Help with photographer questions!!

Cough?

With photographers I think the most important thing is to establish how professsional / experienced they are. When I was looking there are simply just so many photographers who clearly arn't photographers if you know what I mean.

So ask how many weddings they shoot each year? and ask to see lots of examples of different weddings and also samples for a complete wedding from start to finish.

Check they are insursed and check they have backup equipment.

I'm in Welwyn, and I'm metting this Photographer this weekend > www.photographybyriddell.co.uk
He is based in Hemel Hempsted! He's the only photographer I'm meeting. I eliminated all the others. I've spoken to him on the phone and he seems really professional and friendly and his prices are very nice too. His wedding blog is amazing http://www.photographybyriddell.co.uk/WeddingsBlog.htm

Sammy

You need to get on with them, theres no point in choosing a photographer you cant stand just because there work is the best youve seen - you will only get annoyed on the day.

Insurance, Back up equipment, whats styles they shoot, what they offer, the quality of the products (theres no point paying £1000's for cheap products)

There is a guy called peter i believe is very good - hes got a terrible cough though.

Hey Peter,, I have some lockets here for that cough of yours, lol.

Yes. Thats very important. When I was looking, loads of photographers were offering deals that on the face of it seemed great, but their work was of course poor, and when you enquired about the details of things like prints, they were only doing inkjet prints or offering albums, especially the storybook albums very cheaply, but they were offering very poor quality products. In one case I found the photographers storybook album on the internet, it cost just £15.00 and had inkjet prints inside. It looked like it came from Asda, no offence to Asda, but thats not what you want for a special day, like your wedding!

I also found lots of photographers, who offer DVDs only, but they were very cheap and didn't even balance the photos. Reading on a few photography forums, these are known as shoot and burn photographers and probably offer the poorest qaultiy out of all the different photographers out there. Any decent photographer can supply you a CD if you want as a well as prints. The photographer I recommended above, includes a DVD free of charge with the album.

Good point about the importance of getting the quality you are after. I would say though that some people only want digital copies of their photos without wishing to sacrifice photographer quality. Maybe because they are artistic themselves and want to create their own album, or maybe simply to keep the cost down.

This shouldn't mean having to choose a sub standard photographer!

I offer a cd only deal but wont let them leave the building until every image has been cropped and colour corrected which can take a while...

In note i would check exactly what you get as most people wont know what to do with just files straight from the camera and the quality isnt exactly fantastic (colour and positioning) - this would suggest that the photographer doesnt initally care about the images he takes.

Alot of us are very particular about the images we print or get printed and what work we want people to see.

Thanks for that, interesting.