How To Pick A Wedding Photographer

Where to Start Looking For A Wedding Photographer –

Happy New Year to all you newly engaged couples out there!

Wondering how to tackle the task of picking a wedding photographer?

Things got a little easier for couples trying to find their wedding photographer when we all started putting all our stuff online. It’s easier to look through our portfolios, see what our styles are, maybe get some questions answered.  You might even be able to find out about pricing and availability without ever having to actually contact the photographer.

But now you also have to sift through all the social media postings and scrutinize reviews and try to figure out if they are “too good to be true”.

What Does My Wedding Photography Package Include?

That might be a great way to start your initial wedding photography search, but when it gets down to figuring out who you actually want to chat with, it gets a little more difficult to sort out our nitty gritty wedding photo package details.

I have lots of friends in the industry, am a professional photographer and frankly even I can’t make heads or tails of some of their packages.

It’s especially difficult to figure out three things; what’s included in the pricing for rights, what’s delivered to you and how much post processing is done to the images (whether you get prints or digital rights).

What Exactly is a Proof?

Some photographers offer “Full resolution” digital proofs. What’s that? Usually proofs are low resolution and usually full resolution aren’t called “proofs”. So which one are you getting?

Photographers say that all the images are retouched. Really? What exactly does this mean? Is the photographer doing the retouching or is Ai?

For me that’s always meant they have been color corrected, adjusting contrast and the images and are ready to print.

Editing is subjective and it’s important for you, the consumer to totally understand what you are and aren’t getting. Are you getting images with watermarks?

 

What Will You Be Doing With Your Wedding Photos?

If you can figure out exactly what you anticipate you’ll be doing with your wedding photos, that will make it easier for you to ask the right questions about what your needs are. If, for example, you know you’ll be posting your images on facebook and not doing hardly any printing at all, you might be okay with low resolution (although I’m sure you’ll want to be able to print them eventually).

I see lots of watermarked images appear on people’s facebook pages. Some photographers use that to copyright their images which means the couple are effectively using those images without consent, while other photographers simply watermark images so that other photographers and corporations can’t steal their work (but that’s for another blog!).

 

Ask LOTS of Questions – That’s Totally Normal

So don’t be afraid to ask questions that might seem silly or the photographer has implied that they’ve answered.

Make sure you understand exactly what it is that you are purchasing and there won’t be any disappointments later.

Once you’ve figured out what you need, which photographer can deliver exactly what you’re looking for, then you look at which photographer’s images. Which ones do you relate to the most? Who seems like the kind of person you can get along with the best?

Who has the most experience, timely delivery and whatever else are top priorities on your personal “must have” lists?

 

Congratulations… Now Take The Quiz!

Happy wedding photographer shopping to all you newly engaged couples in the New Year!

For more blogs about figuring out what different wedding styles look like, please read my blog posting all about it.

When you’ve finished reading, see how much you’ve learned about different wedding photography styles.