WEDDING

The hybrid pro: Shooting wedding photos and video simultaneously

In-demand wedding pro Jo Greenfield reveals the practicalities of shooting both stills and video – and how doing so can open up a new tier of client.

A laughing bride and groom are carried on the shoulders of guests at the wedding reception. Taken on a Canon EOS R5 by wedding photographer and videographer Jo Greenfield.

"A few content creators have come on my weddings with me,” Jo Greenfield reveals, “and they all say the same thing: ‘You are so hands-off.' I say, I just let the couple do what they want to do.” Some couples – and some photographers – want a portfolio of highly-staged, very formal images, she says, but “that’s not me. Some want that stunning couple portraiture. That's not my couples." Taken on a Canon EOS R5 with a Canon RF 24mm F1.8 MACRO IS STM lens at 1/200 sec, f/1.8 and ISO 1,250. © Jo Greenfield Photography

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Wedding couples these days frequently want more than just photos, but it can be expensive to hire a videographer as well as a photographer. This presents an opportunity for the hybrid shooter, who can offer a full-service package at a price that beats the combined cost of two separate professionals. Here, hybrid wedding shooter Jo Greenfield reveals how she makes it work and why it's been a great business move for her.

Jo started videoing weddings when the industry was struggling to start up again after the pandemic and she wanted to expand her offering. She learned the craft by filming the "micro-weddings" that were common at the time, which were small enough to be manageable for a novice. "I fell in love with it," she recalls, and now half of her bookings are for hybrid wedding photography and videography packages.

A formally dressed groom in a rugged Highland landscape sprays champagne from a bottle, while the bride, wearing a white wedding gown and holding a bouquet, laughs with him. Taken on a Canon EOS R5 by wedding photographer and videographer Jo Greenfield.

"A few times I've had a content creator come along with me, get some footage of the couple and some of me working. That's the way social media is going,” Jo says. “I find that my most successful posts on Instagram are not my photographs and not my polished videos anymore, but they're videos of me working and then showing what I've produced." Taken on a Canon EOS R5 with a Canon RF 50mm F1.2L USM lens at 1/500 sec, f/2.5 and ISO 400. © Jo Greenfield Photography

Wedding photographer and videographer Jo Greenfield at work, squatting to take a picture of the wedding prep, shooting with a Canon EOS R5 camera while another hangs at her side, ready for use.

On a wedding shoot, Jo Greenfield carries two Canon EOS R5 cameras fitted with different lenses. Both hang around her neck on a harness that makes it quick to swap between the two. © Jo Greenfield Photography

Jo Greenfield's hybrid wedding camera setup

On a hybrid wedding shoot, Jo will have four Canon EOS R5s with her. Two will be around her neck, one with a Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM lens and the other with a Canon RF 85mm F1.2L USM lens. She uses both cameras for both photo and video, depending on which field of view she wants. In addition, she has another EOS R5 on what she calls a "floating tripod", which she uses for fast-moving moments that she simply must capture first time – "the confetti, the first kiss, the first dance, anything I know cannot be repeated.

"I'll never ask a couple to repeat something," she adds, "because to me it just feels inauthentic." Reinforcing that approach, her fourth EOS R5 is a backup for the other three, particularly in hot weather when Jo knows cameras are at risk of heating up quite quickly.

Jo doesn't have any shortcuts configured for switching from photo to video – she's very happy to press the Mode button on top of the camera and then Info. When friends advocate various workarounds, or even the quick photo-video mode switch on new models such as the EOS R5 Mark II, she observes that she always shoots in full Manual mode and likes to take the time to get all her settings right before pressing the shutter button for stills or video. Because conditions over the course of the day can fluctuate so much, she doesn’t even rely on custom modes or presets.

"If I miss a little bit, I miss a little bit. Everything these days is so fast, I think taking a breath, just going 'okay, it's going to take me half a second to switch back,' is calming. That's just the way I like to work."

A technician wearing purple gloves works on the circuitry of a Canon camera on a table.

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A lively wedding reception, with dancing guests entangled in colourful streamers, Taken on a Canon EOS R5 by wedding photographer and videographer Jo Greenfield.

"The biggest feedback that I get is: 'How did you capture all of this stuff on your own?' I say it's easy when you're photographing and videoing solo – you just make a decision on what's photograph and what's video, and you just capture so much more than you could do with just doing photographs." Taken on a Canon EOS R5 with a Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM lens at 1/125sec, f/1.4 and ISO 100. © Jo Greenfield Photography

A top-down view of a groom and male wedding guests clinking their glasses together in a toast. Taken on a Canon EOS R5 by wedding photographer and videographer Jo Greenfield.

"My business runs very much on me. I reply to every single e-mail personally, I edit everything myself. It's not mass production, though I think a lot of the wedding industry is going that way at the moment. I think if every photographer just took the amount of work that they could shoot and edit comfortably themselves, then there wouldn't be this huge gap where some photographers haven't got any work and some are doing 200, 300 weddings a year because they're farming out the editing or associate shooting." Taken on a Canon EOS R5 with a Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM lens at 1/125sec, f/2.2 and ISO 320. © Jo Greenfield Photography

How to shoot wedding photos and video at the same time

How does Jo decide in the moment whether she'll need photos or video? "When a couple book, I ask one specific question: 'if you could have only five photographs from your wedding day, what would they be?' I treat that as my brief, and I nail those five pictures. After that, I apply the print test. I always ask myself: 'would that photograph look good on someone's wall, or would it serve its purpose better as moving footage?'"

Jo gives the example of the bridal prep stage of the day. "Realistically, how many photographs will a bride want of all of her girls with no makeup on? I'll take just a few stills of the feel of the morning – always in black and white, because no-one wants to see their makeup-less faces. But as a video, it tells the story of the panic and the mayhem and the camaraderie. I'll only start taking photographs of that section of the day when all the girls have got their hair and makeup done, and I know I'll get a beautiful portrait of each girl just having her lips done and feeling confident.

"My videos are very story based, so there's a lot of detail shots and a lot of scene setting. There's very, very little of the couple looking at the camera, because I find that people don't want that. They want to remember how it felt.

"The best qualification for this job is to be a people watcher, and I have always loved people watching. When all of my main photographs have been done, I sit down and blend in. I point my 85mm lens at people and just get these tiny moments. That guy I can see is starting to tap to the music, and I know he's going to get up any second, and then I know that that person there is going to go and join him... The interactions between people are to me the most important thing on a wedding day, and you develop a sixth sense for them. You just know what's going to happen."

A woman’s left hand resting on a man’s shoulder, with her rings in sharp focus and the rest of the image falling out of focus. Taken on a Canon EOS R5 by wedding photographer and videographer Jo Greenfield.

“I don't do big luxury weddings, and I feel my type of work is best viewed as a whole gallery,” Jo says, emphasising that she doesn’t aim to produce marquee single images – but she demonstrably does deliver evocative shots and video that capture the emotion and tell the story of the day. Taken on a Canon EOS R5 with a Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM lens at 1/1,250sec, f/2.0 and ISO 100. © Jo Greenfield Photography

Black and white photo of a bride sitting in the passenger seat of a Land Rover, touching up her makeup. A male figure is out of focus outside the car on the other side. Taken on a Canon EOS R5 by wedding photographer and videographer Jo Greenfield.

"Since I started shooting hybrid, I'm a lot more conscious of what I'm photographing. I take a lot less photographs. Sometimes it might be just 1,500 pictures, which will end up in about 700 fully edited delivered photographs, and maybe 500 clips, which will produce about a 10 to 12 minute film." Taken on a Canon EOS R5 with a Canon RF 85mm F1.2L USM lens at 1/80 sec, f/1.2 and ISO 100. © Jo Greenfield Photography

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Jo sees hybrid shooting as addressing a large gap in the wedding market. "You've got high-end luxury wedding couples who can afford photographers and videographers. Then you've got the lower-end weddings who can just about afford photography. You've got content creators who are sort of bridging the gap, but there's so much work to be had with that middle section of people who are paying a good amount of money for photography and then adding on video. I position myself as less expensive than separate photography plus videography, but more expensive than the stuff at the bottom that I don't want to shoot, and there's a huge pool of work to be had in the middle.”

Jo’s style is to shoot cinematic horizontal video, but if she knows that her couple are particularly active on social media, she will (reluctantly) “do a few little snippets in portrait mode for them and make them a little Reel”, or she will employ a content creator to accompany her on the shoot so that the couple get that must-have content for their social channels.

"I do a lot of different kinds of weddings,” Jo adds. “I do the big full days and also very small elopements where they book me for just two hours – and a lot of them will have the hybrid option because not many videographers, to my knowledge, will go out and work for just two hours, because they struggle to tell the story. But I really enjoy doing a small film for a two hour wedding. It challenges me, and I just think there's so much you can do in that two hours to tell a story of someone's elopement."

By offering affordable wedding photography and videography packages, being able to switch seamlessly from photo to video over the course of the day, and taking full advantage of her Canon kit’s versatility to excel in both formats, Jo has found a wedding business niche with a firm foundation and great potential for growth.