New Locations for Wedding Photography

"Where should we go for our wedding photos?" Sounds like an easy question for a wedding photographer, and in some ways it is, but if you want to keep you pictures fresh, you really need to tailor your locations to your couples. You need to get to know them first. Thing is, it's often one of the first things they want to know, almost a test question from one of those "what to ask your wedding vendor" booklets.

I usually name a couple of possible locations, then ask if they have looked at any they like or seen any pictures they can see themselves in and try to refine (or expand) the choices from there - 

Very often though, I need to go and see. What is in the local area, how do the travel times fit in with the venues for the ceremony and the reception, and are there any booking requirements or fees involved. It isn't unusual for me to have to do this while the client is still deciding between me and another photographer, which was the case this week. As I write this, I have traveled about 100 Km and made calls to four organisations (2 councils, a university and a private garden) to find out if their venues are available on the required date, and how much they charge.

I have passed the information on to the couple, although I don't know yet if I have the job - I may well be making life easier for the competition... but on the other hand, it builds my database and I have had a very enjoyable time photographing the best of those venues. It is an absolutely beautiful public park with ancient trees, memorial gardens, shaded walkways, a military section with canon, 25 pounders and mortar launchers (my potential groom is a part-time soldier). Great character and variety and with the right aspect re the sun for the time of the post-wedding shoot.

I never consider my unpaid time scouting for venues or negotiating with the people who manage venues wasted. I always learn something of value, often make good contacts, and come away a little better prepared for that inevitable question "Where should we go for our wedding photos".

Post Script - they went a competitor who also provides video.  That's OK - I win about 70% of the jobs I quote for, and I know the photographer they chose - she will do a wonderful job for them. Now I wonder where they will go for the location photos?

Giving Away the Farm

If you don't like moaners, don't read today's post, because I am going to have a whinge!


Many wedding photographers provide their clients DVDs with the image files from their wedding day - many do not, and some will supply them for a fee.


Photographers who never offer files on a disk, or who charge for the files, tend to be highly respected professionals. Men and women with really impressive reputations, amazing talent and great skill. They know something that you may not have realised - they know that you do not really care much about their skill, talent or experience  - you just want some photos!  But still, their Names - and ultimately, your satisfaction - depends on you receiving photographs prepared, printed and presented with the individual care that their reputation is built on.


They also know that it doesn't matter how hard they worked for you or good their photography is,  the photos people see on Facebook or in a packet of prints that you hand around to your friends is their best advertisement.  They don't want  a stack of 20cent prints in a department store photo album to be the measure of their skill and efforts!


A photographer whose only commitment is to provide a set of files on a disk has a different mind set. How the pictures turn out is not their concern. It is your responsibility and and they don't much care where you get them done. They work cheap, and count on low price and ignorance to keep them in business.


Of course, they will do their best to ensure you have good pictures... the trouble is, good pictures are pictures taken with an understanding of how the photos will eventually be used. The file burnt to a disk may print well for a small book, but be useless as an enlargement - good for Internet viewing but poor in a flushmount album, acceptable in a digital album, but not work in a traditional album and so on. 


Specifying "high Resolution" files doesn't actually mean anything - or rather, it means different things to different people, and I'll talk about that a bit later.


When I know that I will be managing prints, albums and so on, I have a vested interest in ensuring that the files are not only of the highest quality, but that they are in an appropriate format for the various uses to which they are going to be put. 


What is more, knowing in advance how they will be used, I can photograph each wedding with those uses in mind; I need to be sure that,  in addition to the "standard" photos that make up most wedding collections,  there will be images in the portfolio that will be ideal for each planned use.


Why isn't it enough to just be sure that all the images are high resolution (HiRes)?  Can't HIRes files be enlarged for any anticipated use... unfortunately not:  HiRes is not a meaningful term. When you ask most  burn-and-shoot photographers what they mean by HiRes, they tend to talk about how many megapixels their camera captures- but the little toy cameras in cell phones have more megapixels than some professional SLR cameras. You would never think of them as HiRes! These photographers are mixing up pixel counts with resolution and digital capture with output. It is the output resolution that counts! Without going into technical detail, it is all about the final image, not the file it came from. 


Printing presses (used for digital photo books)  and inkjet printers used for most quality prints and albums, have different requirement, but basically you need a file that can provide 300 dots of ink(dpi) for every linear inch (25mm). of your print. If your photographer has supplied you with typical jpeg files direct from the camera to the disk, they will not manage this. If he shot in RAW, and then used default settings from most conversion software, it will still not be set up for enlargements  - but pictures up to A4 will be fine - usually - and other uses will be "good enough, but a long way short of what they should be. 

I was interested to read an ad from a "professional photographer" which offered hi-resolution files for purchased on disk: up to 250 files, edited and able to be printed as large as 5"x7". To me, that does not suggest a high resolution;  a 300 dpi file could be produced easily from a 2 megapixel camera; I suspect those files have been intentionally reduced to prevent enlarging, but they are still High Resolution.

The standard printer used for pro quality albums prints at 600 dpi. I work with a company that has a one-of-a-kind 3600 dpi printer; try uploading your typical shoot-and-burn files to that and then tell me about hi-res files.


You get what you pay for - so if you pay for a disk, that is what you get; the photos on it are often just an excuse to collect a fee for the disk. . So you say "I want hi-res images on a disk and the right to print them later"  and that's what you will get, too. But since you have taken on the responsibility of preparing the files for  printing you really have no comeback when the results are second class.


I'm sorry this has turned into such a diatribe, but I was just shown a set of files on a CD and asked if I could print an album from them. Of the 350 or so files, about 150 are suitable. Isn't 150 enough for an album? A small one, anyway?  Maybe, but all the "good" slides are from the garden part of the wedding ceremony, and most of these are so similar that you couldn't use more than half of them - 19 shots of the first kiss is all very well, but it doesn't tell very much of the story of the wedding day. Add 10 quite acceptable photos of the family groups, one of the bride walking up the aisle and that's about the sum of it. Very few of the indoor shots are any better than the guests took.  I could make some nice Canvas prints and some reasonable enlargements... and they will look good on Facebook, but for an album...


I will try to restore enough of the preparation  photos and the reception shots to make an album, but it won't be quick and it won't be easy. I can't help thinking that, if the photographer had known she was going to make the album, she would have made a very different set of pictures! 

Weddings: A Place to Begin

I've been married 20 odd years, and at the beginning, Jean and I weren't all that financially secure. We started out with 6 kids between us, and two of those were handicapped. Then there was the mortgage, and all the usual costs of setting up a new home amidst the wreckage of the failed ones we had left behind. We may not have been in poverty, but the wiff of it was in the air...

And what has this to do with photography? A little: with not much cash in the household, we had to make a few ... call them "compromises"... with our wedding day.

Some things that you might expect to "have done" we simply did ourselves: Jean baked and decorated the cake; we catered the wedding ourselves, with great help from the local Salvation Army; I was still up on a ladder decorating the reception hall at 5 am on the Big Day. Couldn't afford a wedding dress or fancy suit (we married in Salvation Army Uniform "under the Flag" as Sallies like to say); and our children provided the music, songs and readings and acted as ushers.....

But one thing we could not do for ourselves was take the Wedding Photos and we sure couldn't afford a photographer.

What did we do? We told every guest who owned a camera to bring it along! Those were the days of film, of course, and it was an agonizing wait to see what - if anything - came back. We couldn't really chase people up and ask "what about our wedding photos?"

Well, we did get back some quite nice photos. We treasure them! They may be really simple pictures of family and friends standing a bit awkwardly and grinning at the camera, but they are OUR wedding pictures and they mean the world to us.

Does that mean that I would recommend the "d0-it-yourself" approach to wedding photography? Of course not; it can be done, but it is chancy and stressful.

What it does mean is that I am very conscious of two things when I photograph a wedding: the obvious one is the cost. Weddings have become very expensive undertakings, and a big part of the cost is the photography.

O.K., so it isn't a large expense compared with the catering or the hall or even the dress/shoes/car hire and so on. But how does a photographer justify up to $5000 for one day's work? Except it isn't one day's work to them.

For every hour taking photographs, there is another 3 hours editing, classifying, sorting, selecting, uploading to websites, building albums... it is worse for film photographers!

It isn't all profit, either: the taxes, maintenance costs, travel and insurance (I carry about $6,000 worth of cameras, lenses and other equipment on a wedding shoot - you bet it's insured; and so is the computer I store and edit it on) - they all eat into that fee. J

Just about every wedding happens on a Saturday, so there are only about 50 jobs per year maximum from which to earn a living. At $2500, a photographer with one assistant to pay will just about break even.

So how come there are people out there offering to do the job for under $1000? Often they are offered by part-time photographers who are not relying on their photography to earn a living: they have a "real" job. But yes, full-time pros have budget packages too.

I certainly have packages for under $1000, partly because I remember what it was like when I got married, and I don't ever want to price my services out of the reach of any couple. But I can only afford it because most people want more than the budget package, and it is the average return that determines whether I go broke or not, and besides, it generates good word-of-mouth referrals

Weddings also generate alternative income steams which let's us run "break-even" packages - for instance, when I contract a $950 wedding, my I know I can count on extra income from sales to guests; and then there are relatives who couldn't get to the wedding. Even though I give all of the opictures to the bride and groom on DVD, a lot people prefer to buy prints direct from my website - it's cheap and the couple don't have to part with their precious CDs.

The other thing I an very conscious of is that leaving the photos to the goodwill of friends might get you a record of the bits of the wedding as they went to - the service and the reception- but that is only a tiny part of your experience as a Bride or Groom. That is where the real value of a professional photography shines out.

My friends took pictures of us standing with family or friends, but there is no record of the day as a whole, and while the photos stir our memories, they can't convey our emotions and our love and sense of the day to anyone else, not even to the other participants.

When you place yourself in the hands of a Wedding Photographer they will meet with you, discuss your plans, come to understand how you see this day, and work with you to create something very special that encapsulates all that this means to you. And they will have the skill, experience, technical ability and the equipment to ensure you wedding memories last a lifetime.

When the wedding cake has been eaten, the guests have gone home, and the Gown has been put in mothballs it will be your Rings and your Photographs that stay fresh through all the years of your marriage.