Photographer Buckinghamshire - how to find one!?

Welcome to the forum.....

I am Herts based and mainly work in that and surrounding areas. I have done several weddings in your county before......please take a look at my website and see if it appeals......I am definitely not a "cheese seller"

Peter

Hi S2BMrsS!

We found ours through mutual circles of friends but if you're really stuck the suppliers list here on Hitched is as good a starting point as any.

With regards pricing movement everyone is different and has a different policy. A lot of photographers are so busy in the summer months that they actually don't take any bookings in Jan-Feb or at least are careful what weddings they do in that time. (I'm very careful what I take on then too). Many also wouldn't discount either because of the time of year it can be harder to deliver a decent final set of images.

It depends on the locations, ceremony start time and so on. An urban London wedding lends itself well to the Winter, as would something like yours.

That being said, there are people who will probably offer half price if you looked hard enough. I've seen it many times before.

Thanks both, food for thought certainly.

I've been trawling through photography websites all morning and my head is in a spin with engagement shoots (what on Earth do people do with these photos? OH and I haven't changed our facebook photos in about three years and don't have ANY of ourselves up around the house!), coverage of getting ready (again, why!?), rights and ownership and complicated fee structures. ARGH!!

I think I'm going to make a list of websites, show H2B tonight, contact the ones we like and ask for availability and a rough estimate. Is that a good place to start? Is there any reason we should have an engagement shoot? We are minimalists so only have one digital photoframe in the house (currently unplugged) which mostly just has photos of our cats and chickens ? but I suppose if we had one done we could send them to our parents!

We are also in Buckinghamshire. We wanted to book a wonderful photographer who our friends had used but they were already booked (over a year in advance!) but they recommended someone who they work with and who photographs in a similar style. Here is her link: http://schutters.com/

If you need recommendations I would ask around locally. I am not sure about discounts to be honest as we are getting married weekend high season but it's always worth asking.

Thanks for that bananacat. Where are you getting married?

We haven't really decided, but have booked Beaconsfield reg office in case we find nothing else. We're looking at nice pubs/Crazy Bear Beaconsfield/a coach house and a couple of pubs in Marlow (OH is from Marlow)/a barn. We sort of just want a relaxed affair with loads of real ale and silliness rather than the big package wedding thing but venues seem to cater for the latter!

Hi hun

We found ours by googling (our venue) photographer. We looked at most of the ones who came up and narrowed them down to 3 that we just liked the look of.

We sent enquiries to those 3 and chose the one we did because she was lovely and chatty and just seemed generally nice!

Engagement photos - we're using these for our STDs and as a practise run with our Photographer. H2B hates having his picture taken, so we're hoping that it'll put him at ease for the big day!

The getting ready shots just seem to be 'the norm' - I do like the ones where you get the first look with your Dad or whatever though. They carry a lot of emotion.

Your plan sounds like a sensible one, perhaps make a list of what you want for the day and go from there? A lot of togs will tailor their packages to suit you

xx

I don't cover your area and am not convinced by "engagement shoots" but I think the prep shots can be well worth doing, I don't charge any extra for them, have a look here for some info on these shots

Thanks for the perspective, will have a think about it!

We're on the Berks/Bucks border and getting married in Burnham at The Grovefield House Hotel, having the whole day at the same venue. We also wanted to do something simple but we found that going with the package was actually cheaper for us because we have so many people and the other venues in the area that were less formal were more expensive when you added all the necessary things on that we would need for the day. Again, something to do with being high season weekenders I think!

I am not surprised you are having trouble choosing a photographer ? Best advice is make sure you look at hundreds of photos from each wedding and make sure they are from a real wedding, I noticed yesterday a new local photographer and on their site was nothing but photography workshop photos all over the site.

Try searching for your venue then photographer or your wedding location and photographer but most photographers travel all over the country so dont discount ones that are further away. Ask friends if they know of any.

Winter weddings are harder than summer weddings and take longer to process the images so I'm not sure if a long standing pro would move on the price, a new photographer probably will because they dont know what they are getting in to until its too late ?

I chatted to one last night who quoted £1200 including engagement shoot and coming down to scout out the venues. Love his work (very quirky, no shots of people standing in lines) but he's far away so will only do a full day for us. I almost considered hiring him but telling him we definitely don't want the pre-shoot and only want a half day but will pay him full whack, but OH reckons that's a bit of a waste and might seem dismissive/offensive so we should look for someone more local.

He seemed really lovely but I'm not really sure I like the idea of someone else there whilst I'm getting ready (in fact I wasn't even planning on doing the whole girly bridesmaid thing in my house so there wouldn't be much to photograph!) and he was talking about going off to do shots of us together alone (in theory a great idea as we could have some lovely shots of the wintry Thames) but actually I just envisage going straight from the registry office to the pub to get bladdered. I'm getting all anxious about the whole thing right now as I feel like I'm being really awkward, when all I really want someone to say is 'sure, I'll take a few snaps of the ceremony and your guests and then b*gger off...it'll be like I'm not even there'

One of my guests is actually a pro tog but works with models FT then occasionally puts on abstract edgy exhibitions of Burmese monks picking their noses, so isn't any good to us!

Hi dear, highly recommend this guy:

https://peterlanephotography.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/destination.wedding.photographer amazing work

Good luck xx

Its funny I cant see Tina.smith post on here but I got a email with it and can only say please stop spamming Hitched all the time.

By Tina.Smith in Wedding Planning

I found booking a photographer quite hard going too - all the ones I loved were about twice the amount I wanted to pay! We ended up sitting down one night & looking through all the suppliers listed on Hitched in our county, made a shortlist of anyone who had a reasonable price displayed on their website that we liked the look of from their photo galleries, then emailed 3 or 4 asking for their availability.

We booked the guy who straight away offered to drive quite a reasonable distance to our house on the weekend, to show us his previous work & talk about what we wanted from the day, rather than those who were more interested in when we were going to pay a deposit without trying to get to know us a little bit first - and no awkward engagement shoots (they're just not us), no expensive albums; he just felt like the right guy to go with. He also gave us a 10% discount he was offering to all Feb enquiries - result!

Good luck with your search - I can guarantee it's a big weight lifted once you've found the right person!

Where are you if you don't mind me asking, as he sounds good!

OH says the websites he looked at so far either have fluffy and unhelpful 'investment' pages which then attempt to build value by showing packages with loads of things we don't want (we just want a few digital files!)

I have often wondered how many people actually are influenced by the whole "your investment" thing.

Sometimes when looking at costs there can be loads of things thrown in that sound good but may cost the photographer next to nothing and they are used as you say just to add value.

We're in Herts - he's based in Hertford - I can send you his details if you like as I think he travels?