Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom on AdoramaTV.
I'm Ruth Medjber and today I'm going to be getting the lowdown on wedding
photography from one of Ireland's best wedding photographers
Tomasz Kornas.
Thank you so much for coming on the show today and maybe if you could start by
telling us a little bit about how you got into photography?
Well I started in 2011 where I picked up my first camera and that triggered
another step in my career of going into... doing a degree in photography and
graphics and three years later I graduated. In the meantime I was
trying to find what I like and what I don't like about photography and in the
meantime what happened was that I shot two or three weddings as a second shooter,
and that triggered an idea that that's something interesting and you can
approach it in your very own personal way and create something
beautiful for people that you work with.
Well I always try to approach it with a very personal way and trying to meet
people a bit more and see why I'm there and why they need me there and why it's
so important for me to capture their wedding and find those personal things
that are personal to those people and I can capture them in my personal way.
And your work is almost as if you're not there as if they're not
paying you any attention. It's completely like documentary-style, fly on the wall
things.
How do you get people to not notice you?
It's all about the great connection of the couples that I have and how I communicate. The first
thing I do, I just drop my cameras and I say hello to everyone. I'll go get a
cup of coffee. I'm going to harass mother to give me a coffee or something,
you know. And just having a great laugh with people in the morning, having
great... putting a great vibe and just showing that I'm actually more of a
guest on the wedding rather than a guy with a camera or a photographer with a
camera. Like I'm trying to be close to all their moments that happens but I'm
trying not to interfere with what's happening on the day.
And then before you arrive on the day, I'd be interested to know how much prep work goes in between
a bride and groom.
I mean when they find you and I'm assuming they find you on the
internet or through wedding fairs and that
kind of stuff and they contact you. Like how well in advance would it be and then
what's the procedure after that?
Alright so for the typical bookings
I would get an email anywhere from three to 18 months in advance so I'm
booking as far as 2018 now and but I'm booking, still, weddings for December
this year.
I think having a great website which communicates everything that you want to
put across is very helpful because before they approach it, they know a lot
about you and this type of work and and how we work on the actual
wedding day, so it's a matter of having a a good meeting with a couple and just,
again, just show your personality.
I mean, like, how much photography is in your job or is it all like web design and, you
know, marketing and that kind of stuff? I'd love to know the breakdown.
Before you go into photography you think, oh I'm going
to be taking
beautiful photos and I'll be getting paid for that. But when you start to
actually get paid you realize that the photography
business is not really about photography itself,
it's actually more than that. You have your marketing, you have to upskill your
business skills, you have to upskill your marketing, your personal skills
communication skills, so there's a lot to it and
the faster you get them, the sooner you're going to grow in a business.
So, I mean because you're not at this too long, professionally, are you? I mean you
told me you graduated in 2014 with your degree which is fantastic but
that's only about two years ago. You have such an amazing portfolio and body of
work to get in such a short space of time.
You must have been all over those business skills.
Yeah, thankfully I had great support, and I still have a great support from my wife and she
supported me into pushing myself into growing the business to a level where it
is now and yes it did happen in such a short time space but that was all thanks
to kind of being very brave in business decisions that I was making and not be
afraid of failure.
So maybe
you'd like to tell us a little bit about what goes on, on a typical day
shooting a wedding, you know, how long the days are because I remember
photographers used to turn up for the ceremony,
you know, in the church, take some quick pictures outside and then they were done.
All in about an hour and a half. Now people want you there for 12 hours is that normal?
Yeah it would be pretty normal. Now again because I do the
documentary style of wedding photography,
people love to see the whole kind of documentation of their day from the very
early morning where they have makeup on,
on to the dance that night where people just go absolutely nuts on the dance floor.
That's what we want. So the typical day will be I normally start around
three to four hours before the actual ceremony starts so that gives me enough
time to do the kind of the most shots of the dress and shoes and stuff like that but
there's actually a bigger senses in that I can actually establish
myself well with the people that I work with, so all the bridesmaids and
bride and mothers and whoever else is there.
And I'm kind of able to establish myself as a friend
so people can start to ignore me because this is a need for me to start to capture
the real things that happens in the morning.
Moving on, then, there's a ceremony.
After the ceremony, we typically do family photos, which you wouldn't see in
my portfolio, but
I personally feel these are the most important images from the day. The family
photos are crucial. You may not like them today but in a few years time, they're
going to be the images that you'll be looking at the most.
That's brilliant. I'm glad to
hear that people are still doing those family pictures because they are so important
and then after you do the portraits what do you do? Do you take the bride and groom away for,
like, their little couple session or?
So what we normally do after the family photos,
I love to take my couple out just for a bit of a walk and have a bit of fun
and have a bit of 'craic' and just go and try to create something
beautiful for them.
I keep it very relaxed and kind of chilled out and I wouldn't put too much
emphasis on posing.
I'd be more into capturing the moments or capturing the kind of the connection
between those two people because, this is the only quiet time of the day for them
that they can actually enjoy themselves.
So I always try to put the focus on them and just capture
how they feel about themselves in the most important day of their lives.
And then do you stay and do the party as well?
Yes, so I would say for the speeches,
which is a great laugh and I would cry and laugh with people as they go along and
then I stay for the first dance and dances at night as well.
Do you have help on the day? Do you use a second shooter?
Most of the time, no. It will be
just me and I worked out a system that works for me and I find if I have a
second shooter or assistant,
I lose the connection with people that I work with
so if I'm on my own on the day, I'm able just to focus in and think about what
happens without being distracted by anybody else.
Wow that's a really good insight into that. That's amazing. Fantastic.
So that's all we have for this episode, I hope you enjoyed the show.
I'll be back chatting to Tomasz some more about his post production styles and his
wedding photography gear in the next episode
so subscribe to the Adorama YouTube channel to catch that.
Also, if you'd like to brush up on your own photography skills then check out the
Adorama Learning Center.
Thanks and I'll see you again soon.