Selecting your wedding photographer

Selecting your wedding photographer - What you are told to do by other wedding photographers when selecting your wedding photographer.

What you are told - So, first off is that you MUST pick your wedding photographer as early as you possibly can.  Probably before you are actually engaged to make sure you get THE wedding photographer for you.  Plan well ahead.  In fact plan so far ahead go back in time and ask your parents to book me the day you are conceived.

Reality - Yeah, book in advance if you want.  But we all have some spare dates here and there and 99% of us usually can't afford to turn money away.  The other 1% are cantankerous gits like me who are picky about choosing our wedding clients.    For me, the further out you book the cheaper it is as I fix my price at the time of booking.

Selecting your wedding photographer

What you are told - Facebook Reviews are BEST - really?  How easy is it to put up Facebook reviews?  Just ask your mates - we all have Facebook accounts.  In fact about 1 BILLION PEOPLE are on Facebook.  Then ask yourself how many times has Facebook messed up with data, security etc?  Yeah, I don't trust them at all.

Reality - I use Google Reviews.  Harder to fake, harder to do, (not many people actually have a Google account compared to a Facebook Account) so it takes some real effort for a couple to put up a Google Review. I've only got 113 Google Reviews (November 2022), but each and every one of those people has more than likely HAD to go out of there way to write it.

What you are told - Style of photography is really important.  You MUST find a wedding photographer whose style you like, 'Reportage' / Formal' / 'Documentary' / 'Photojournalistic' etc etc.  If you don't you will regret this forever.

Reality - Very few wedding photographers have a clearly defined style that they stick to.  I certainly don't.  I shoot landscapes, products, portraits, fine art, and architecture at weddings.  I shoot candid, natural, formal, posed, casual, relaxed, drunken and occasionally normal.

What you are told - Find a photographer whose editing style you like. The "edits are the art daaaaaarrrrling"

Reality - Editing is a subjective thing.  I HATE the muted, washed-out colours that seem to be trendy.  But if you really like the photographer, I bet they will think twice before turning you away if you ask them not to apply a curves adjustment to make the photographs washed out. Let's face it, we are self-employed artists.  We need the money.  Except for "spot colour".  Even for all the Jaffa Cakes in the world, I still won't do any of that spot colour crap. Even if Helen Mirram bought me Jafa Cakes, I still wouldn't do it.

What you are told - Budget is really important.  You have to spend at least £1995 for a wedding photographer for them to be any good.  Anyone not spending that is being a tight arsed git.

If you spend £500 then you are probably hiring a total amateur with low-quality kit, no insurance etc.  I initially thought that many years ago when I was trying to persuade (con?) wedding couples into booking me for my high prices. A load of crap that.  I know many highly experienced wedding photographers charging that because their Costs of Doing Business allow them to. Some wedding photographers will even post dodgy photos that a £500 wedding photographer took, and have a washed-out, blown-out highlights photograph they took themselves and not see the irony!!!

If you spend £1,300 (for example) it will probably be a part-time photographer (??AHHHAHHAH WTF.  14 years full-time mortgage paying and my wedding photography prices start at £1,175 at the moment!!!).  The kit will be ok, not the best, shoot only a handful of weddings a year (I've averaged over 37 weddings a year by the way) and may not have adequate insurance that venues insist on.  Load of crap that one as well.

Up to £2,000 then you MUST be a full-time real-time professional.  Why?  Because you charge that much.

Selecting your wedding photographer

Reality - If you can only afford a £500 wedding photographer then go for it.  If you really think a person who charges £1,300 or less isn't any good then what are you doing looking at my website?  If you want to pay £2,000 for wedding photography, then it's your call.  What you pay is what you can afford at the time.  Your budget shouldn't shame you.

What these wedding photographers are saying is that they are scared that you will go for a lower budget-priced wedding photographer and not them.  WTF?!  If a wedding photographer is charging £2,000 why do they even think that a £500 wedding photographer is competition?!

As I said I was there a few years ago.  Now I coach, mentor and train other wedding photographers.  Many of them lower-priced than me and I probably annoy you because I share their work on my Facebook Business Page a lot.  I wish I had someone like me way back when I was trying to make a living and get the dream working.

What you are told - USBs are the only way in the modern 21st Century to get your images. They look so gorgeous and fantastic and amazing and WOW and they have real moss or straw inside the mass-produced (sorry handcrafted) wooden box and the USB will last for years.

Reality - That USB is already out of date.  90% of USB's included by wedding photographers will be USB 2 only.  The really slow ones. Very few will pay for a USB 3.x due to cost and even fewer will pay for a USB C, again due to cost.  Oh USB C?  That's the very small USB that Apple now use and most modern computers use.  You use a computer, don't you? Because if you have a tablet device, that USB is useless - unless it is USB C

USBs will end up in the kitchen drawer with a load of other odds and sods.  Or your granny will take it to Tesco to make some prints and lose it. Oh and if you lose it?  Expect a few hundred quid for a replacement, that is if the wedding photographer hasn't deleted the images after 5 years!  By the way, I keep mine pretty much forever.  Got online galleries going back to 2009 and images on Hard Drive back to when I first started.

Selecting your wedding photographer

What you are told - Wedding albums are offered but not included as they are expensive luxury items. Or not offered at all as they are not environmentally friendly as one wedding photographer brags about.

Reality - Bolloxs.  Lots of wedding album companies out there, each offering outstanding wedding albums at excellent prices.  Some even give discounts to photographers who order lots of them (like I do). The reality is these wedding photographers who don't include wedding albums but talk about the importance of memories are, in my humble opinion, not really photographers but just digital image-makers.

Selecting your wedding photographer - Real photographers print. 

My mother-in-law of 75 is more of a real photographer than they are.  She prints every image from her point-and-shoot (2gGb SD card) whenever it's full.  Sure some are crap - but she has visible, tangible, physical memories.  Not the kitchen drawer where you think that wedding USB may be.

What they really mean is that "I'll make the wedding album so expensive you won't buy one because I can't be arsed to design it", but I'll give you a discount code to try and coerce you into buying one after the wedding.  Then I'll give the code a two-year time frame (of shorter) in order to coerce you even more into buying one, even though I don't really want you to. Then I'll post on my Facebook page that if you don't take me up on the code the price increases, and by the way Im going to delete images as well.

What you are told - I only shoot 8 or 10 or 12 hours at your wedding to save you money.

Reality - I'm a lazy wedding photographer and would prefer to be at home watching Love Island, and if your wedding does go over I'll emotionally blackmail you into giving me more money or I'll leave before a major event takes place. Oh and every hour I stay is £200 extra so you had better get on with it.

By the way, I don't bother with time limits. Tried it, hated it and now I'm there until your first dance as a minimum. 16, 17 or 18 hours at some weddings.  I don't care.  You paid me to be there. Anyway, I hate Love Island, give me Vera any day of the week.

Selecting your wedding photographer - What you are NOT told.

The MAIN thing that should really concern you about selecting your wedding photographer is the personality of that wedding photographer.  They are going to be with you a long time and if you don't connect, if you don't get on then it's damned hard to get rid of them for the day!I know I'm not the wedding photographer for everyone, but there again you may not be the wedding couple for me either.

In which case I'll tell you rather than ruin your wedding. 11 Reasons not to get in touch with Andrew.