Mentoring & Education

In my previous career in the Royal Air Force, I had plenty of experience mentoring and guiding lower-ranked servicemen. I’m also a qualified personal trainer, rock climbing instructor and for a short period, I used to teach guitar.

Why am I telling you this? Because I love to help, teach, guide, and watch people develop. Now, as an experienced wedding photographer shooting weddings all over the UK and overseas as a destination wedding photographer. I want to help photographers who are keen to develop aspects of their business or photography.

wedding photography mentoring

Mentoree to Mentor

I myself was mentored when I began my wedding photography journey. The benefit for you here is that you’ll be mentored by someone who has been on the very path that you’ll be on. For you, this means that things will develop quickly and efficiently. Listening to you and working out what you want to improve on, I can easily transport back to when I was developing in that area and use my experience and skills to bring the most out of you and your business. Whether it’s lighting a dancefloor or working on an SEO plan, I can help.

Weddings In Ravello

WHAT I CAN HELP WITH

SEO

One of my primary ways of getting enquires is my SEO. With my self taught and developed methods, I now rank on page one of Google for over 60 search terms. At least 30 of these terms are positions 1-3 and they include keywords such as; Destination Wedding Photographers, Lake Como Wedding Photographer, Tuscany Wedding Photographer, Sicily Wedding Photographer, Liverpool Wedding Photographer, and more.

HONEST & CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK

One thing I told my mentor back when I first began was that I wanted him to be harsh and strict with me. I was never looking for a peer to tell me my work was great, I was getting enough of that from my mum and randomers on insta saying; “great shot!” I needed to know every downfall and everything that could be improved or changed. Not only is my feedback honest, but I’m also open and honest about all my methods. I hold nothing back and my only goal is to bring out the best in you.

SOCIAL MEDIA ADS

No one likes wasting money. I certainly wasted money when starting out with paid advertising on social media. Now, all that money has been spent I’ve been able to create and manage ads that bring me in some of my best jobs. My best return on ads was after a while of not having them active. During the pandemic, though one of my ads cost me just £79 and it returned £11,250 in booking revenue (happy to prove this to those mentorees who would like to see!). I wish it was this successful all the time though I always get a solid return on them.

STYLE & CREATIVITY

I love bringing a creative aspect to my work but I never used to have that. At least I strongly believe my creativity has really improved in my wedding photography over the years. So if you feel you want to bring a new creative edge to your photography. I’ll be sure to teach you the tips and tricks I’ve both picked up and developed over the years to help my images stand out.

DESTINATION WEDDINGS

Shooting destination weddings is something I wanted to do early on in my career and I was actually able to get into booking and shooting them pretty early on. I’ve booked weddings in the following countries so far; Italy, Greece, Cyprus, France, Spain, Turkey, Bahrain, Albania, and Sri Lanka. During mentoring you’ll learn exactly how I book, price, and manage the destination photography side of my business.

WORKFLOW

Having a solid workflow from inquiry to delivery is something I’ve always found important. I’ve always felt that it’s something that can be easily left behind when managing a business. It’s quite a personal thing and many people have many ways of managing and doing things. Focusing on workflow has great benefits including; having peace of mind over your backups and saving huge amounts of time within your business. This frees up more family or free time as well as more time working on the growth of your business. Again I’m an open book with how I manage this.

EDITING

Improving your editing skills is one of the best areas a wedding photographer can focus on. Helping your images stand out, giving your style or look consistency, and saving your hours of editing time are just some of the benefits of developing your editing skills. It’s one of the first things I worked on and it really helped my images stand out and saved me plenty of time to work on other areas of my business. I always recommend a full day 1-2-1 for this.

PRODUCTIVITY

You’ll most likely know that there is much much more to running a photography business than just taking photos. Managing inquiries, editing photos, managing emails, blog submissions, working on SEO, managing social media, making slideshows, delivering images, and much more. Getting the important things done in the right order in the most efficient and effective way possible can help grow your business quickly whilst giving you more free time.

FLASH

This is one topic I really procrastinated on developing early on. I was really overwhelmed by the idea of it. Setting it up, knowing what power settings to use, where to put flashes for certain scenarios, etc. Now it’s a skill that I don’t think id be too comfortable working without. Walking into a dull dark ceremony room doesn’t bother me anymore. If the light is really poor during the speeches, I can confidently create my own. Being able to use flash to create interesting portraits in the darker months too is great.

SHOOTING CONFIDENTLY

I don’t think the voice inside my head that tries to doubt me has ever gone away really. Though I now have full control over the voice now. So when I’m running really low on time or things are not going to plan I’m still able to produce my best work regardless of the pressure. Going into a wedding confidently now it helps me to just focus on making awesome wedding photos.

INSTAGRAM

An extremely high percentage of my work comes through Instagram. Being present here is great for making new connections with potential couples and also making great connections with other wedding vendors. As photographers we have so much to offer vendors and they can also help us. I can help with my methods of how I use Instagram to help grow my business and network.

Find out more

If you want to find out more about how I make these images below and how I book the weddings I do then please get in touch. I’d love to hear all about your business and what you want to improve. I offer my mentoring services in a few different ways from 1-2-1 days to a six-month program. My sessions can be online via video calling or in person. Spaces are limited and at the time of writing, I have NO slots available for the 6-month program.

When we get started we’ll go right into the core of your business from looking at your full wedding galleries, having a good chat to see where you want to go as a wedding photographer. The learning journey will be fun, we will shoot together, edit together and perhaps even shoot a destination wedding together.

Drop me an email at;

ste@stewalkerphotogrpahy.co.uk 

and let’s talk wedding photography.

Ste