Wedding photographers rant

A good photographer doesn't have to cost a fortune, but paying out large amounts of money doesn't guarantee a good one. Get recommendations, talk to them, and decide if they are the person you want to take the photographs. Our photographer was brilliant, recommended by our wedding planner and the work he and his wife did on the day was fantastic, and his fee was very reasonable, because he doesn't do it for a living, but because he enjoyed it.

Speak to people at the venue if they do a lot of weddings, see who they recommend and take it from there.
 
We didn't have a professional photographer at our wedding, which I really regret, especially as so many of our older relatives are no longer with us now.

Some friends of ours paid just shy of £1000 for their wedding photos and they are amazing. For that they got all the pictures they wanted in an album, in the size, order and colour/monochrome choice. They also got a CD with most of the other photos taken on the day, including some double exposure ones taken during the fireworks at the end of the party. The photos include some taken 2 weeks before the ceremony, ones taken as the bride's party and groom's party were getting ready and some absolutely fabulous candid, unplanned, informal ones of friends and relatives.

It is something that they and their families treasure and look at frequently so it was well worth the money.
 
£100 to drag and drop some files into a cd? For that much I hope they'd have custom wrote the cd making software and plated the cd in 24k gold. I certainly wouldn't have paid £500 for someone to be at a wedding for an hour.
 
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Energize said:
£100 to drag and drop some files into a cd? For that much I hope they'd have custom wrote the cd making software and plated the cd in 24k gold. I certainly wouldn't have paid £500 for someone to be at a wedding for an hour.
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£100 would be expensive to "drag and drop" if those photos came out of google images.

As for £500 an hour, last wedding i did for a friend, 15 hours on the day and i spent a further 48 hours in total processing the 1600 shots i took. I did it as a favour as I knew the bride since she was 8, shes the sister of my best mate, on top of that i gave them this print (which is now hanging in their front room) as a present. They did give me £200 towards a lens i wanted to get as a gift afterwards but for the time and money spent (i hired a lens for £70 as well), minus the money on the print. I made about 90p per hour for that wedding.

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I said before, and i'll say again, the client see that they pay £500 for an an hour, but that's if the photographer just turns up on the day, takes 100 pictures, and gets home and burn every shot into a CD. Not if he is worth his salt and be a professional, do processing, albums, and video slideshow etc.
 
I think its the usual £100 extra for the photos on disk that people object to on top of the £1k! My sister got married for a second time in 2005 and looked for a photographer; she is loaded and was prepared to pay but the only condition was that she had copyright of the photos i.e. copy/duplicate at will.

As soon as the condition was mentioned all the 'commercial' bods lost interest; presumably removing the possibility of repeat fees was the reason. As we have at least four members of the family with SLR/DSLR kit and the ability to use it they did it between them in lieu of presents. The fact that all four of them have different 'styles' meant that there was nice mix of photos.

For the reception every table had a camera and there are shots of everybody. The only time the SLRs came out was when my sisters Salsa group got going!
 
Energize said:
Where the images came from is irrelevant because they have already been paid for, the cd was extra on top of producing the photographs.
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Well, photographers makes a lot of their earnings by selling prints. That print above costs £90, thats the bottomline, that's how much it came out of my bank account to get someone print it, and custom frame it. So i would've sold that for twice as much to make money from it. That's how normally a photographer make a lot of his profit, selling prints. He can sell a group shots to people in the shot 20 times, its how they make money. Its how the business is done and if you are in their shoes, you'd do the same.

Now, if he gives the Bride and Groom a CD, what's going to happen? They are going to take it to Boots and print out all the ones they want a thousand times over, for their mother, neighbour, friends, auntie louise and the dog. The photographer loses that revenue of income. He could make the Bride and Groom to sign a contract and legally speaking, they can't print it like that, but what's actually physically stopping them? Nothing.

Copyright is a touchy subject, the photographer will normally hold on to the copyright for his dear life because that's his art. Without copyright, he won't be able to use those shots in his website, or use it in advertisement.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
Well, photographers makes a lot of their earnings by selling prints. That print above costs £90, thats the bottomline, that's how much it came out of my bank account to get someone print it, and custom frame it. So i would've sold that for twice as much to make money from it. That's how normally a photographer make a lot of his profit, selling prints. He can sell a group shots to people in the shot 20 times, its how they make money. Its how the business is done and if you are in their shoes, you'd do the same.
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Tbh I'd simply increase prices of photography to compensate for lost print sales, from the reactions of people in this thread it seems that it would go down better with the customer and not lead them to thinking they were being ripped off.
 
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Energize said:
Tbh I'd simply increase prices of photography to compensate for lost print sales, from the reactions of people in this thread it seems that it would go down better with the customer and not lead them to thinking they were being ripped off.
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Say, just like 10 years ago, not that long ago really, the B&G will NEVER ask for CDs, the photographer keeps his negatives, that is the end of the story, no arguments.

The CD is like having the negative, you see where i am going? I know times change, and I do give the CDs away, in fact, thats what i do, I even give them permission to print sets for families as stated in the contract. What I don't do is give away the copyright. I also don't give away the full size image, only good enough for a A4 print really, which is good enough for most people's needs. I also shoot in RAW and only give jpegs on the CD so if anytime an argument comes up on who owns it, i have proof.

But for a lot of pro, i guess their mindset is still that of Film era, and giving away the CD is like signing away their soul. £100 for that though, from the client is cheap really if you think about it, you'll save yourself a FORTUNE in asking for prints.
 
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We paid out photographer (a lovely woman who had a real eye for pictures) £300 to do our wedding.
Afterwards we decided to pay the £150 for the full-rights to the pictures and we were given the images in RAW format on DVD.

It meant that we and all of the friends and family who wanted pictures could arrange to get them printed at a much lower cost.

We love all of our pictures and I don't resent paying our photographer the £450 in total for all the work she did.
I oly plan on having one wedding in my life and I want the memories of that day to be perfect - she managed to produce that for us.
 
I feel that once the photos have been taken they belong to the couple. We have set prices and we provide everything that we feel someone who doesn't know the inner workings of Copyright / the photography business world of doing things etc would resonably expect to get. I.e. Your photos that you hired the photographer for in the first place is a good start, that always baffled me with some other togs how you get the first xx amount of photos and after that they cost per photo or similar, that's just emotional ransom.

We encourage people to copy the DVDs we supply for friends and family, so they have backups outside of us. We supply the raws if they want them and they can print and use them as they wish as long as they are not for commercial gain.

We always suggest printing on the highstreet or through the internet as an alternative to ourselves if people ask if we do prints, it's part of giving good service I believe. We just make sure to charge enough UP FRONT that we make a fair profit and make enough for us to continue doing it, the B&G then know exactly where they stand finacially on the photo side considering they have a million other things to think about, it allows us to continue upgrading our gear over the years and generally making an actual living from our professions as everyone should be entitled too.

We do keep the Copyright as it's our 'art' but that shouldn't bother anyone unless they wanted to sell the photos. We also always ask before using or showing other couples photos, putting them on our website etc.

I guess what I'm getting at is that togs can cash in on weddings if they're cutting back on their service or charging for hidden extras (they usually come with emotional pulls attached) so although you may think you're getting a deal you may find that actually you've spent more, feel ripped off. Had to fight and pay more for all your photos. I'm not disputing that some togs out there charging £500 produce fantastic results but out of the few gems there's a lot of rough pebbles.

That's my ramble on it anyway :D
 
I do agree that people should get the original raw considering they paid for it's creation, I think it's only fair to give people the product they paid for and not a cut down compressed version. It seems to me that some people have an irrational fear that they will lose money because of it, despite having proof of copyright. When I do an artwork commission for someone I give them the uncompressed image and allow them to distribute it as they please, as far as I'm concerned that's what they've paid for, and certainly what a layperson expects to recieve. I find that by charging an amount that your happy with for the IP avoids many many problems.
 
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I totally appreciate the time needed for post production. It can and does easierly take up much more time than the original shoot.. the actual day of the shoot can become a distant memory! Those that are angry about the costs need to realise that the camera doesn't do all the work, just because you have spent X amount on camera gear doesn't mean you can point, shoot and job done.

Having said that... £100 for a CD ontop of the charges does sound quite extreme and it sounds bloody money grabbing.. Shouldn't the CD just come inclusive of the total price of the deal?
 
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rG-tom said:
To the person who said DJs have more moneys worth of equipment please give me a breakdown of that gear? I find it hard to believe that the typical event DJ I've seen has more money in his gear than I do?

Also they've got a far less stressful job, set up a playlist before hand and say a few words every now and then, otherwise sit back and supervise the equipment.

Tom
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Depends a lot (like these examples being thrown around for the cost of camera kit). Mobile DJs are generally crap because it's not possible to fit everything good in the back of a van. As a rough guide you're looking at £800 per CD player (CDJ-Mk3) and £900-ish for a mixer (something like a Xone:92). £130ish for headphones (HD-25) and about the same again on a mic (e945). Then a few hundred quid of speaker processing and limiting and whatever system they decide to bring. And a few grands worth of CDs/vinyl.

It's all pointless anyway because a good DJ will cost you a lot of money, like a good photographer will.
 
2StepSteve said:
Having said that... £100 for a CD ontop of the charges does sound quite extreme and it sounds bloody money grabbing.. Shouldn't the CD just come inclusive of the total price of the deal?
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100 quid is a bargain. Most photographers charge an arm & a leg for original images as they make money from selling the pictures as prints to friends / relatives etc.
 
We paid just over £1k for our wedding photographers last year, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

We paid for two photographers (a really nice married couple) who were with us from first thing early in the morning until the end of the wedding breakfast, about 6.30pm. We ended up with a beautiful leather album with 40ish pictures, not including the background shots that fill each double page in the album.

They also gave a CD with ALL the photos they took during the day, numbering into the hundreds, that we can do with what we please. And that came at no extra charge.

The quality of the images is superb; their style is candid and contemporary, with just the bare minimum of posed family shots.

Apart from the actual photography, we found the photgraphers to be the most helpful people throughout the entire planning of our wedding. They gave us a lot of useful advice on things that were completely out of their remit, but they were happy to help nonetheless.

We also had two pre-wedding shoots just to get us used to them taking shots in the background while we were doing our thang on the day.

We don't have much money between us, but this is one area where I would wholeheatedly recommend spending extra. Take the time to find a fantastic photographer (and i mean fantastic - there are plenty to choose from), and you will end up with a day you'll always remember fondly and some pictures to treasure for the rest of your life.
 
Raymond Lin said:
There is no way in hell i would hand over RAW files, that's like handing over film negative, who does that?
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We do!

What are you going to use the negatives for of someones private wedding? They only really hold real true value to the couple so why withold that from them if they want the RAWs?

Also, it's not like you're losing the only copy you have, RAWs being digital means you still have a copy as well!
 
That is a sublime print Raymond Lin, I've seen you post that all over the net but then again who wouldn't if they'd shot that.

Stunning work mate!

sid
 
The RAW files being given means you lose out on a huge chunk of future recopies/prints if you offer this facility. It's agreat way to conitnue making extra cash because the RAW allows for pritns up to A1 size and beyond depending on the level of resampling done in a RAW editor. if you're giving RAW files to a client who knows what they're getting then they'll be laughing in their heads at the bargain of a lifetime they're getting!

Sure the RAW files you will still have copies of and the IPTC copyright info will remain forever in those RAW files in your name but it doesn't stop them making huge prints and giving to guests or guests approaching them asking how much prints are and them selling the prints making your money instead of you making that money!

Unless they've paid the extra monies for the RAW files (which should be a large sum because of what they're getting) I'd never advise handing over such files! if they request high res versions on disc then I'd recommend handing over restricted resolution JPEG images at a lower comrpession ratio so they're geting high quality pictures on disc and capable of printing without quality loss up to a pre-determined size like 8x10 for example.
 
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