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There are some pros and cons to the way that I shoot weddings compared to traditional wedding photographers. Because I'm not running a wedding studio, I don't have fixed 'packages' - I shoot weddings the way that I shoot any other event, running around spontaneously documenting whatever I see happening. I'd much rather make the photography about the wedding than the wedding about the photography, so I won't give a lot of directions or set up shots. I work almost entirely by available light, and sometimes with a little bit of flash, but never with big lighting setups. That results in my being a lot more unobtrusive; It means I might miss some shots, but it also means I'll get a lot more natural shots.
I shoot all color, all digital. You can convert any image to black and white later if that's something you're interested in. The technology's evolved to the point where it's plenty good enough, and in some respects better than film. In the last few years, high quality printing options have become a lot cheaper and a lot more accessible. And digital makes it a lot easier for you to share images with family and friends. Also, I take a -lot- of pictures (we're probably talking thousands, not hundreds. No really, they turn into videos) so you'll have a lot of shots of those friends and family to share with them.
I don't do a lot in the way of postproduction- so if you're looking for fancy leatherbound albums, airbrushed photographs and what not, you should go to a wedding studio. What I do is quick turnaround, post a gallery of the pics to the web within a few days and then give you high resolution copies of everything on disk afterwards. It's then up to you if you want to distribute disks to friends, share them via an online printing service, have someone make albums for you or make your own, it's all up to you.
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What about the formal shots? I'm not against posed pictures per-se, and most people's families want at least some sort of formal portraits- shooting some of those is fine, but I don't like to spend a whole lot of time on them- I find that spontaneous candid shots have a lot more life to them- if you want a photographer to go around grouping people together for you during the whole reception, I'm not the right photographer for you. But if you do want to do some arranged group shots, it really helps if you recruit someone else to help organize the whole thing- my nature is to document, not direct, so I'm not so great at setting these things up. But if you can get everyone all lined up, I'll take the picture. If you really want to go through a lot of arrangements of folks and make sure that they're all absolutely perfect, you might want to think about doing what my cousin did and hire another photographer to do these on a separate day, thus freeing me to focus on what I do best which is photographing the real action that's going on.
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Here's the catch: I have way too much fun shooting weddings, but I don't want to make a career of it. While I'm perfectly happy shooting a few weddings here and there until the day I die, I don't want to shoot -only- weddings for the rest of my life. I need to keep my workload diverse. And while your wedding is -the- big party of your lifetime, I can't spend my lifetime just going to parties when there are so many people in this world who are far less privileged than I. The problem is that every wedding that I shoot refers me three more weddings and not much else. Since weddings are planned well in advance and most other things that I shoot come up on much shorter notice, the growth of my wedding photography career is blocking opportunities for further development of other facets of my photography...
In 2003 I shot maybe four or five weddings. By the time 2004 is over, I will have shot almost twenty in eight states and three european countries. And with two or three days of work associated with each one on top of the shooting days, that makes for a whole lot of matrimony in my life! I'm fine with 2004 being the year of JJ the wedding photographer. But I don't want to have my life swallowed up by them every year. So please don't be offended if I say that I can't do yours- it really depends on the timing, but I'm not looking to book two per weekend all summer long like professional wedding photographers do.
So, if you want me to shoot your wedding, you've got to -promise- to make it clear to your guests that I'm looking for other work besides just more weddings. Because everyone leaves the wedding thinking of me as a wedding photographer, and only thinks to send their next family member that's going to get married my way- it never even occurs to them that maybe their company's art director should look at my website, or that they should tell their friend's band, or the publication that their cousin works at- it's always just more weddings. And I need a bit more variety in my life than that. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you went and -actively- refered me other kinds of work- It's one thing if someone comes asking you if you know a photographer, but that doesn't happen too often. But if you just tell those random folks that might need pictures "hey you should check out my friend JJ's website, he might be of use to you someday" without -ever- mentioning the words 'wedding' or 'marriage' that'd be most helpful..
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Locations: Weddings have been great excuses to travel-> my usa fieldtrip started off because I was headed to northern wisconsin to shoot a wedding. My summer trip to europe happened because I was shooting weddings in london, normandy and hamburg. And I'd be happy to have your wedding be an excuse for me to discover a new place. But again in the interests of variety, I'd much rather travel to a location for a series of different projects, one of which might be your wedding. I did a few short 48hr jaunts this summer for weddings that ended up having me breeze in, stay in a hotel, shoot the wedding, and then dash away again. While the weddings themselves were great fun, the trips felt like business trips, and I didn't get a chance to get to know the community. I'd much rather the trips be adventures, and stick around shooting other things in your area. If you can help me line up other photographic activities in your area, that makes a trip out there all the more appealing. |
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Costs, and advance commitment- They say you're supposed to book your wedding photographer one or two years in advance, right? That's fine for people running wedding businesses, but it becomes a problem for me- my life's very much up in the air and I'm looking for new opportunities; agreeing to shoot something too far in advance locks me down. But then again I already have run into situations where people have asked me about weddings and behold, I was already booked for other weddings. So how to manage it? The best bet is for you to give me an early heads up so that I'll mark the date as tentative in my calendar but to wait until as late as possible to ask me for a solid commitment. If you really want a 100% commitment far in advance, I can certainly do it, but I'm going to charge you more.
As to the rest of the rates- again, I don't have fixed packages, and it will depend not only on the scale of your wedding but on what is going on in my life at the time. You'll have to tell me the specifics so that I can quote you a fee. That will essentially be a flat fee for the shooting time and time spent handling the files afterwards. I don't bill hourly, as I think that that would lead to my doing worse work- I'd much rather be there from the very beginning to the very end, because that's when a lot of the great moments happen. If you're used to dealing with professional photography, you'll probably find my rates fair or very cheap for the amount of work that I do and the volume/quality of images that I turn over. If you're not used to dealing with with professional photography and are on a tight budget, you might find that it's a lot more expensive than you were expecting. My rates are always negotiable if need be, because I'm in this for the fun and not for the moneymaking- but at the same time I can't be too flexible otherwise I'll just be shooting too many more weddings. Take a minute and look around at the rates of other people doing this kind of work to get a ballpark idea of how much photography should cost. If you're not clear on why photography's expensive, click here for a quick intro to the costs involved.
To download an example of what one of my wedding contracts look like, click here. (note: this is only a general example, the contract which might apply to your wedding might be different) - I've never had to actually go back and look at any of these things, they're just a silly business formality- I hate having to deal with stuff like this, but now that photography's my full-time job I do have to think about being at least semi-proffessional. And the fact that I have a standard wedding contract, and this page right here, mean that I'm already way more of a wedding photographer than I want to be. We'll see, maybe 2005 will also be a year of lots of weddings- but can't have so many in 2010!
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For some more photos, reload this page a few times - the pictures are all randomized so you should see a few new ones. Or, if you want to see a case study of what a wedding that I've shot looks like, drop me an email and if I have any galleries posted from a recent wedding then I'll tell you how to find it. Or watch some of the unedited quicktime movies
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PS: Dress Code- While weddings are often formal affairs, I don't dress up that much while shooting them. If you want your photographer to be wearing a tux, I'm -definitely- the wrong guy for you. I need to be comfortable when I'm shooting, able to move quickly and if I wore fancy clothes I'd just trash them when crawling around trying to get shots from low angles. I usually wear a newish pair of black carhartt work pants, a button down shirt or sweater, and boots. (traction is key.) |
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