Things to think about before hiring a wedding photographer

By now you've already figured out that getting married is expensive.  At every turn there is a new expense and a new way to spend more money on your wedding. If the economy was doing great you would be more likely to throw caution to the wind and toss the budget out the window. However, for most people, this isn't an option.  The current realities are that weddings are becoming smaller affairs and that costs have to be watched every step of the way. 

If you were to hire a wedding coordinator to plan your wedding one of the first things they would do is ask you what your priorities are, and plan a budget accordingly.  If  top of your priorities is food, they will devote more money towards food,  If it was entertainment, they would devote more of your budget towards that.   They would eventually bring up photography, where does that rate in the big scheme of things on your wedding day?     If it's something of importance, then budget accordingly (see below for ideas).

We are now in an era of abundant photography.  Your cell phone probably has a camera built into, and though it's probably not a great camera, it's there when you need it.  You always have a camera ready to grab images when you need it.   Thus, your life is probably fairly well documented, and perhaps you have a very cherried up Myspace page.   Thus, the entire wedding photography thing may not be that important to you right now, and hey, saving a few bucks on photography helps.   So, let me give you some ideas of how to save money on wedding photography if this is what is important to you.

Free Wedding Photography

Is there really such a thing as free wedding photography?  Sure there is!  You know your friends and relatives with the good cameras?  Guess what? These cameras take better pictures than your cell phone camera.  If you really believe that the quality of the camera ultimately has more to do with the success of your wedding photography than you're luck because there are tons of people out there with really nice cameras.   Some of these people are so desperate to build a portfolio that if you search around hard enough, someone who is passionate about photography will most likely volunteer to photograph your wedding for free.    Wouldn't that be a great deal?  You can help someone out and you don't have to ask your friends or family to be your wedding photographer.

As you stand there at the alter after the ceremony on your wedding day, the group shots are taking forever because the free photographer doesn't know what they are doing, and your wedding guests are shooting along side of them, a thought crosses into your mind.  Does this person really know what they are doing?  They are taking up a huge amount of time, everything is disorganized, your spouse is getting angry, your parents keep coming up to you mentioning that the young kids are getting anxious and the older people need to leave.  You are stressed, and not happy, but you fake a smile for the camera.   The resulting images come on a DVD.  There are tons of them.  But somehow in the thousands of images, key images are very much missing. And unfortunately, there are a lot of terrible images.  Too dark, bad lighting, out of focus, bad composition, ect.    Of all the key pictures of your family that are missing you can rest assured that your mother will bring it up to you every thanksgiving for the next twenty years "Oh it's too bad we didn't get a picture with grandma on your wedding day."   Then when someone brings in a nice wedding album to work and shows it to you, you can be one of those people who says "Oh, I really really wish I had a good wedding photographer at my wedding."   You can tell the story of having 380 images of you dancing at your reception but not one family picture with you and your grandmother, and you're mother won't ever let you forget it. 

Cheap Wedding Photography

Free is a great price!  There is nothing wrong with free.  They give out free samples of food at Costco, don't you just love that?    But do they ever give out free samples of Rolex watches?  How about a free BMW?   Why is it that things that are of value aren't free.  Thus free wedding photography isn't often of  any value.  How about cheap?  We're all about getting good deals, aren't we?   If for example you had your eyes on a BMW that cost $50,000 and they sold them day in and day out for $50,000, but they made you a deal to buy the same car for $25,000, that's half off, isn't that a good deal?   It's something of value, and it's at a discount.  If you buy the car, everybody tells you what a great deal you got. except for your dad.  Dad points out that you can get a stripped down Ford Focus for $8000.  For what you've paid for your BMW you can have 3 of these cars!  He then points out that you can find a "good" used car for under $1000 if you're motivated.   When you try to explain your good deal, he simply says  "What difference does it make, it's just a car, it'll get you where you want to go."  The same can be said about wedding photography. 

Whoever offers the most stuff for the lowest price wins!

It's very difficult to hire a wedding photographer.  You go to one website, you see a bunch of nice images and some funny stories in a blog.  You go to the next website, you see the same thing.  You go to 20 websites, things start looking the same after a while.  Everybody has nice images, everybody has a funny story to tell, everything looks good.  So, if everything looks good, everybody sounds like they know what they are talking about, how do you decide on a photographer?

The fastest and easiest way to select a photographer  is to figure out who offers the most stuff for the lowest price.   When you boil things down to dollars and sense, it's easy to figure out who you should sign up with.   This notion assumes that all photographers offer comparable goods and services and thus the lowest price wins.  This approach works well if you really believe that wedding photography is a commodity.   If you really believe that all photographers will do essentially an identical job at your wedding, then yes, the lowest bid should win. . .   If only life was that simple. . .

The problems is that wedding photographers don't do identical work and there are deliberate con artists to people who really honestly want to the best job that they possibly can for you, except, they are lacking important things such as  skills, experience, and adequate equipment.  There are many nice, upstanding people who very much get themselves in over their heads with wedding photography.  It's almost like a right of passage to attempt to do weddings at some point, even if it's only to say that they've done wedding photography.    In some respect we should be lenient with these people who dabble in wedding photography.  However, if they charge money they are considered professional and they should be under the same scrutiny as any other vendor.     Then there are people who have wonderful websites and make their work look like they are a 10+ photographer when in reality they have trouble being a consistent five.    When they create expectations they cannot live up to, it's just another form of fraud.  These people are full of excuses of why your  wedding photography doesn't come out like the pictures they showed on their website.  "The lighting was difficult, you guys were late, we didn't have enough time,"  People who set expectations they cannot live up to is about the most common problem we hear about.  It doesn't matter what excuses they give, or what kind of deal they cut you, when they failed to meet your expectations, you paid too much.

 

There's nothing like a good warm, fuzzy

A lot of wedding photography is sold on good feelings.  The photographer is a nice person, they like you, they are excited for you, etc.  In general, wedding photographers are very nice people.  That doesn't change the fact that there are many very nice people with lovely personalities who really shouldn't be doing wedding photography.    It's important that you find a photographer that you like, but it's not the only thing.  TheIR work is all you will be left with.  If they fail to meet your expectations, who cares how nice they were?

Wedding photography is easy to do poorly.

Wedding photography is an unregulated industry.  The people who cut your hair or fix your toilets have more rules and regulations on them for a $50 transaction than a wedding photographer who charges over $5000.  The money is too enticing for many people to pass up.   They feel they can fake it. What makes it even harder is that the barrier to entry in wedding photography has been lowered with cheaper and cheaper cameras.   Today there are more and more people who consider themselves wedding photographers.

Don't you have enough on your plate?   

We were going to list all of the problems that you have to worry about when hiring a wedding photographer.  The problem is that it would take another five pages to list all the horror stories we've heard over the years.  Con artists who steal deposits and don't show up to the wedding.  Photographers who sign you up on a low package and then drop you when a better paying job comes along. Photographers who send other people to cover their wedding.  Photographers who lose your images after the wedding due to a computer problem.  The list goes on and on.

There are a lot of really great studios who do a nice job.  The problem is that there is a lot of junk out there, and thus finding the good studios are harder to do.  So, we'll offer you some advice to help with your hunt.

Get referrals- You should pay extra close attention to people who have used a photographer in the past, and after the full transaction, feel good about it.

Be Skeptical-  Ask questions, look to see more than a few albums, look to make certain that they show you complete albums, not just greatest hits of a few weddings. Ask if they have been to your ceremony and reception site.  Ask them to describe it.  Get a copy of their contract, read it.  Is it too loose? Does it have your interests covered?  See  a few photographers before making a decision.  Listen to what they say.  Ask questions.  Be very skeptical about people who insist on meeting in your home or restaurant.  Why don't they want you to know where they live?

Set a realistic budget- Wedding photography should be 10% of your wedding budget, if it's important to you  15%  of your budget.    With wedding photography it's often better to pay more than you want to than less than you should have.

Pay attention to experience- People who are experienced tend to charge more than those who don't.   If you want the job done right the first time, go with someone who is experienced and has a vast portfolio of previous successes. 

Red Flags

These are things to watch out for, and should be considered knock out factors.

#1.  Photographers who insist on getting paid in full, before the wedding.  Even if you have the money, don't pay in full in advance.  Too many horror are  stories happening these days.  This is a lot of money, and it's in your best interest to not pay it all in advance. 

#2. Uninsured Photographers-  If something goes wrong at a wedding and your uninsured photographer breaks something or injures someone, and they don't have the money to pay up, guess who is next on the list?  That's right, you! 

#3.  People who are too eager to sign you up.  If you feel someone is pushing you into signing you up on the spot, it's a huge red flag.  If they are cutting you huge deals if you sign up on the spot, it usually a bad sign.   You should have a right to read over contracts, go home, talk about the deal with your family.  You should have the right to do a full search for a wedding photographer.

#4. Poorly written contracts-  If the contract is skimpy, with very little detail, with more detail about how you will pay and less detail about what they will do, then this is troubling to say the least.  Sometimes photographers are just bad business people.  If you want to hire them anyway, draft up your own contract, or make a contract addendum and be very specific about the details of the agreement. 

#5 If it looks too good to be true, it is! -  We used to publish a list of 25 questions to ask a wedding photographer.  A few years ago it worked well,  In fact it was so popular that other photographers used it on their website (and put in a copyright notice, isn't that a riot!) , and it ended up in magazine articles.  It was helpful to some extent.   This one gal grabbed the questions and asked them to the photographer she was interviewing. Boy, he had all the right answers. But for a moment, let's digress. .  .

Photographers all have their little sales pitch.  You go around and talk to all of us and sooner or later we'll all contradict each other.  That doesn't make your job any easier, we know.  We all have our little stories and our little ways of doing things.  We all have things that make us great, and some good justifiable reasons why we are better than the other photographers you will meet.

Okay, back to the story.  This gal asked these 25 questions, looked the guy up and down, and he had all the right answers.  Here's what he had to say.   He had these lovely albums.  Big beautiful albums, and they were only $995 for the photography and album.  She was in for the deal of the century.  So, she wrote him a check for $500.  A few months later she got a letter in the mail, he wrote to inform her that he was going out of business, and thanks for the money.

If something doesn't feel right, than your gut is trying to tell you something, you need to listen.  If something looks too good to be true, it usually is.  Be skeptical.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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