A Few Thoughts: Choosing Your Photographer

There are a number of considerations in choosing the right photographer for you and your fiance. Here are some, in no particular order:

• How important are the wedding photos to you?
• What style of wedding photography do you seem to be drawn to?
• How much money do you feel comfortable spending for your wedding pictures?
• Do you think you will want an "heirloom" type album that's made up of a selection of your absolute favorite photographs? Say 40, or 50, or 60 prints....Or is it sufficient to have your photographer cover the wedding, deliver the proof prints, and release the negatives to you? Then you and your new wife can assemble an album yourselves, if you wish.
• A lot of your decision should be based on how much time and effort you are prepared to spend designing your own album, selecting the proper negatives, going to the right lab, taking care of any retouching, and so forth. I can tell you that it is more difficult for most people to go through this process than they might imagine.
• Do you want a lot of posed photos or are you primarily interested in spontaneous pictures that capture the day and tell a story?
• What ratio of black and white to color do you think you might want? Your photographer should be able to guide you in this decision.
• Consider the personality of the photographer since you'll be spending a lot of time with him/her the day of the wedding, and you'll have contact with this person after the wedding, especially if you want a finished album.
• If you want an album, what style book appeals to you? There are many choices available, from cheesy-looking albums you'd find at places like Walmart, to fine glove leather or Japanese silk hand bound books that are one-of-a-kind.

I could go on, but these are some of the major points you need to think about.

As for pricing, it's all over the map, from a few hundred dollars to virtually as much as you want to spend. It's important to know what exactly you'll be getting for your money. Prices for reprints will also vary greatly from one wedding photographer to another. Some will shoot the wedding for very little, sort of "on spec" hoping to make their big profit on print sales, other photographers are "fee-based." These photographers tend to charge for their services at rates that they feel reflect their talent and experience, and sell prints at moderate prices, rather than be "middle men" for their labs. Some wedding photographers charge an hourly rate plus film, processing, and other expenses. Some have one inclusive price.

Some photographers like to do "package" pricing, which can be inflexible and confusing, in my opinion. Others offer something called a "design credit" which is a sum that you pay upfront and is applicable to your album and reprint orders. I used to price this way but I didn't like it because many couples found it confusing.

I also felt that it was misleading, because often the "credit" wasn't enough to pay for the size album that couples desired, and they wound up spending more than they were perhaps comfortable spending and were unpleasantly surprised at how much albums and photos cost "after the fact" of the wedding, and after they already paid their photographer a significant amount of money to shoot the wedding.

Some photographers price on an a-la-carte basis. One set fee to shoot your wedding, no additonal fees or upcharges. You know exactly what it will cost for your photographer to photograph your wedding. Your album is based on your wants and needs and is priced separately per precise estimate.

I like this method of pricing. I think the most rational way for a couple to make decisions regarding their wedding album is after they've seen the photos, not before! A very good way to research wedding photographers is on the Internet. In addition to typing in "Seattle Wedding Photographers" in Google, you can try wedding-related websites such as "www.weddingchannel.com. There are others.... You'll soon see what an enormous variety of talent, taste, sophistication (or lack of it), and pricing there is out there.

-Paul Sanders
www.psweddings.com