Wedding photographers

Mr_Wistles

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OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!

I cannot believe how much a good one of these costs.

I am getting married in April and the cost of this thing is burying me.

Photographers must be laughing since it has all gone digital as they can shoot all day and their consumables cost is zippo.

I am definitely in the wrong game.
 
Try asking in the photography section.
You may get an AVF discount. There are some very good photographers in there.
 
What gets me is that you pay them to take pictures but they own the copyright. I had to pay him for prints everytime I wanted copies of a photo :mad:

I bought big prints and any member of my family who wants copies gets them free scanned which is fine but when he said I'd have a CD with the pictures I didn't expect they'd be made into a stupid low quality slideshow movie.
 
People seem to think that wedding photography is point and press.

Far from it. Quality photography is a specialist trade.
 
What gets me is that you pay them to take pictures but they own the copyright. I had to pay him for prints everytime I wanted copies of a photo :mad:

I bought big prints and any member of my family who wants copies gets them free scanned which is fine but when he said I'd have a CD with the pictures I didn't expect they'd be made into a stupid low quality slideshow movie.

You can negotiate to buy the copyright which would include CDs with the highest quality - the value our photographer put on it was £500 - we got it chucked in for free.
 
I'll do them for ya for the cost of getting there and equipment and the copyright will be yours :p
 
Best money we spent at our wedding.

The very modern looking album is spot on following a consulation with how we wanted it laid out. They propose a layout and fill it with sample pictures and you can swap, move or change them until you are happy from the total amount they took on the day.

We had two photographers, one formal - who takes the traditional family shots, and one 'reportage' - who takes the funky off-the-wall pics - like some shots in black and white, or with a hint of colour just in the confetti, or an intersting shot of something you would have overlooked.

When compiling the album they used a selection of the two - and on the day took over 300 pictures, which were all given to us as 6x4 shots in an album from which we selected our favorites for the main album.

This was from a company in Coventry, but I believe they are franchised throughout...

John Wright Photography
Herald Way, Binley Industrial Estate, Coventry, West Midlands CV3 2NY
Tel: 024 7665 3900

Good luck...
 
You can negotiate to buy the copyright which would include CDs with the highest quality - the value our photographer put on it was £500 - we got it chucked in for free.

Oh yeah he told us that afterwards (bear in mind he told us before hand that we'd have the pictures on a CD which we wrongly understood meant image files). However he wanted far more than £500 for that - the fact that we'd already had the wedding and he had the photos probably allowed him to rip us off.

Still I don't see why you should pay on top of the existing fee for the copyright. It's your wedding, you on the pictures and you paid the guy for his time, knowledge and expenses.
It's like paying someone to make you a website and they want to charge you everytime someone visits it.
 
or you get the disc but the photos have a big watermark of the photographers name all over them!!

Liam
 
Photography is a very difficult thing to master, and although it may seem that now digital has come into play that it is less time consuming, but infact, a) It is more reliable, b) there is much more post processing that is done in house where as quite often it was done external whilst photographers were using negatives, c) the outlay for decent digital equipment is much more expensive and there is less of a second hand market, plus software, computer hardware and quite often either the outlay of learning to use software or paying someone who knows how to use it.

Also please remember that the photography industry really does not give you any assets, the only assets that you may have is your equipment or your copyright, where as equipment devalues copyright does too unless whomever has had their pictures taken becomes famous etc so the photographer could then re-sell for more money. Essentially your copyright is your pension.

Photography is a very difficult industry to crack, not only do you have to be self employed but you also have to keep up with changing times and the megapixel wars, as opposed to a trade such as building or plumbing were systems do not change. When you first try and get into the industry you have to work for very little money, and then when you are a photographer you have to constantly tout for work.

Also we cannot factor out insurance, I have public liability £1 mil, professional indemnity for £250000 and equipment cover to the tune of £7000 and this costs me £200 /year. Add this to the cost of time, equipment, transport, tax, NI, costs of post production and printing and employment of other professionals..... lawyers (for when clients dont pay, illegally reproduce images etc.....) and accountants etc we're talking a large outlay thus i think photographers are just in their charges and asset protection for themselves.

Ways that you could consider negotiating is to take a lease as opposed to paying for copyright, with a lease you would have the option to reproduce the print for a set amount of time.

FYI the average wedding photographers yearly wage is around £24,000, not much for what often adds up to 12 hour days.
 
Best money we spent at our wedding.

I agree. We got married 5 years ago so our photographer used film. All up, she took about 1000 shots. The great thing was she made herself invisible so that we could go about enjoying our big day whilst capturing all the shots we wanted. All up we paid £1400 back in the colonies.

I think it depends on how much you value the photographs as both an artistic representation of your wedding day as well as capturing the memory. For us, it was very important especially as we didn't care about getting it videotaped (just so our kids can record over it later in life).

When you do go shopping for a photographer one tip I would give is make sure you meet who you is going to take the pics on the day. Last thing you want is to have a photographer who drives you both nuts.
 
I got lucky when i got married 2 years ago. I paid just over £1000 for a guy who came and took photos who had just started to go professional.
Whether it was luck or not, he was superb, loved every photo and he was a nice guy.
Since then he has put his prices up and now his basic package is £2400 :eek: and when i go back on his site he seems to do a string of weddings. Now thats a wage packet.

Im not sure i woud pay over £1500, but you need to get it right.

My friends paid a friend £500 who is an amateur and he was frankly rubbish. I knew more than him and it was money wasted whereas my £1000 was the best money spent on the wedding.

My cousin also paid ALOT of money for his and i took some photos behind him and gave them all to my cousin and when he showed me his photo album a couple of my shots made it in, but agian his photographer was good and probably worth the money to them !!!

My advice would be, go on word of mouth if you can and if you get someone good you wont care about the money, just make sure they are a decent photographer.
 
Yup, as everyone else has said, it's worth the money if you want good photos. My uncle is a professional photographer up north and has made quite a name for himself in his home town over the years. It's all about word of mouth advertising. If you're good, people recommend you, if you're not, people make sure other people know it ;)

Remember that it's not just about pointing a camera at someone and clicking a button, it's about composition of the shot (i.e making sure no lamp posts are growing out the brides head), getting the right settings (pro cameras are a LOT more complex than your average £400 camera) and how to get the most out of the shot when you come to process it. My dad also does a lot of photography and spent £1k on a semi professional Nikon last year. He's only now getting to grips with it (there are a LOT of settings on it).

Granted, there are some incredibly lazy "photographers" out there who point and click and print, but there are also some exceptional ones as well. It's not their time you're paying for (well part of it is), it's their experience, a great photographer has spent hours and hours behind their camera.
 
We will get a dvd with all the images on which we are allowed to reproduce.

This is the guy www.tavistockphoto.co.uk

The place where we are having the wedding have a deal where you have to choose from their "approved" list.
 
Congrats Russell and best wishes for the day.

I personally feel that getting married is the biggest rip off! So much cost and expense for just one day!
i've had a right result with Mrs Shodan. She told me that if she was to get married then she wanted a big church wedding. I then helped convince her (hee hee!) that as she isn't religious and I am quite anti then a church wedding would be making us both hippocrites. So it would have to be a registry office, which she said she would rather not get married, rather than not have the wedding she wanted (which is all for the bride and the guests to enjoy anyway!). Then she surprised me by changing her name and title by deed pole so she is officially Mrs Shodan anyway! That only cost me about £50. What a result! So our son has my name, the world thinks she is my wife and its only cost me £50!










I really ought to buy her a ring to put on her wedding finger though I think. She'd like it and it really is the least I could do as she has saved me so much money and grief.



They are funny though, she would go nuts if I spent 15 to 20 grand on AV stuff or a car but that would be perfectly acceptable to spend on one day for a wedding!

I think getting maried is the biggest rip off!
 
Tell me about it, as soon as they find out its for a wedding the price triples.

It started off and we thought 20k would fine, then 25k, then 30k now I am going to be lucky to get change out of 35k (why I am at work on a Saturday)

She is worth it though (if you are reading this darling, any chance of action later?)

I have spent countless thousands (close to the wedding cost if I am honest) on AV over the past few years which she has no interest in and she never complained (well maybe once or twice) . So it's her turn to have some cash spent on her.
 
I am getting married this year and I am determined to do it on the cheap some friends of ours got married last summer and while it was a nice enough day it cost over 20k for the traditional event. Anyone spending that much money on a day must be insane!
 

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