Join expert Vanessa Joy on The Professional Photographer Podcast as she shares the latest trends and seismic changes impacting the wedding photography industry in this engaging episode. In a social media-driven era, wedding photography trends have begun to mirror the nostalgic memories of clients’ childhoods, creating a unique challenge for photographers trained in traditional methods. Vanessa Joy explains how vintage-inspired looks with direct flash and motion blur are now capturing clients' hearts as they reminisce about their early photo days. But how should photographers adapt while maintaining their essence and keeping the business afloat?

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(02:09) - Photography Trends

(06:55) - Adapting to Customers

(14:15) - Be Your CEO

Connect with Pat Miller ⬇

LinkedIn | Website

Connect with Vanessa Joy ⬇

Website | Education | Facebook | Instagram

I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. Welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. I'm Pat Miller, your host. And you'll notice we are not in my basement tonight, boys and girls. We are live at Imaging USA 2025 in Dallas presented by Sony. This episode is a part of our industry trends series. Vanessa Joy is on the episode today. We're talking about trends in the wedding industry. We'll bring her on in just one moment. Now the setup today has been done by Sony. Thank you to them for going all out, and we are drawing raves here at the conference because we're using their Sony cinema line cameras and their Monitor & Control app. So as people walk by, they see what they've set up, and it's really impressive and there are hardly any wires anywhere. The whole thing is running off of an iPad. It's really spectacular. So thank you to Sony for making us look so good. Now let's talk about Vanessa Joy. Right? Like, wow. Industry trends, let's go right to the top. And today, we're gonna talk about what is she seeing in the industry? What are the brides bringing to her off of social media that she has to go out and shoot, and then we're also going to get into the heart of this podcast, how to run a great business. What are the trends of building your business so you can continue to earn the right to take wedding photos? It's time to bring her on, Vanessa Joy. Welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

Very excited to be here. This is, like, where all the energy is, right? Outside the Expo Floor. It's like all my friends are in there, all the new cool things I wanna see. I love this. So much fun.

I'm excited to have you on to talk about industry trends. We get to talk about wedding trends. So there's just the free space. What are you seeing right now in the wedding industry that's very trendy?

Oh, man. You know, thanks to social media, wedding trends are not just a thing for wedding photographers anymore. They are now based on what clients see and love. And it's been a very dramatic shift, and the shift that, you know, a lot of photographers are like, oh, I don't know if I like this. So some of the trends, big ones, direct flash photography, a little bit of motion blur, and these are things that make a lot of photographers cringe because, you know, direct flash, we were all taught eventually that was wrong because that was cheap. That was, you know, you had a pop-up flash on the top of your camera. And it should be off camera, and you shouldn't see the shadow on the wall. Right? But now they wanna see that. And blurry photos or photos that are kind of edited in a way to look like film or actual film. So there's a lot of them, and I think they're all based on nostalgia. You know, when couples that are getting married right now, they're, you know, let's just say 25 to 35 years old, their childhood photos are a little blurry. They are from disposable cameras with direct flash. So when they look at imagery like that, which we all consider to be bad photography, they get nostalgic about it. And then they want it. And then that's what's around. That's, you know, the hottest camera right now is a Canon, like, G7, PowerShot, like, old school camera. You can't even get it. It's, like, thousands of dollars on eBay.

Wow. Do you see these things come in cycles? Like, now that is in, and something else will come in? That's how trends move?

Of course. That's how all trends move. You know, there are cycles. It's what's being presented on social media. Something right now, that is an out trend because of an issue that happened on social media. So, a lot of you may have heard about Sepia bride. Have you heard about this? Okay. So for those of you who haven't heard about it, Sepia bride is a bride that hired a photographer that had a style that was very, warm orange. A lot of, like, Utah-based photographers have this similar style and it's fine. The bride liked this type of style. The photographer's work matched that style. The expectations were set very clear that this is the style and then she got that style when she got her photos back. But then, I guess, I don't know, decided to mess around with the photos herself and edit them herself because she can. Right? Even off a JPEG you don't need RAWs. And ultimately decided that you know what? She liked a cleaner edit, which she didn't necessarily know that terminology like we do, but that's what it was. She liked a cleaner edit and started posting about it on TikTok. Caused a huge uproar and she became known as Sepia bride. Long story short, it kind of exposed the sepia editing trend as maybe one that it's not bad, like, or good or any of it. But I think it exposed it as one that might be now going out the window because of that.

Yeah.

So I mean, everything cycles. I think one of the strongest thing you can do, maybe ask ChatGPT. Whatever your client's age is, let's just say it's moms in their forties. You're obviously not a wedding photographer.

No.

You're a kid photographer. Ask ChatGPT what is nostalgic for a woman between the ages of 40 and 45. Find what's nostalgic and do some marketing around that.

That's a really good idea. So when a client comes to you with something that they want, very trendy, maybe it's not something you've done before or you don't really feel like doing, customer is always right, steer them in the right direction. How do you handle it when that happens?

I'm all for it. You know, I grew up, I'll say, in the photo industry where we thought that we had to have a niche. We thought that we had to have our style. And I think that's still true in the way that you market yourself because you have to set expectations so that you can fulfill them. But I don't think that limits you from being able to curate something to your client. I mean, I photograph weddings but also photograph from major brands like Hilton. Hilton Grand Vacations hires me to come to do their resort photography, and their style is not necessarily my style.

Right.

So my job is to understand their brand vision, their brand voice, and then match my photography to it. So why can't I do that with my wedding clients? And more recently, I started to get ahead of that, and I will tell them, hey, we're gonna do a mood board together. You're obviously hiring me because you like the type of photos, but ultimately, it's you. It's not a cookie cutter wedding. It's your day. Let's visually communicate about it, not just verbally communicate. So we'll do mood boards and kind of nail down their style. And I started booking clients more because of that because they like that idea. So I'm all for it. I'm still gonna give them my style. I'm still gonna give them that. I have a very, like, clean kind of timeless, I guess, image. I'm not changing colors or over or under editing in any way. So I'm very clean with my editing style. I'll still give them that, but for example, my bride just a few weeks ago, she loves the film look of black and white. So I photographed some that were a little bit more blurry. I edited more black and whites than I normally would as virtual copies and I edited the black and whites. And by I, I mean, my editor. I instructed my editor to add more grain and a film-like look to them. She's thrilled. I love that. I love thrilled clients.

Keeps the range wide though, because you're not always doing the same thing.

Yes.

But at the same time when a trend emerges, you don't wanna lose yourself in the trend.

No. You don't wanna go so far to curtail your entire brand and change it. That's where it can go too far and then you'll eventually have to go back the other way. And that's a lot of unnecessary work and doesn't create the consistency that you can give to your clients and promise them. Because that's really the most important part is creating a consistent look that you can promise and repeat.

One of the trends that you shared isn't what the photos end up looking like. It's how many cooks are in the kitchen. That it's no longer a world where there's one photographer at a wedding. Multiple content creators, what are you seeing there and how do you navigate it?

You know, it really started in the video side of things a little bit. So back in the day, you know, of camcorders. Right? Videographers will come to the wedding, and they wouldn't really direct very much. They'd kinda just stand to the side and shoot whatever you were shooting and, you know, fine. Every once in a while, they would do something with the client. Since the Canon 5D Mark II, right, came out, that just changed the entire industry with all this DSLR and mirrorless cameras that produce video, very different look. That was like the first wave of like, okay, videographers are much more involved in weddings and it's much more of an art now I think than it ever used to be. But now since phones, now you have another type of video. So a big thing with wedding trends is couples see TikTok videos and want to repeat them for their wedding day. And to be honest, I don't even want a part of that. So go hire a content creator. And they can do that style. I really don't think it infringes upon what we do as wedding filmmakers and wedding photographers. I think it's just another genre of content creation, photography, video, whatever it is. That is something else. Now, do some people just hire a wedding content creator, not photo video? Yeah. Probably. But they weren't gonna be the people that probably would have really spent much money on it anyway. So, it's just another thing, another fun thing that's happening.

Yeah. I'm sure you can identify a bunch of other trends in the wedding area, but let's talk about some trends that don't go out of style. Because people learn from you and follow you because it's not just what the images look like, it's building a great business. So, what are some of the timeless, maybe in business parlance, best practices or good habits we should be in to have a strong wedding studio?

Yeah. The client experience is the biggest one. I think it's very easy for photographers to say, okay, I wanna take pictures. I'm gonna be a wedding photographer. And then there's this whole other side of the business that maybe never even comes into play. But having a great business that, one, you're making money. Yes, obviously. Let's make money. Unless, you know, you're a non-profit or charity. That's fine too. But, you know, make money. But have a great client experience because it's not just taking photos and delivering digital images that's going to give them that full service photography studio experience. You have to show them the possibilities. What can we do with these images? You have to educate them. I think it's the responsibility of photographers to educate your clients on how those memories are best preserved because they're not best preserved digitally.

Right.

They'll die a digital death. They'll be on some USB drive, or God forbid, a DVD. Right? I was burning photos on the DVD ten years ago. Now where are they? Who could even play them? Their kids can't. They won't even know what it is, but they know how to open a wedding album. They know looking on the wall at a framed portrait that, you know, they're gonna fight over one day when the parents aren't around anymore. Like, it's our job. That right there is our job. Like, to educate them, to show them how to best preserve it, and what they can do. And that never goes out of style. The wedding album, it's never gone out of style. It never will.

That's the second time today talking about trends that the importance and almost reverence for physical items has come up for that exact reason because it's gonna end up in a drawer otherwise.

Yeah. And unlike a USB stick, they're gonna be like, this plugs into nothing.

Yeah. CD players. They don't work anymore.

No.

Okay. Let's talk about the photographer that's thinking they're a professional, but they are a non-profit. They aren't taking the business side seriously enough. They love what they do, but they just bristle at the idea of I have to go sell something. How would you talk to them to give them that pep talk that they need to, "Come on, friend? We gotta make a business here."

Yeah. You know, you have to throw sales out the window. We tend to think of sales as a dirty word. It's a used car salesman. It's awful. But it's not. It's learning how to sell, but really it's learning how to communicate. And we're not taught that enough as photographers. In fact, I hired a coach. Like full transparency, I paid $20,000 for this man to teach me how to actually sell. And when he did, it was like all these light bulbs going off. Like, it's not just selling, it's learning how to communicate, learning how to motivate people. I teach photographers all the time, and I've learned how to better motivate them because I learned how to sell and learn how to run a business. If you're listening to this, you can DM me the words on Instagram, the words "photo mastermind," and I'll send you information on that because I've realized this is something that no one teaches photographers. And part of what I'm doing, very small mastermind, I do have a hundred-person waiting list right now. I'm not trying to sell something because it is not sellable at the moment. But that concept of learning how to communicate and sell so that we realize we're really doing our clients a service. We're not selling them. We're doing them a service. And then, ultimately, when we serve our clients in that matter, we have a successful business, that they're happy. They're not having buyer's remorse because we're a sleazy salesperson. We are giving them a full service in a way that also profits as a photography business, which lets us keep going, create more memories for more people, and show them how to preserve fun.

The thing that I was taught about sales, and I'm curious what you think, it's really about asking great questions and listening. It's really not about pushing anything or trying to ask for anything.

It's discovering.

Asking questions, and then when they tell you, they'll tell you exactly what they want. Is that what you find as well?

Yeah. Not only do you discover those things, but then your job at the end is to hold them accountable to the things they've told you.

Oh, right? Because now it's time to get the print, it's time to put something on the wall, and you can remind them why they wanted it in the first place.

Yes. Oh, you told me that photography was a priority. You told me that you imagine sharing this with your children later, that you want to decorate your home. So you'd be curious and then you hold them accountable.

Is there anything else in the business side that's a trend or a best practice that you just could wave a magic wand and wish everyone would follow more than they should because really if we're not making money and making profit more than anything, they're not gonna stay open.

When photographers think about business, they tend to think about profit. And they tend to think about marketing. And they miss the part where they need a CEO strategy and they have to run their business like a business like a CEO. That's the part that I wish more photographers would understand because once they do that and they create a business that runs smoothly with, something like 17Hats. That's sending emails automatically or contracts and invoices, lead management, all that. Once that minutia is taken care of, you can be a better photographer. You can, one, spend more money on all the gear you want, but also spend more time at conventions like this one. And that's where you see the most growth in your business. When you run your business like a CEO, you will find exponential growth in all the other areas you care about, like marketing and profit.

It's so great to talk about trends in the wedding industry from someone that's on the front lines and teaching us, but also taking the time to talk about the business side and the best practices that we need to stay open. Vanessa Joy, thanks for coming on The Professional Photographer. I appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast. This has been the deep dive on industry trends. It's been a lot of fun. I hope you've enjoyed it. Now we're gonna gauge whether or not you enjoyed it because if you didn't enjoy it, don't click like and subscribe. But you did enjoy it. Right? So you're going to click like and subscribe. Right? And you're gonna leave us a comment and tell us what you liked about our guest today. That helps us and the team kinda know if we're doing the right stuff or if we need to go get a job at Dunkin' Donuts or something like that. So please leave us a comment, like, and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Also, if you're not a member of PPA, we need to have a real conversation. Because if you're trying to build a photography business, PPA is for you. We're talking top-notch equipment insurance. We're also talking about education. This show and so much more is made possible by PPA. So if you like getting better at photography, PPA is there for you as well. Not to mention the sense of community with photographers that are all trying to get better and build their business. At PPA, you belong here. Register now and sign up for the group ppa.com. That's ppa.com. Thanks for tuning in to The Professional Photographer Podcast. I'm Pat Miller. We'll see you right here next time. Take care.