela uses every time he’s shooting people, as well as a complete list of poses and how to achieve, customize, and perfect them. The Execution portion, with sections like “Lighting through Direction” and “Simplicity through Subtraction,” reveals Valenzuela’s overall approach to getting the shot. The book also includes an inspiring and helpful chapter on deliberate practice techniques, where Valenzuela describes his system for practicing and analyzing his work, which leads to constant improvement as a photographer. If you’ve been frustrated and overwhelmed by the challenges of real-world locations, posing your subjects, or executing a great image–or if you simply want to become a better shooter but don’t know where to start– Picture Perfect Practice gives you the tools and information you need to finally become the kind of photographer you’ve always wanted to be: the kind who can confidently walk into any location, under any lighting condition, with any subject, and know that you can create astonishing photographs that have a timeless impact.

"Now aspiring wedding photographers have a comprehensive guide to building a profitable wedding business! Profitable Wedding Photography contains all the necessary tools and strategies to successfully launch and grow a personally rewarding and financially successful wedding photography business. Drawing from her 23 years of experience in the wedding photography industry, author Elizabeth Etienne helps readers reduce the growing pains both in shooting a wedding and dealing with wedding clients. With an introduction written by celebrity wedding planner Colin Cowie, this indispensable book shows how to create a great product, offer dynamic customer service, price your product and service appropriately, package your product uniquely, and market that product in the most effective way possible. Unique features include prep sheets such as: couple's questionnaire, shot list, photo timeline, helpful hints, contract, and package rate sheet. Anyone looking for practical advice on how to start and grow a wedding business will need this one-stop resource from one of the most sought after wedding photographers in the world"--

Containing numerous contemporary images by leading photographers, this indispensable manual concerning wedding portraits explains posing fundamentals as well as how to create a flattering, feature-specific photograph--one that focuses on the head, shoulders, arms, legs, or torso--in different levels of close-ups, from head-shots to full-lengths.

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In Wedding Storyteller, Volume 2: Wedding Case Studies and Workflow, photographer and bestselling author Roberto Valenzuela uses wedding case studies extensively to teach you in great detail the entire Wedding Storyteller Skill Components system that he introduced in Volume 1. Drawing from his highly successful career, Roberto shares multiple case studies from numerous real-world weddings, covering the entire wedding timeline, from the beginning of the day when the couple is getting ready until the last portion of the reception.

Roberto goes into deep technical detail regarding how to apply the Wedding Storyteller Skill Components system to help you excel at photographing weddings for your own clients. Copiously illustrated with nearly 700 photographs and illustrations, the book covers:

•   The five key elements of assessing the getting-ready rooms

•   The four types of wedding party group photos

•   Roberto’s system for ceremony coverage, TARPP (The Action/Reaction Position Plan), which details the 10 crucial positions for the photographer to use to create the best and most cinematic story of the ceremony

•   The “situational approach” to bride and groom portraits

•   The three main locations for family portraits, and how to photograph “elevated” family portraits in each of them

•   And much more

Also included is Roberto’s invaluable advice concerning such topics as equipment preparation, wedding psychology, lens selection and usage, and the importance of including imperfect but “fun” photos in your wedding photography (your clients will love it!). In Wedding Storyteller, Volume 1, you learned the Wedding Storyteller Skill Components system, which provides the foundation for your wedding photography. Here, in Volume 2, you’ll learn how to execute that system to perfection.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: Pre-Wedding Workflow Practices

Chapter 2: Implementation of the Wedding Storyteller Skill Components

Chapter 3: Working the Getting-Ready Rooms

Chapter 4: Bride and Groom Preparation

Chapter 5: Preparation Details

Chapter 6: Wedding Party Portraits

Chapter 7: The Ceremony: The Action/Reaction Position Plan (TARPP)

Chapter 8: Bride and Groom Portraits: A Situational Approach

Chapter 9: Elevated Family Portraits

Chapter 10: Reception Lighting and Execution

Conclusion

A complete guide to the field of wedding videography, from the wedding day shoot to the post production work flow. Written for those who are just getting started in the industry, this book is filled with expert tips and techniques and valuable insight to help you confidently enter this challenging and creative field.

Learn how to confidently build a thriving and profitable career as a professional wedding or portrait photographer!

For nearly a decade, renowned wedding and portrait photographer Roberto Valenzuela has been sharing his vast knowledge and unique, systematic approach to making photographs as he has taught workshops around the world and written five critically acclaimed and bestselling books that cover composition, posing, lighting, and wedding photography (his Picture Perfect and Wedding Storyteller series of books). He has helped countless photographers improve their craft.

But the truth is that you can create the most amazing photos…yet still have a failing business. And what’s the point of being a great photographer if you can’t build a career, pay your bills, and feed your family? In order to create a thriving business, you need a different kind of knowledge and a new set of tools to succeed. In The Successful Professional Photographer, for the first time Roberto turns his focus on the business and marketing of your photography so that you can build and sustain a highly profitable business as a wedding and portrait photographer. Roberto shares all his hard-earned knowledge regarding finding clients, marketing and presenting your work, and getting paid what you deserve. Topics include:

• Best practices and strategies for Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook

• Being found through SEO

• Promoting yourself and your work

• The role that testimonials and reviews play in your success

• Creating long-term client relationships

• Forming personal connections with clients with promo videos

• Why you should feature your work in publications

• Pricing your work and the gentle art of the up-sell

• Understanding and conveying the crucial importance of selling prints

While the photographs you create are the core of your work as a photographer—being exceptional at your craft is a must—that’s only half of the formula you need for building and sustaining success. The other half of the formula is here, in The Successful Professional Photographer. Implement the strategies and techniques outlined here, and you’ll have everything you need to succeed and build a long, prosperous, fulfilling career as a wedding or portrait photographer.

Foreword by Luke Edmonson