The “social media fame”, influencer and blogger mistake in wedding planning

I’ll tell you a story… a few years ago a bride wrote one of my team-members that she decided to hire a girl that had tons of followers and was mentioned as “one of the top photographers” by many Instagram profiles and influencers. She wrote us back a few weeks after a wedding that she had committed the biggest mistake and if we could do a “wedding photoshoot” of her in her dress with her husband in a pretty place since her wedding photos came out so horrible. We helped her out and gave her an awesome photoshoot, of course. She had to hire make-up artists again, get new flowers, etc etc. But you know what we wouldn’t re-create? her entire wedding day. All those emotions from friends and family that the Instagram-popular photographer missed.

I’ve made that mistake personally…. many many years ago. I hired a photographer to come with me as a second shooter for a celebrity wedding… she had so many followers on social media! So many influencers and profile said she was great!

OH MY GOD! her photos sucked! her technical skill was horrible! Only 11 photos from the 3,211 photos she took that day made it into the gallery. Then I looked at her Instagram profile again, and it hit me! all those photos in her profile are those few photos she gets by luck from every wedding! But people don’t know about this! even I learned it the hard way!

A wedding photographer with tons of followers is a fictitious character. It does not tell you if they are skillful in real life. It is an actual illusion.

It’s crazy! Remember, they can post their best images and it might take them a thousand images to get a good one. You have no idea how many photographers that have thousands and thousands of followers have interned with me and ended up blowing my mind on how little they knew in a technical sense and how horrible they have performed in real life as directors. Don’t trust the blogs or pages naming some photographers as “top photographers” they are usually written by regular people without any qualifications method following an arrangement or commissions between themselves. It simply means nothing. It’s a crazy epidemic out there of people without skill making other people look great.