Many of those who belittle photographers for being cheap, started cheap themselves and I think it’s a lousy attitude to have. I believe there are customers at every price point and someone charging a couple of hundred £ for a wedding isn’t competition for me. I’m happy for those cheaper photographers to exist, it’s how I got started after-all! As long as your prices don’t stay that low, and why would they? Then I don’t think it undercuts the industry at all.

I think the issue for me, is less the use of the images, but the honesty about it. If you’re going to set up shoots, that’s absolutely fine, just be honest about your experience. Because shooting real weddings can be hard work and you don’t want to mislead people about your experience, because if something doesn’t go to plan and you’re not confident in dealing with it – you’ll come quickly undone and it’ll do more damage to your reputation than being honest about not being very experienced would have done in the first place.

Seconding is a hard one, because if a client is paying for me to provide a second photographer then I’d want to have a second with me that I knew shot in a similar style and quality to me so the end product was cohesive. While I’m more than happy for seconds to use images on their own sites (with some rules around timing of usage), equally, I don’t have the time during a live wedding to actually coach anyone.

If you don’t want to shoot cheap weddings, and struggle finding seconding opportunities then shooting real couples would be the next best thing in my opinion. Real situations, not models who can already pose and not styled to within an inch of their life. Just real couples in real situations, and be honest about your wedding experience when speaking with couples 🙂

Love the site by the way!