Justin Jacques: Hey there, it’s Justin Jacques with the Wedding Insider Podcast. Today I have Michelle Yee, my friend and photographer from Toronto.

Michelle Yee: Hi.

Justin Jacques: She’s awesome, and looking forward today we’re going to talk about how you can find an awesome wedding photographer and other things just to consider to make sure that you have amazing wedding photos.

So to get started, Michelle, what do you… no, no, we’re not going to start like that. We’re going to start with….

Michelle Yee: Okay.

Justin Jacques: How do you start being a photographer?

Michelle Yee: Oh, how did I start being a photographer? Well, photography has been in my life for a really long time. My mother was a pretty avid hobbyist.

Justin Jacques: Cool, cool.

Michelle Yee: So she was always taking photos of us, and I think I was probably around like 12 or 13 when she first taught me how to use her camera, which was the Canon AE-1 Program for 00:00:58 any live phone or…

Justin Jacques: Yeah, we got one of that too.

Michelle Yee: Oh nice.

Justin Jacques: It’s cool.

Michelle Yee: Yeah. I love it.

Justin Jacques: Yeah.

Michelle Yee: I was really sad when she left it in the Philippines.

Justin Jacques: Oh no.

Michelle Yee: Yeah, that’s fine. At least you could still buy them on eBay, but yeah, so she made sure that photography was always around. She was the first person to sort of teach me how to use it, use the camera, and I had pretty much been taking a lot of photos ever since then, but I didn’t really know I could pursue photography as a career until I was in my early 20s, which is a little bit late, I think. Yeah, but I went on a trip to New York, and I know this sounds really clichéd, but it was this transformative experience, and that was where I really saw, “Well, people are actually like making a living doing whatever it is that they dream about doing.” So yeah, so I went on that trip when I was like 23 years or 24, and that’s really when I started.

Justin Jacques: Cool, and then did you move into trying to shoot weddings? Is that kind of how, how was that transition?

Michelle Yee: Yeah, well, I was living in Edmonton at the time, and basically, if you want to be a photographer, you’re shooting weddings there.

Justin Jacques: Oh.

Michelle Yee: So right away when I came back, I met like as many photographers that I could possibly could and I started working with photographers shooting weddings. So that was in 2000, and I kind of grew reading like Bold Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar, and a whole dream of moving to New York initially was to be a fashion photographer, but weddings is what I had available so I just started shooting that right away.

Then I guess it came a little bit later where I had already sort of established myself as like this new commercial and advertising photographer here in Toronto that I really started to focus on weddings, and it was basically when the recession came, the industry changed and people were just desperate to do any kind of work. I had – well, for me it would have been like – a pretty big client like I finally got hired by one of the Canada’s like big banks to shoot like a campaign for them, and they just probably paid me like $500 for an ad that was going to be in China.

Justin Jacques: Whoa!

Michelle Yee: Yeah, and I just thought, when I talked to my other friends, and one of them basically just said, “Look, if you don’t do it, somebody else will.”

And I just thought, “You know, this is not worth it for me.”

Justin Jacques: Yeah. That’s crazy.

Michelle Yee: Yeah. So at the time, like when I first moved to Toronto after photography school, and even when I was in school I was shooting weddings, like weddings, that was like when you’re an actor like you wait tables. For me I was like a budding commercial photographer, you shoot weddings.

Like it was just something that I had always done and I had did, so when the recession came and it was realizing that this path I was pursuing totally brought me no joy or satisfaction whatsoever, it ended up being weddings that sort of saved me. Like I had friends who had asked me to shoot their weddings, and before I would have passed them off because I was like a hired gun for like a larger wedding photography company, so I would have just referred them to that company, but I was like, “You know what, I’m not really doing much work, yeah, I’ll do it.”

I was really surprised at how much like I really loved the work, like it felt like second nature to me, and not having that person in between like me and my clients, like before it’s hired gun like I never met the people, I just like would show up on the day of their weddings and start taking pictures. But now it was like, well, I had like met these people. We were sort of acquaintances before, but now this time we’re really friends because we had worked together throughout the planning, and even in the act of actually shooting their wedding, I realized that I was only accountable to them and to myself.

Justin Jacques: Yeah.

Michelle Yee: Like I did pause that I had to justify any sort of creative decisions, and that just made me feel like free to just do what I wanted.

Justin Jacques: Yeah.

Michelle Yee: And yeah, so that was like that first wedding under my own banner was in 2009, and I haven’t looked back since.

Justin Jacques: Cool. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a much more intimate connection. Like that’s a huge difference between hiring somebody like you or I or a much smaller company where you actually get to work with a person, and really, it’s like you’re there for every single, especially a photographer, like I’m only there for the party basically.

Michelle Yee: Yeah.

Justin Jacques: You’re there for like the whole day and the most intimate parts of the day.

Michelle Yee: Oh, for sure. It’s mindboggling to me to think that. Usually, for a wedding photographer, it starts with like getting ready. So in these people’s lives, if you were ever to tell them, “You’re going to take your clothes off and probably be naked for a moment and put your clothes back on,” and some stranger is maybe there taking photos, like most people would not be open to that at all.

Justin Jacques: Yeah.

Michelle Yee: But on a wedding day, it’s accepted. So I think it’s really funny that people sort of don’t realize like this responsibility basically that they’re bestowing upon this person. Like there is all sorts of that. I know that planning a wedding is really difficult, but this is somebody that you’re going to put a lot of trust in.

Justin Jacques: Yeah, for sure.

Michelle Yee: It’s really important to know who’s going to show up that day. Like I mean, of course, that company that I worked for was like really reputable and all of the photographers that they had working for them were super talented, but just that one thing alone of really not knowing who was going to be there on the day of, like that has a real act of trust that when you work with like a small business where you know who you’re working with.

Some people are okay with delegating that and just putting their trust in that company to take care of their interest, but for me I think it’s something that’s a real source of comfort of just knowing you are building a relationship with that person who’s going to be there on the day of and be there to take care of you afterwards as well.

Justin Jacques: Yeah, it’s a crazy connection that you can form with someone over working with them, essentially for one day.

Michelle Yee: Yeah.

Justin Jacques: But it’s a part of the job that I really enjoy is like meeting my clients beforehand and really getting to know them as opposed to just showing up on the day of and having someone taking pictures or playing music.

Michelle Yee: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it wasn’t really something that I had planned, but I love that we have so many new friends because of the work that we do, you know?

Justin Jacques: Yeah, for sure.

Michelle Yee: It’s really rewarding.

Justin Jacques: Okay, so let’s get going on some tips to help couples finding a photographer. So like where should people start w