06 Aug Choosing Your Wedding Photographer
Thank you to Gretchen Birdwell of Gretchen B Photography for this nice post on what to keep in mind and be aware of when choosing your wedding photographer.
Your wedding…one of the most important events of your life. You want images of you and your groom, your family and friends, as you gather to celebrate the love between two people and the beginning of a new family. One decision that you make that you will live with for the rest of your life and will share with your children and their children is about the photography. Where to begin? What do I look for? What questions do I ask? What is “style”? How will the photos be preserved? Why do I want a disk of digital negatives (and what are digital negatives, anyway?)? These are but a few of your questions. Let me help you with a few answers.
The first thing you want to do is ask your friends who have recently married who they hired, why they hired them (best photographer they saw; cheapest price; most hours covered), and would they hire them again. After you get a few names, visit the web. View the images with a critical eye. Visit not only the website, but check out their blog and their facebook page and anywhere else you might find them. Do all the images look the same from one wedding to the next? Do the subjects in the photos appear to be having a good time? Are the photographs correctly exposed? Can you see light in the eyes of those who are photographed close up? Are all the images overexposed (this seems to be the rage right now, but I promise they will look very dated in just a few years)? After you have decided on two or three photographers, schedule appointments to meet with them as soon as possible. You don’t want to lose them because your date is already booked.
Every photographer has his or her own “style” – this is not only the images we produce but also the way we interact with our clients. Do you want someone who stands back and shoots what they see? Do you want a photographer who interacts with you and your guests? Do you want all “candid” photographs or a blend of both candids and formals (formals in wedding vocabulary typically means those family group photos where if they weren’t posed, you’d never get a photo of all of those people looking the same direction at the same time!)? Do you want two photographers (usually a man and woman to make the bride and groom more comfortable during those “getting ready” photos)? Does the photographer use off camera as well as on camera flash? Off camera flash is important for the reception hall as well as for photographs taken during the day. If you are not bothered by “raccoon eyes,” then you can feel comfortable hiring the photographer who claims to be an “available light only” photographer. Otherwise, hire a photographer who owns off camera flashes and knows how to use them. In other words, experience does matter.
Do you want your photographs in a leather album individually matted with one or two photographs per page or are you more interested in the storybook album where the images are printed on the paper and bound in a book? (NOTE: Not all storybooks are equal in quality! If you hire a “cheap” photographer who includes a book in your packages, you can bet that you book will be cheap and quite possibly not archival. Archival is important if you want to be able to share your wedding memories with future generations. Ask if the paper and ink are archival!)
Digital negatives are a great way to be able to store your wedding images in the event of loss. You will also be able to get fairly decent prints from the negatives as long as you stay small. The reason there could be a loss of quality is not that the digital negative is faulty, it’s that the consumer printers are not even close to the quality of professional printers….most likely there will be color shifts so the images look too orange or too red or too blue—basically too much of any one color. In addition, most photographers will do a more thorough job of touching up the photograph if it is going to be printed for wall art—those pesky strands of hair that won’t stay put, sweat beads ‘cause you know you’re going to sweat!, and blemishes will be taken care of by your professional to ensure that the photograph you hang is worthy of being called artwork. Some photographers include digital negatives in every package; some in just the higher priced packages; some will sell them as an ala carte item. Before you compare photographers and their packages, be sure you know what items are truly important to you and why. (As a side note, technology is always changing. If your photographer provides digital negatives, it is then your responsibility to put those images on the next generation of storage device—the photographer will have, more than likely, purged your images from their storage.)
If you would like more information on things to look for while you are planning your wedding, please email me at Gretchen@gretchenbphotography.com to request 21 Essential Tools for Planning Your Wedding or just to ask a question about wedding photography. I’ll be glad to help.
Gretchen Birdwell is a Certified Professional Photographer and has been a professional photographer for over 10 years. She has a studio in Helena and an office in Cahaba Heights.
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