photography help please?

How long's a piece of string?

You need to work out how much coverage you want. Obviously the longer the photographer is there, the more it will cost. (Usually.) Will you have one or two photographers? Will you be having albums? Will you need the photos on a cd?

Once you work out what you actually want, then it will be easier to narrow down your price options. But costs vary wildly.

You're right about booking early though as good photographers get booked up well in advance. Also your date will probably narrow your choices.

There are many variables that make up the price(as AliLindsey points out)

Perhaps you could give us some idea what area you are getting married in and we could then suggest some photographers websites for you to peruse....

Peter

Hi Anglefish,

Just to turn the tables a little 'how much' do you think is reasonable and for what package?

What you have to remember is that you only see the tip of the iceberg, brides often think £1200 for a days work?! What you have to understand is that a wedding can easily take up a week to plan, shoot, post process and design and prepare an album. Even longer when the client wants a coffee style book and and lots of revisions getting the album perfectly suited to her individual tastes.

When using good quality albums they can easily cost over £400 to manfacturer and I'm not even going to go into the overheads.

You can get cheaper photographers, but you just have to understand if you pay say £800, you are not going to get a £400 album and a weeks worth of love an attention on your images because it would make a mot more sense for the photographer to go and flip burgers, with steady pay, holiday, sickness and pension it would make a lot more financial sense!

What you have to remember is you are not paying for just somebody to come and take a few pictures, you are a paying a skilled professional for up to a week of their time and a quality album.

To put things in perspective, if you tried to hire a plumber or electrician for a week they would chage you nearer £2,500 plus materials and a good photography is at LEAST as skilled as a good plumber!?

Brian, I just love this analogy!!! True words of wisdom and ones I will be shamelessly copying if the need arises!

Very well put Brian......and very true of a lot of the services provided on the day.

Pixcellence - cheaper than your local plumber! I think I will have to check with my partner before I put that on our website ?

'tis true. I know all of the plumbers in my area charge around £60 per hour plus materials, when I break down what I charge after variable costs over the time it takes it's probably closer to a third. I used to earn a lot more when I had a 'real' job, unfortunately I just happen to love what I do now!

Hi,

ur photographer was recommended by our friend and is costing us £450. this includes 2 photographers, one at the brides getting ready, one at the church, both at reception up until the speaches end then they return in the evening for the first dance and the arrival of the evening guests, for my friends she had a total of 850 pronted proofs back with discs with the photos on so she can print more if she wanted to, a album with 40 photos chosen from her proofs in an album of her choice, she chose white leather with silver lined pages, and a A3 size canvus photograph of her choice for the wall. needless to say i am booking him.

lou x x

I'm paying less than £1200, but don't think it's an unreasonable amount if you are happy with the photography. I also don't think it's too early to start looking at this with your date being a very popular night, and one a lot of people might not want to work.

There is nothing wrong with hiring a cheaper photographer at that sort of price range provided you know what you are buying.

Personally I couln't provide the quality of product I do at that price, the material costs alone would cost me signficantly more than what he's charging, the prints alone would cost me £365 and that's AFTER the discount I get from the lab becuase I put so much work through them!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that yes, you can get very cheap, but the cheaper you go the more compromises and sacrifices in quality and materials must be made to come in at that price. If you are happy with non archival prints which might fade after 15 years or so and a budget album then it may well suit your needs, just dont' expect it to be the same sort of quality as a photographer charging £1000+.

Put it this way, even printing somewhere like Asda, it's going to cost him a minimum of £42 to print the photo's, an album is going to them back £100 at the very least and the canvas at least another £60. Using the cheapest possible materials that's going to cost £202 before any postage.

Now he's got to pay the second photographer, going rate is £100-£150 getting somebody on the cheap who is learning the ropes, lets say they have been lucky and found somebody willing to work for £7 an hour, that's another £50 for the day.

So the photographers £450 has now shrunken to £198, which is a WEEKS pay, because of the timing of the seaons it's very difficult to physically fit in more than 35 weddings a year and even that is pushing it, so you are talking about an annual salary of around £6,930 out of which marketing, equipment, travel and other overheads have to be paid, not to mention pension. To put things in perspective, I've spent £3k on updating my equipment this year already, plus another £600 on a couple of replacment sample albums, that' half this photograpephers annual living budget!

Clearly, they have to cut every possible corner to make any kind of profit, cheapest possible album, non archival prints, get obsolete second hand equipment and use it until it falls to pieces, forgo insurance and no way can they afford to run a reliable car to get them to your wedding on that salary. By my calculations it would make more financial sense to go and be a static security guard, flip burgers or go and work in a shop. (and nothing wrong those jobs either)

It's pretty clear you aren't going to get the most talented people at the sort of price range. People who area good at their job want to be paid, otherwise they move on. If the going rate in your job was £30K a year, you were good at it and only got paid £10K would you stay?

I'm not having a go so please don't read it that way, I'm just trying to point out the economic reality of why photographers costs 'seem' expensive, but in reality, are often very reasonable bearing in mind the quality of the materials, time and effort that goes into them.