Photographer costs

I found our TOG online, i stumbled across the website and loved it! The style of the photos were exactly what i was looking for. A few months later I arranged a meeting with them and looked over the albums. They were a lovely couple! I really think you need to be comfortable with the TOG from the start, ask lots of questions and go with your instinct!

Ours is costing about £1000, like you we noticed that most TOGs vary on price and what they offer.

We get, pre wedding shoot, images to be used on cards for guests which has the web address of where they can view the images,

A4 Image mounted on white card for guests to sign

2 photographers for the full day

60 page album

10 A4 prints

2 large prints

CD with all images (not restricted on size etc)

DVD slideshow from prewedding shoot and wedding to music

Ours is £1500. For that we get two photographers, all images on a disc, 60 images in an album which we really love the design off and an engagement shoot. We spent ages looking and it was the one thing that H2B thought was really important. We narrowed in down to three from looking at websites and then arranged appoinments to see them all. We went through all the pro's and cons of each photographer but it ultimately came down to one who we thought we'd be more relaxed with on the day.

We're paying £500 for our tog and for that we get her from 11am (not getting married until 2pm) until 10pm and all the photos on a disc with copyrights. she's also setting up a 'photobooth' area for the evening do. whilst we wouldve loved an album (which was offered in another package) we needed to keep costs down wherever possible.

xxx

Ours is around 650 pounds from prep up until first dance. We get all images on a disc and an album. We are also getting a white screen package with props for 2 hours after the meal for an additional 200 pounds.

Ours is £650 for two photographers

-from 10am till 10pm

-includes 500 picture cd (we have copyright)

-includes 60 picture album

They do all over the country at no extra cost!

x

Hiya, depending where abouts you are based, have a look at our website - we cover throughout the north and wales

www.rswphotography.co.uk

HTH x

We must have looked at 100s of websites initially! We contacted a few and made appointments to see 3 of them. With the one we chose, we're paying £650 for all day coverage from bridal prep through to first dance, a DVD/CD (with copyright) of all the photos, a 26 page storybook with aprox 60 photos and a small album with 20 photos. Although this was the best deal, the photographer was also the one we got on best with and this is mainly why we chose him.

This price seemed to be at the lower end of the scale for where we are.

A lot of photographers especially at wedding fayres stressed that they were taking bookings for 2012 & 2013 and said they were getting busy & we should book soon but every photographer we actually spoke with & contacted had our date available.

Who is this photographer? Sounds like a right deal!!

They are called RPM Photography and are a husband and wife team based in Staffordshire. He does it as a set price but you can shorten the time if you like but still the same cost.

They keep the costs low because he prints albums and canvases etc himself - he is one of the people all other photographers send their photos to, to be made up into albums!! Plus, he trains other photographers so we may get three on the day.

We loved the price and once he'd come to our house to show us his work and albums we we're sold!

x

You may be looking at this the wrong way. It's best to decide: What do I actually want - in terms of style, albums, attitude, coverage - and then go and find the best fit. You will then be presented with a range of prices for very similar propositions.

Be wary of marketing speak... a disk of images isnt just a disk of images, It could be "ALL" the images, or a select 50. They could be fully edited, full resolution ready to print images, or they could be smaller lesser edited files which are really unsuitable for serious printing. "All day" could mean "All day, from the moment you start the day until the lights are turned off in the venue or it could mean "from 1/2 hour before the ceremony" through to a "couple of minutes past the first dance" I have never figured out what a "fully qualified" photographer is yet, and also many of the "awards" people have won are "dubious"

I would be mortified if a couple saw me as "all day with a disk" I hope they book me first because they love my photography, and then because I offer the best package for the price

Seeing as my OH is a professional himself, and works with other photographers we'll not be short of photographers on the day. We also have about 6 friends who are serious amateurs.

My sister's OH is a 'pro' wedding photographer (meaning he's a weekender) and has offered to do ours for free if we let him use a few shots for his website - how can we refuse?! It's hard to say no when a friend offers you something for free, but we're hedging our bets and inviting anyone with a camera to join in - we may even get a friend to the house in the morning to do some extras.

We were quoted around £1000 as a wedding package from 2 local togs, including an hour at the house, full ceremony and until 10pm, an album and a disk.

Ours is costing £595, that includes coverage from 11am until approx 9 30pm, all photos edited (some will be in poss 3 different finishes - colour/ black and white and black and white with accent colours) I was very pleased with the pricing as she is lovely

we got in touch with her as recommended to us by a friend.

Be really careful to make sure that "one of them" is know to be the "primary photographer" the last thing you want is 6 excellent shots of the same thing, but you concentrating on one of the photographers, and your H2B concentrating on another

My daughter's photographer charged £40 per hour on the day. She arrived at 1pm for a 3pm wedding and did lots of pre-wedding getting ready shots which they wanted and stayed until 9pm in the evening. She worked alone on the day. We have just got the slideshow of photos back and she took over 500 which we didn't expect that many so was a suprise.

They are all excellent quality and a good mix of trendy, arty, traditional, black and white and colour shots. She is providing a disc too for £399 which includes copyright and albums extra at various costs depending on which album you choose. Print re-orders from her start at £5 each.

Her website is www.judegidney.co.uk and she is based in Saddleworth and covers Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire.

We are paying £1049, which cover one TOG from 'getting ready' until the wedding breakfast, so about 6 hours coverage. Web hosting, DVD with copyright of all images and a 40 side storybook album. He also spends about 30/40 hours editing!!! We met with two TOG's but I must have looked and emailed about 20! HTH xx

We're paying about £1000, but the price was not too important (but everyone has a budget!).

We met 2 companies, both were experienced professional companies with their own style, and ultimately it was difficult to decide (but we had to!).

We've decided to get a CD of images that we have permission to print into our own album.

As with any service, try to meet the photographer to ensure there are no personality problems and they can do what you require.

For us, having an experienced professional on the day was important.

Jason

I met our photographer at a wedding fayre and it was a bit like when I found my dress - I just knew she was "the one"!

I think it's important to consider the type of person you are hiring and how they will mix with your guests...our friends and family are quite a shy, quiet bunch so we didn't want a photographer with too much "presence" if that makes sense? Our chosen lady prefers to stand in the background with a long lens and capture the day as it unfolds, rather than keep organising everyone.

For formal shots, she asked if we could provide her with a list of the different ones we wanted and she would then arrange with our best man to organise the right people, rather than her stand on her own and call people's names from a list which we liked. Definitely worth asking how they like to organise the guests.

She arrives in time for my preparations and shoots until the very last dance of the evening, provides every image she takes (after editing out badly placed fire exit signs etc!) and with some in B&W on a disc with full written copywright, a 60 image album for us and two parent albums with different pictures for our Mums and Dads. It's £1250 after a mid-week discount for being a Friday.

Hope that helps

Ours is costing £1600 that is for all day coverage with several hundred photographs. He also does the kind of photography I want which is mostly natural real time apart from a couple of group shots which we can choose which we want!

Our own individual website and our album which we picked (we both liked more expensive one and as photos and memories are all you have left we thought it was a good idea to get what we want). This also includes 2 parent albums and is coverage from around 10am in the morning all the way through.

I first saw him at a wedding fayre but didnt book straight away and checked out other tog's too. We had appointments with a few other ones but in the end decided on this one because we both felt comfortable with him and his wife etc and I think thats really important.

Tog's do vary in price but I think it depends where you are and what your getting for your money!

Good Luck xx

This is also very important as some ministers can get a bit miffy if there are too many cameras pointing their way. They do like to perceive a structure to the procedings....which I am sure would happen in reality. If you are having a church ceremony, ensure that the designated tog is the one that gets the signing of the register shot....?

Peter

Michelle,

As you say prices vary widely. And there is a massive difference in quality between photographers out there, both in the quality of the photographs they take, both technically and artistically and also in the products they offer.

I personally found it one of the most stressful things to book, because so many I found were clearly amateur photographers, who you want to avoid at all costs. Both of my friends who have got married before me booked 'semi professional' photographers and both have ended up with photos so bad they are unusable.

My advice when looking is first of all to find a true professional photographer who can show you loads of great work. You should be able to go to their website and see many examples of absolutely beautiful wedding images. If they only have a few or if their work is average. Just discount them.

Once you've found some photographers whose work you love, then you can start to look at their prices.

Call them, speak to them. Ask all the questions. Get a feel of their professionalism.

From there meet a couple, and again they should bring you piles of high quality work. Lots of nice big photos. Weddings from start to finish. And again if they can't show you that, or if the quality of their albums is poor discount them again. The other extemely important thing is that they have a personality and character that you feel comfortable with and that you feel you'll be happy to spend your wedding day with them.

Sorry if that sounds daunting, but I personally feel that the wedding photography sector has by far the biggest number of cowboys in it that anywhere else. There is still a lot of good people out there, you just need to seperate the wheat from the chaff.

I've found a great guy and I'm paying £1000.00 to have him there all day, a beautiful handmade storybook album and a few prints. I think that is about average, or maybe a little under average for the quality he offers.

You would be very lucky to find a decent package for £400 from my experience.

I chatted to dozens of photographers at wedding fairs, trawled through lots of websites and sent of e-mails, had a "proper" meeting with one...and then decided not to use any of them. My fiancé's brother is a fantastic amateur photographer and he's going to do it - plenty of people have said we're taking a huge risk, and initially I thought the same, but I've seen his pictures from other weddings and you couldn't tell they're not professional. Plus for him it's a really special day as it's his little brother's wedding, not just "yet another" job. I may live to regret it, but I figure I could otherwise pay £1000 and regret it anyway so at least this way I won't be out of pocket too!

The "average" cost of wedding photography is around the £900-1K mark although much will depend on the type of end product you would be receiving..

Putting the cost of the photography in to perspective, when compared to the cost of the wedding dress, the amount of work and craft that goes in to your photographs is incredibly high. By comparison, I find it amazing that many dresses can cost over £1000 and are described as designer when in fact they are virtually manufactured on a conveyer belt with hundreds or thousands of that design being sold. A properly crafted and shot photography coverage will be unique by comparison.

Then again...I am biased.......?

Peter

Thanks all for your replies - really helpful and gives us more to think about.

We are based in London so probably the most expensive area!

Michelle

Not necessarily. Two of the most expensive photographers I know live oop north.......

Peter

Ours is costing £500 and for that we get 2 photographers from the Groom waiting at the venue/guests arriving (around 1.30ish) untill just after the first dance (9.00ish). We will get all the photo's on a copyright free disc. We are also having a practise shoot with the main photographer this July at our venue which is included in the price.

x

I would generally say that cost depends on competition and area, London having lots of competition can generally mean that you get a good deal, I wouldnt just look for the cheapest as price ranges hugely depending on what a photographer thinks he is worth. Look at image quality and product quality. you can get a good quality cheap photographer and a poor quality expensive photographer.

Ours costs £975 and for that we get 2 photographers from bridal (and groom!) preparations through to the first dance - though they will stay longer for no additional cost if we have something special planned for after the 1st dance which we want them to photograph. Our package also includes a pre-wedding photo shoot, album with 30 photos and all photos edited and put on cd.

Finding our tog has been the hardest part of the planning so far because so many of them in our area either took rubbish photos, were ridiculously expensive, or were just horrible people. We originally only wanted a tog from the ceremony to the start of the wedding breakfast, but the only two we could find that we liked only had one full-day package and wouldn't negotiate, so we ended up having to have one for longer than we wanted. After 3 months of searching though, we just wanted it to be over.

My OH is in a band and has a photographer (who also does weddings) that he regularly uses for promotional shoots and live gig photos and as he knows him we are paying £300 for two photographers all day till 11pm with all our images on CD and any editing we want. We were VERY happy with the deal and snapped up his offer as I have seen some packages online for £1000 with doesn't include access to the pictures without further payment. xx

I knew this post would get a lot of attention! As a Wedding Photographer I hope I'm able to give a little advice... I've got three rules, that if all are met, you've found the right one...

-The Photographs - You've got to like their style and how you get them.

-The Photographer - If you think they're a dipstick or don't like him/her/them don't book. You won't be relaxed!

-The Price.

Sounds simple doesn't it?! But if all three aren't a match then don't book!

Hope that helps...

I'm in the same part of town as you and I don't think photographers are more expensive because of where we are. Many, many other things are more expensive but a LOT of togs are willing to travel all over the country, which obviously doesn't happen with venues and people like cake-makers and seamstresses etc. Mine lives in Stoke-on-Trent and includes his travel costs in his price. (Which is £849... he stays all day, literally as long as we want, and provides all images on disc in high resolution as well as an online gallery and a studio during the reception. His prices have just gone up, however, and he's now charging £1000 for that package.)

I'm sure location does matter a bit, even though I didn't look at any photographers up north, because I'm in Hertfordshire, but in general things are cheaper up North, its just a fact.

Even down my way I could find loads of photographers from £99 - £500, most of whom offer uncopyrighted CDs (and generally only a CD) they don't offer any albums, and if they do, just really cheap ones that I just know they have brought in Tescos / TK Max or somewhere)

They generally also offer 2 photographers, and also often throw in a 'pre wedding shoot'

But all of them are total rubbish. I've had them show me photos of cats, landscapes, bottles of beer, anything but weddings.

If you hang out on some of the photography forums, you'll see all these things are tactics employed by cheaper, inexperienced photographers. They often team up into a 2 photographer team, because that way they have more chance of getting some good photos, because they often really don't know what they are doing. And they also usually give only the CD because they don't have the skill and equipment to post process the photos and adjust the colours properly, as you need special expensive equipment for that. They often offer a 'pre wedding shoot' just for further practisce and also simply to gain some images for their portfolios.

Just a few weeks ago I met with some friends who brought along their parents wedding albums from 20-30 years ago. In every case the photos were stunning, it really puts all these modern amateurs to shame. And of course there was only ever one photographer back then.

I still stick by my previous comment in this thread that there are a lot of cowboys out there in the wedding photography business and you have to be very cautious. Go by the quality of their work. Not by the figures and add ons.

More can often be less.

S