wedding photography

[Kaloki]

Let me preface this by saying I wouldn't do it myself, so do value those that do, however..

My DP is a photographer, and he mainly does fashion, so we do understand the costs involved. (He has the full studio kit etc) And definitely don't think they should be charging in a way that undervalues their skill. But we just can't justify spending so much on a photographer for 2-3 hours work maximum. It's crazy, DP doesn't charge even half that much and he's no amateur!

So it grates no end knowing that the same photographers (in some cases) will charge so much less for a normal on location portrait session (so no difference apart from the event) than they would for a wedding. Is it the use of the "w" word? Does the use of it in some way contravene a law and so requires extra money to pay off lawyers? What the hell?

We just wish we could clone DP so he could do the photos himself, rather than all this fuss finding a good photographer (understands f-stops, ISO, shutter speed, and that photoshop wont fix bad photos) who doesn't charge the earth.

AIBU to think the prices are insane?

"Not to excuse the insane Bride Tax that's slapped on anything wedding related, but they're a slightly different kettle of fish from general studio photography - it's more like press. Ideally, you need a reflector-wielding assistant to make sure the right permutation of Auntie X + Cousin B (but not Cousin C) shots are taken, and to get everyone herded in and out before the next wedding arrives. You can't go back and reshoot, you have to be prepared for rubbish lighting/sudden showers, brides often say they want 'reportage' but then decide they need a formal family set as well, the day can start at 7am, and finish at 11pm at the reception, etc, etc."

It's actually not so different from fashon/portrait shots to be honest. You need to be prepared for all outcomes there as well, you rarely get a call back if something goes wrong.

Annoyingly for us, we know it wont be all day, and we know exactly what we want, it then doesn't make sense to us to have to pay so much for a full day. 3 hours at £800? £266 per hour? Not keen.

Mingg I would go for the disposable camera, but having worked in a photo lab I cannot stand the awful quality! This is the other problem, we definitely do not want photographs that we could do better ourselves. See here, DP is talking about using his camera on timer if we can't find someone to that standard.

And really, we shouldn't be paying the earth for a photographer who can take decent photos! That should be the standard!

littlereddragon It's a small wedding, 20 guests, at a zoo Going to be excellent, and a bit alternative seeing as both me and DP are goths.

Sounds fun, Kaloki! Congratulations.

Btw, glad you started this thread, as I've picked up lots of good thoughts from it.

Just to add to the ridiculousness of some photographers fees.

Paying extra because someone has a grasp of composure, exposure and the way light works is insane! That's all that photography is about, it's be like being an electrician who doesn't understand electricity! You'd never get paid work, and people would certainly not expect there to be a sliding scale of that knowledge, and accept it!?

As a professional photographer I can reveal that the truth is simply that there is a lot of work involved and a lot of expensive equipment needed, not to mention insurance, CRB checks for working with children and everything else.

To most weddings I will take along about £12K of equipment, this does not include all the other specialist equipment back at base for colour calibrating images etc.

Then on top of the time spent at a wedding, it usually takes a few hours to sort through, and post process the images.

Then there can easily be a few more hours or even days reowrking and editing photos when the couples order their albums.

However I feel my prices are very reasonable and I'm based just by Whipesnade.

You can see my work here - www.photographybyriddell.co.uk

riddell it's the same costs as for DP plus studio equipment (also a pro) and he knows that it's still a rip off in most cases. Most photographers price themselves out of the market.

Kaloki - I completely see where you're coming from - DP is a studio photographer and does weddings (specialising in non-traditional ones) for friends and contacts for a decent price who are similarly naffed off with the wedding photographer bilge.

I haven't read the whole thread as DS is grizzling, but are you still looking for someone?

We are M32song

Our photograher is charging us £425 for coverage from 10am (bridal preparations) until 6pm. He's won awards and is really good. We're getting married on a weekday though.

Whenever you mention the 'W' word expect anything to have it's price doubled, hair, make up, flowers, and if it's on a Saturday, treble it.

HTH

I'm going to come in in defense of the expensive wedding side of things here - we paid 2,300 for our photographer - for that we got two photographers for 8 hours (one doing reportage and one focusing on the more traditional shots), a 50 page A3 wedding book fully designed and printed and all images (of which there were over 1000) on a DVD for doing our own re-prints. The photographers were excellent, very good at marshalling people without them feeling harassed and they managed to capture at least one good candid photo of every single person attending (and there were 120 guests - not one was missed!). They also went up to the castle the day before and spent time working out lighting and the best location for images so everything ran super quickly on the day.

The reason we paid so much money for the photographs was that I wanted to make sure that I had the best possible record of the day. The photographs are amazing and I was happy to pay that much for them.

I think the difference with a local portrait session is generally you have smaller groups to manage at a time, your subjects/models are less likely to be all wandering off in different directions towards the bar while you're trying to get a group shot of them and it's a less stressful environment - one thing that was very important to me was that the photographers were as unobtrusive as possible while still directing people into good shots. There is a real art to that which some photographers at other weddings I've been to seem to lack.

drop me a line at rmtflash at gmail dot com and I'll put you in touch with him.

lucky and that's fine. But we are being quoted the same for 2 hours work for only portraits of us with no "album" or groupshots or retouching, and we've done the recce of the location for them. With the aim of only ending up with 3 (at most) good shots to be framed.

Kaloki - they're taking the piss then

Not strictly about price, but thought I'd add my tips in..
We paid for a 'proper' wedding photographer for our wedding in Feb and I'm so disappointed with the results that I sometimes cry at the results.
The quality could have been better, but what upsets me is the content of the pics. So my top tip would be to be really clear about the pics you want e.g. I wanted a pic of just me and my best mate, but he got a pic of all the girls together. I'd also assumed that being Feb, it would be cold and raining, so I wanted pics of the us inside the manor house we used(ornate fireplaces as backgrounds etc), but as it was a clear day, he dragged everyone outside.
I'd even go as far as writing a list of the shots you want so there's no confusion.
I also think the relationship you have with the photographer is really important. Ours didn't speak to me about what I wanted at all - serves me right for letting my in-laws arrange it, but that's another story.....!

Hi Kaloki!

Haven't read through the whole thread but as it's you, I didn't like not to reply...

Anyway. We had a small wedding, and had it mid-week. Purely because that date was special and we didn't want to wait three years for it to fall on a Saturday. Anyway, that made a big difference to prices for a few things - flowers, cake, photographer, hotel and even registry office. We didn't realise it beforehand, but it did work out well for us. Have you already set your date?

For the photographer, we met up with the guy from the local newspaper. Doesn't normally do weddings (so reasonably priced) but also had plenty of experience.

However, in the end, we went with someone different (just liked him better and he "pric matched"). He was a wedding photographer, but as he wouldn't normally have been working that day, he saw a bit of cash-in-hand for a few hours' work as being worth his while.

We made sure to tailor our own package too. I didn't want silly shots of me half made-up and still in my dressing gown, so the guy met us at the registry office. We also (having such a small wedding) wanted peace for the meal and party so didn't want him hanging about for a first dance or anything. (More relaxed atmosphere for us and for guests.)

The other thing we did was we asked for all images to be given to us (raw format) on a disc. We didn't want x amount of prints and then £10/£20 a go for extras, and we wanted to do our own album. So again, I think the guy was saving by just turning up for a few hours, taking the pictures, minimal editing and then posting us the CD. Easy money. And as for us, we have the ability to print off as many copies of the photos as we like (literally hundreds of photos on the disc) and we have our own album that we made up ourselves, very personal and unique and absolutely perfect in my opinion.

Anyway. Dunno if any of that's helpful?! As usual, a big long ramble from me though!

I'm a documentary photographer. I deliberately avoid doing weddings. Not least because everyone appears to be astonished that they are required to pay a halfway decent rate for your creative skills spread over hours and hours in attendance! All with £10K and upwards of kit. And that's before the hours spent on post-shoot editing, presentation and printing.

I agree that there are some rip-off merchants but equally, if someone can do a wedding for under £500 then they are nowhere near covering their costs. So something will have to give. It might well be quality and how much of a bargain is a set of hideously poor wedding pictures?

But quite frankly, it'd be less stressful to be an embed in Kabul than it would cover the average suburban wedding.

If the OP's dp is a photographer, surely he has some friends in the business who'd be prepared to do a favour?

PS. I am the Mumsnetter formerly known as Pikelit.

i am not having formal photographs - it's a pain the bum for everyone involved, photographer, guests, even bride and groom!

we're having a friend who is a graphic designer by trade and amateur photographer take a few portrait shots just of me and DH (as he will be by then) after the ceremony.

then for the lunch, ceilidh, bbq etc we have told guests that we would like them to take digital photos and post them onto a flickr account we've set up.. i will also specifically ask some friends i know who are very good with a SLR to take some of their own family/group/table.

i then plan to create my own book using something like cewe.

we had a small wedding but my aunt and uncle both agreed to do the photography (for free - even though we wanted to pay them). We did look around at local photographers prices but the cheapest was £600 and we couldn't justify that. That was just for the CD!

If you can get someone from a college or a relative to do the photography (just the bits that are really important like cutting the cake, church photo, reception photo, some with relatives etc) it will be much much cheaper.

I do appreciate that photographers have to earn a living and the cost of equipment is not cheap but in these times it's a lot of money to part with only for photographs.

the good thing about having relatives or close friends do the photography is that on the day they can set up the laptop with all the shots they have taken and you and your guests can view them on the slideshow option - it's nice to see your photos the same day they are taken as some may need to be taken again if they didn't turn out well. this is what happened at my own wedding - I enjoyed getting to see all the shots.

I just bought my own photo album and 3 years on haven't got round to completing it - had other pressing matters like having babies on my mind! The day itself was more important than the photos though and so I'm not too bothered about that. I will get round to sorting out the photos in a few years time.

Wasn't there a photographer mumsnetter on here recently asking for people to critique her new website? Halo Lifestyle I think it was called - she had some beautiful shots, although I can't remember where she was based.

FWIW I went with a big franchised company for my wedding photos. I asked for reportage and got formal, and the only one on my wall is one taken by my BIL that is of a group of us waiting for a formal photo and laughing madly at something.

That was £500 in 2000.

another good thing about getting a relative to do your photography over a professional is that if they do it for free or for a small fee you've not got much to lose if things don't turn out well.
Luckily my own relatives did a grat job with the photography and everyone was a winner. I only asked for them to take photos at reg office and cake cutting but they carried on taking photos right the way through the evening reception because they were enjoying it (both love photography).

www.sussexweddingphotography.or.uk

were offering free reportage wedding packages to build portfolio.

Sorry www.sussexweddingphotography.org.uk

This is probably better

www.sussexweddingphotography.org.uk

Bloody hell I'd forgotten this thread! Thank you for the links, but the wedding happened just over a month ago now :)

The photography was saved by a wonderful friend of DH's (was on the same photography course years back)