[Closed] Calling wedding photographers or help!

We used a guy from just outside Cannock called Neil Maxwell, think his company name was picturebox. Done ours at Brewood in July, very pleased with the results and he was fun during the day, which everyone commented on. He wasn't cheap, but we are well chuffed with the photo's.

Can get his contact details a bit later if you want.

John cheap? Rough figure?
Cheers

Think our package was around £1800 8O, but it's what Mrs gixer wanted, afterall she was getting an ugly scrote like me at the end of it!!

My sister's mate is pretty good: http://www.celinechaplinphotography.com/

Amit

get in touch with my good chum: http://www.justint.co.uk/

I'm a bit far away probably and my website is currently not working amazingly - but you can see some of my wedding stuff here

http://grahamwynnephoto.com/

grum - well done for this

With every package, all the edited images are supplied high resolution on DVD copyright free to make your own prints & reduced size images for email/facebook etc

..and your photos of course - jealous

EDIT: seems like everyone is doing disks now - oh well. Still prefer your photos though

Thanks leffeboy 🙂

Yup it's pretty common now - in some way it's not good as I know someone who got their wedding pics printed in a machine at ASDA then wondered why they looked crap! And they could get 'a mate' to do hideous photoshopping on them which people might think you were responsible for.

But I think it's nice for people to 'own' their own wedding pictures really.

I'm working on a wedding specific site but it's not quite ready yet.

When checking out photographers keep in mind, in no particular order:

- How many photos they are offering you for the price. Often they will say a minimum number like 150, 300 or whatever. If you get an album Find out if you make the final selection of photos in it and are involved in the design or not - some photographers make the choice for you, which can be handy or annoying!

- Work out what they mean by 'high resolution images' - get the pixel size if possible, as some of them have been known to supply images that are ok for facebook and 8x10's but not for wall enlargements - you might have to pay more and go back to the photographer for a big size print.

- Ask what retouching is included. Make it clear if you want your pics retouched or not.

- ask if there are additional services (a 2nd disk of photos, more advanced retouching) and what price they might be.

- How many hours of photography you get for your money and where these hours are allocated (getting ready, ceremony, any afternoon do, wedding reception, first dance, waiting around all night for the driving off at the end of the day bit).

- Does your photographer expect to be fed at the reception if he covers it (this is fairly normal, to treat them as a guest as few people want to be photographed when eating)

- Read the contract with care so that you know what penalty you will have to pay if you need to cancel (illness, family problem etc) or move your date or venue.

- Make sure they have a confirmed backup plan to supply another photographer to you if the orig person is too ill or something, to shoot your wedding.

- Make sure they have adequate insurance, in case the memory card gets lost or they drop a lens on someone's foot or thier car breaks down and they never get to the service. A serious photographer will have some insurance.

- Some companies will supply a 2nd shooter so they can cover the groom getting ready etc. See if they do and if its in the costs.

- Make sure the contract includes a product delivery period which is acceptable to you. Some of them supply 'taster' photos for facebook and also on their own web sites but don't do the main photos until some time later. Make sure you have a date for the whole delivery as wedding photos 6 months after the wedding are not much fun as most people don't want to see them/buy them that long after the event.

- If you are private people, find out what the photographer puts in the contract about what he can use your photos for - advertising for his business, putting up at wedding fairs, selling to other people, pages in his web site.

- If you are outgoing, see if the photographer puts samples of all the weddings they cover on their business page blog or just some - if you expect to be up there, make it clear.

- Ask if they include a free engagement shoot. This gives you chance to practise posing and feeling at ease with the process before the wedding. Wear something that you wont cringe at in 5 years time and that does not clash with each other or the setting!

- Trash the dress sessions are sometimes possible, where basically its a fashion shoot for fun after the event - its often wading around in water in the wedding attire, posing in scrap yards, running through long grass type stuff.

- look at samples of the weddings they have shot before and ask to see the whole collection of images from a wedding, not just the best 2 or 3 photos from each event - anyone can get lucky for a few and have the rest pretty mediocre.

- Find out how long they have shot weddings and how many.

- see if they belong to any professional photography associations that accredit skill levels.

Hope this helps. I expect I have missed some stuff off but its all I can remember off hand.

Oh and they need to give you a written 'licence' or include it in the contract that you have a right to reproduce the images yourself. This needs to be formally stated or you are not allowed to print them yourself, technically/legally.

Giving you 'Copyright' is usually the wrong term as the photographer will retain that for themselves and retain ownership of the original files but can permit you to make copies etc by licence. They usually keep the very high resolution or RAW images themselves.

Ask how long they store them for in case anything happens to your own copy of the disk.

http://www.weddingguideuk.com/articles/planning/photographer.asp

A more advanced guide than my post.

A friend of mine from uni is now a professional photographer specializing in weddings. Really nice amd friendly girl.

Here's her website:
http://www.dimondphotos.com/

Ill chuck this fella into the hat. Local, and very talented.

[url= http://www.johncharltonphotography.co.uk/ ]John Charlton Photography[/url]

and I'm liking the pictures of pretty folks in wedding dresses that come up at the side rather than the usual mtb lights nonsense. Thanks for this thread 🙂

I have no suggestions but just wanted to say, congratulations.

>copyright free

I see what you mean, but did you really mean that Grum? Maybe better phrased as "with a license to make as many copies as required for personal use and distribution to friends and relatives". Brave move, otherwise...

Midnighthour's stuff is all good advice I would say.

nbt - you're right of course 😳

I'm rewriting all that stuff for my new website but I hadn't spotted that, so thank you!

I'm rewriting all that stuff for my new website

While you are at it there is a small change you could do to help your SEO

This sort of thing
http://www.grahamwynnephoto.com/?page_id=109
is brilliant where you mention the name of the location high up on the page. I have a suspicion that you can further improve on it by doing two things. The first is to link to the site for the wedding if they have one. Outgoing links help a bit as well if relevant. The second would be to sort the URL not to have page_id=109. Maybe /wedding/Ashton_Memorial/date or something like that. I'd even be tempted to put a link to the location on a google map as that then lets Google geolocate where you were which will help you for local search.

I may be talking rubbish of course. Getting Google to rate you is getting tougher and tougher

Thanks leffeboy - I will definitely bear that in mind with the new site. I hadn't realised that outgoing links helped too, but SEO is one of the things on my list to research.

Sorry for the slight thread hijack OP!

[url= http://www.ezekieltaylor.co.uk/ ]http://www.ezekieltaylor.co.uk/[/url]

This guy did ours... highly, highly recommended. I think he liked us too - the picture on his homepage is me and t'missus (with some cows).

Dave

Don't forget to factor in the wedding tax, I think the going rate is 400%

Don't forget to factor in the wedding tax, I think the going rate is 400%

I know I would say this, but some people seem to think wedding photography is a license to print money - maybe if you are very high end and esatblished, but you'd be surprised how much work goes into photographing one wedding, and how much the equipment costs if you plan on doing a decent job of it.

The most important thing is that you like the photographers style. If you want lots of posed family shots choose a photographer who shoots a lot of posed family shots. If you lots of reportage style photography choose a photographer that specialises in that.

I and with that I'll chuck in my website as well: http://www.jamesrobertsonphotography.co.uk/?p=45

I don't do a whole lot of weddings, though I am full time professional photographer.

Probably shouldn't do this but here is a sneaky peek at the new weddings site I am working on.

http://www.grahamwynneweddings.com/

beautiful, really. But first fail is that "Artistic documentary wedding photography based in Lancashire" is only readable by humans, not search engines. Get that into the Alt text 🙂

Marsdenman from here is very good too http://www.enjoyphotography.co.uk/

Leffeboy - noted 😳

Wow.. some people live in another world... 🙂

How ya mean molgrips?

I'm not booked on that day yet & its not too far from home.
Please feel free to have a look at my website http://www.saundersphotography.co.uk & get in touch if you want to have a chat about it.

Cheers
Dave

I'm still free on the day of your wedding. Take a look at our website [url= http://carreraweddingphotography.com/ ]Carrera Wedding Photography[/url] and by all means, give me a call to have a chat or PM me your number and I'll happily call you.

You're not too far out of our normal area and i'll do a good deal for a fellow Mtb'er

I am a full time professional photographer with two businesses, wedding and commercial/PR. Fully insured as described above. I have a selection of sample albums for you to take a look at and I'll gladly visit you at your home for a no obligation consultation.

Cheers

Nigel

Good grief. It turns out the we are neither all IT managers nor nurses. STW is actually full of wedding photographers. Whowoodaguessed

isn't everybody a photographer? you just need a dslr and you're made
🙄

Best wedding photographer I've seen is http://jeffascough.com/

Amazing photos, but no doubt they come with a price tag to match!

That Jeff Asscough gets good access to his subjects, doesn't he:

WARNING, BRIDE IN UNDERCRACKERS CONTENT

[url= http://jeffascough.com/#!galleries/wedding/24 ]http://jeffascough.com/#!galleries/wedding/24[/url]

I wonder if she knows he's stuck that on his website.

Dave

edit: stw can't cope with certain characters in URLs, so you'll have to copy and paste

It's actually failrly standard for brides/bridesmaids to get photos done of them getting ready, with all that entails!

I'll throw in another one that I can highly recommended-

http://www.nathancombes.com/

His stuff is nice.

By the way for those seriously touting for business, it does say to email the OP not just reply to the thread. 😉

I wonder how many pro photographers, wedding or other fields spend time here at Singletrack?

I too am happily surprised by how many folk have appeared listed above.

Really looking forward to checking out their web sites/pics. I love a good photo:-)

How ya mean molgrips?

I can't imagine spending that much on a photographer. I can't imagine the wedding photos being that important. My wedding wasn't that big of a day - it didn't need to be. It was simply the start of a great journey, that I am reminded of every day. I don't need photos for that!

Weddings are simply a means to an end, and a family piss up. Snaps record the day just as well as fancy photos, for me.

Seems a bit weird for someone that's into photography :shrug:

Perfectly fair enough that some people don't place as much value on the photos - but it some ways in 30 years time you are not really going to remember how good the cake tasted, or how much free booze was provided, or how tight the band were - but some really nice photos will still last and refresh your memory of the day.

But then I would say that too 🙂

Seems a bit weird for someone that's into photography

Well yeah.. but for me taking the photos is the fun part.. I wouldn't want to pay someone else to ride my bike for me, after all 🙂 I'm not saying my pictures would be better to a third party than yours, they wouldn't. But they'd be better to me.

Plus in 30 years time I'll hopefully have loads of pictures of my wife on all sorts of different days 🙂

Anyway it's really weddings I don't care about. I wanted to marry my wife, that's all I cared about. Cake and flowers, wedding cars, dresses - don't care 🙂

I think people investing a lot in wedding photos is less about the hard copy photos for some, but more about living the lifestyle that is sold to people by modern advertising, while grasping at self esteem.

I cant speak for the blokes, but I think for women, it very pushed at them that being 'famous' for no particular reason is very important in modern society and part of the 'herd' behaviour. They are also supposed to spend huge amounts of time and effort and money in trying to look pretty as its still pushed as the most important aspect of existing as a female.

Modern women compete with essentially faked women on cosmetic adverts who are flawless, with photoshoped skin, whitened eyes and teeth, change of eye colour, artificial sculpting of the face in computer programs to make their faces more 'in proportion' so noses are make shorter or longer, eye shape is changed, cheekbones raised, lips made wider and fuller. Standards of impossible beauty normal real life women will never physically be able to meet however hard they try.

On a wedding day its the one shot in life to be near perfect and the centre of attention/approval. Your one shot at a pro photographer shoot, making you look like the impossible beauties, giving you your one day of being famous. Its the one chance at being valid in a society that pushes women to be seen in this role. And the photos give women that forever ro hold on to - a huge shot of self esteem in an advertisers battle the women can never ever win in real life, a war that sets people up to fail cos that sells more products.

I see other reasons for photos too of course - nice memories etc, but feel the above is a big factor for many and molegrips and grums posts caused me to dwell on peoples reasons for such huge outlays on weddings in general.

I think people investing a lot in wedding photos is less about the hard copy photos for some, but more about living the lifestyle that is sold to people by modern advertising, while grasping at self esteem.

just the photography then? not the dress, bridesmaid dresses, venue, car, band, catering, flowers, invite stationary, wedding list, honeymoon etc?

i know somebody who cried at their wedding, not because they were overcome with joy but because there were not enough silver ribbon sashes to go over the dining chairs, kinda spoiled her day. 🙁

MrSmith, you have a point. I guess as I am interested in photography I have highlighted that more. Personalty I dont really get many aspects of getting married - to me its about the person you are with, not the event but I know its not like that for most people.

I have heard that some people get very depressed after the big day as they have built the last year or so entirely around the event, rather than what it was actually about and the day is gone along with a focus point they had put so much into. But back to photos,

I think doing weddings on the cheap is more viable if you get a good photographer as they can make things look much better and more expensive. An associate of mine had her wedding pics taken in front of a huge area of stinging nettles as the event location was hopeless. They looked great on the photos though as it looked like a blurred out hedge or border of flowers. 🙂 In the circumstances the photographer was great at 'amending' the somewhat bleak reality of the location and well worth his money.