Choosing Your Photographer - The 3 P's

If you're getting married I hope that this blog will help - it's about the process of choosing your  photographer. Obviously I am hoping that you will consider me, but I want to give you some thoughts about choosing the person that will be with you both for pretty much all of the biggest day of your lives..

I am always interested to learn about the journey that my clients take before choosing me. So here are my findings and thoughts - mixed in with a few of my photographs from recent weddings.

When choosing your wedding photographer think of the 3 P’s - Portfolio, Person & Price… (this sounds like something dreadful from an American business manual however, it just so happens that the three things all start with P!). 

First the Portfolio, photographers websites do a lot of the hard work here. Excuse the plug, but click here to get to mine. Pictures in photographer galleries should represent their very best work, so if there’s the odd dodgy out of focus one in their on-line galleries then that isn’t a very good sign.

It’s also good to see not just the best of galleries, but also a series of pictures from a single wedding. Blogs are useful for this and if you click here and here you'll see some examples from me. I’ve also got a video channel with slideshows which you can get to by clicking here.

Whenever I meet clients for the first time I always like to show them about half a dozen wedding albums, each a duplicate of a couples final album. This is useful on so many counts, firstly it helps them to imagine what their wedding pictures could look like, also to double check that they love the style of photography and to give them the opportunity to point out pictures that they really like to help me build an idea of what they are looking for.

So you’re now sure you’ve found a photographer whose work you love (and it’s so important that you love it). Next onto the Person themselves and put simply, do you actually like them? You really need to meet with them before deciding if you they are right for you. Your chosen photographer will be with you most of the wedding and their personality can help to make the day… or… well let’s not imagine how bad the opposite of that could be.

Will you have a rapport with them? Will you feel relaxed as they take your picture? Will your family and friends like them? Will they know when to take charge and when to fade into the background? Will they keep the day running smoothly and to time? Will they get the pictures that you want? I could go on…. but you get the idea. I think that this rapport is so important and is vital in your process of choosing the right photographer for you. 

So by now you’ve got a photographer in mind whose work you love and is someone that you like and trust, so next it’s onto the Price.

Maybe you started with price and were on a mission to find a bargain and get a cheap photographer? Chances are that the photographers with the really cheap prices have not got the portfolio that you love and may not have met you, because at their price it's all about just turning up on the day shooting pictures and then leaving you with a disc of 1,000 unedited pictures, ahhhhh!!!

Let’s do a Dragons Den style calculation on the business model for a successful photographer. First they need top-end professional cameras and lenses; they also need insurance and top quality equipment to process the pictures, a website with clients gallery and that is just for starters… photography done properly is a very expensive business.

Finally how much time is your prospective photographer going to spend working on your wedding? I always have an initial meeting with the couple to find out exactly what they want, I organise a pre-wedding shoot to get them used to having their photograph taken. I always visit all of the wedding venues to do test shots and to meet the people involved with the wedding, plus after the wedding I spend at least two days processing the pictures to a very high standard and then returning to present the pictures to the couple - all that and we haven't got onto time involved with designing the album!

On the actual day of the wedding itself you will want a photographer happy to work all the way through, not one that's keen to get back for X-Factor! or one that's complaining of the heavy workload as they have just done 3 weddings in a row. I limit the number of weddings that I do each year to ensure that I can maintain a very high level of preparation, care and quality of service.

So if it’s too cheap be suspicious, how can they be that cheap? What has suffered in terms of time, service and quality to allow their price to be so low?

Hopefully I can satisfy you on these 3 P’s – you’ll love my portfolio, you’ll like me and the price that I give you will be competitive and fair.

I hope this has helped and please do get in touch, click here to contact me. I would love to meet with you and find out about your wedding plans.