How To Hire A Wedding Photographer

When you get engaged it can be difficult to know how to hire a wedding photographer, more difficult than you may even know! The reason for this is because you probably don’t work in the wedding industry and likely don’t know all of the differences between different wedding photographers and that they offer…or what they don’t offer! How to Hire A Wedding Photographer

We have been full-time wedding photographers for nearly a decade at the time of writing this. In this time we have learned a lot about couples wish lists and expectations (so why not list them so you can get a jump start, right?). We’ve also heard a lot about what other photographers put limitations on through not only doing our own research but by listening to what couples like you have told us in consultations. How to Hire A Wedding Photographer

Personally, as a business focused on engaged couples comfort and quality service, we have made changes within our operation to ensure that nothing is overlooked and expectations are met! How to Hire A Wedding Photographer

Here is what we’ve found and what we’ve done to accommodate this wish list…

What Couples Don’t Know About But Should Expect

Photography Timeline: Your wedding coordinator or DJ is often tasked with creating a flow to your wedding in the form of a timeline to ensure that everything says on time and runs smoothly. What some engaged couples don’t know is that a few photographers can and will create a cohesive timeline to your foundation timeline in the form of a photography timeline. Below is an example of the timeline that we create so that you can see the how this can be important and what to expect.How to Hire A Wedding Photographer

Photo Development: Some wedding photographers will only “edit” or develop a portion of your digital photos. Actually, there are some that only edit about 30 digital photos when you should be receiving about 70-100 photos per hour (something that we’ll discuss next). The photos that are not developed are considered, in industry terms, SOC (Straight Out of the Camera). In this situation, if you’ve hired a highly experienced photographer that knows lighting and camera setting extremely well, this might be ok. However, wouldn’t you LOVE better than just ok … for all of your photos!? As wedding photographers, we carefully touch every single photo that we deliver so be sure to ask about this in your meeting because it won’t otherwise be brought up! How to Hire A Wedding Photographer

How Many Photos Should You Receive: This seems like a simple question but many may not know. We’re here to tell you that the industry standard should be 70-100 beautiful wedding photos per hour. If wedding photographers that you are consulting with don’t exactly know or hesitate to provide a specific answer they might not have the experience that they should have for your big day. How to Hire A Wedding Photographer

How Long Will It Take To Get My Wedding & Engagement Photos Back: You’re excited about your photography, you want to show them off and why wouldn’t you?! Well, you might be wondering, if all of my photos should be carefully developed by hand then shouldn’t it take longer? Our answer is, no. If you are hiring a full-time wedding photographer then they should be working full-time. We give an expected timeline of three weeks to deliver your wedding photography and two weeks for your engagement photography, and often we exceed these expectations (who doesn’t want their wedding photos early!?). So, two to three weeks should be your expectation. How to Hire A Wedding Photographer

Photo Print Release: Many photographers require you to print YOUR photos with them, exclusively. The problem with this is that we’ve found that the markup on this service is about 800% from what the photographer is paying from the professional lab. The positive here is that printing through your photographer should be significantly better than going to a local shop like Walgreens, Target, and even Costco as well as far better than Shutterfly and many other personal online printing services. However, we feel that you should feel as though these are YOUR photos, not ours and as such, you should have the freedom to print them, share them, and use them however you see fit. If this is not brought up in your wedding consultation or before your engagement session, definitely ask!

Cost of Printing (Printing Options): We do however offer prints, canvases, albums, USB’s, metal prints, and much more conveniently in your photo gallery. We’re not, however, comfortable with marking these products up so that you have easy access to high-end prints. This is our justification if your prints are printed through a professional and quality lab then our photography looks that much better! … The better your prints look, the better we look. We feel that you really can’t put a price on great reviews, quality results, and a happy couple! Anyhow, that’s our preference but others might not agree so, we suggest asking how much an 8×10 print is, for instance. How to Hire A Wedding Photographer

Our Product Pricing

(For Comparison)

Choose a Fun & Experienced Photographer: Not much could be worse than being stressed out on your wedding day, except maybe looking stressed out or uncomfortable in your wedding portraits! The fact is, your photographer is going to be around you all day and night. Having a connection with them as well as enjoying being around them not only decreases your stress but also drastically helps you look better in your wedding photography. An inexperienced photographer can get overwhelmed at the fast pace of a wedding and that can be uncomfortable. Knowing proper posing and having the tricks to keep you naturally smiling makes a world of difference in your final portraits.

Engagement Session Time limits: Ok, this one is something that you’ll rarely find any photographer not implement. I believe that it is because it is difficult to price things out without having something to go on. However, we have formulated a process that makes a lot more sense to us! We produce a certain amount of photos that you get to select from a gallery of many more photos. This way YOU (not us) get to select the photos that you love the most to download and we have something to price our session off of (a certain amount of guaranteed photos). There is perhaps a more important reason that we do things this way, it’s because we don’t feel that your session should be timed. Photography is an art, it’s not something that should really have a time limit. Natural lighting can be unpredictable, everyone is different in how long it takes to warm up to the camera, sometimes people or distractions are in the background that should be avoided, and more. So, why rush your session and try to keep it to under an hour? We believe that your session should take as long as it needs to take in order to be beautiful and perfect! So, maybe bring this up when you meet with your photographer.