Getting Back to Booking a Wedding Photographer

Due to slamming my hand in very large car doors I have refrained from a lot of typing but I’ve decided that I’d really like to keep the blog up to date in spite of purple fingers and Tylenol. Before the crushed fingers I had started talking about how important it is for a bride to make booking a wedding photographer one of her top priorities for a number of different reasons. I had also started my discussion on the importance of realizing what you may or may not be paying for. Briefly we talked about a “Budget Photographer” and what brides should expect working with someone who may be classified as such. My hope was to transition into what I consider myself and a lot of other great photographer friends of mine to be, that is; The Creative and Slightly Affordable Photographer.

I’m not saying that because you paid your photographer $800 to show up and shoot and then burn you a DVD of the day’s events that you won’t have anything creative to show for it. Like I had said before, a lot of wedding photographers start at the shoot and burn phase just to get their name out there. However, I’m not kidding about the slightly affordable part.

I know that a lot of wedding magazines tell brides to budget between 10-14% of their total budget for a wedding photographer. That’s great if your budget is $30,000 but for most brides who may want to spend closer to $15-$18K it’s a little harder to find an established photographer with a creative eye, great equipment and a nice album package for less than $2,000. I’m not saying that it can’t be done I’m just explaining that it’s a lot harder. For the average bride who may spend $15-$18K on her entire wedding it’s more practical to think that you may actually spend between $3,000-$4,500 on a wedding photographer. At most that’s about 25% of your total budget. But remember what you’re paying for. You’re paying for most if not all of the items that make it to your wish list!

So let’s start from the beginning. The “creative” part is usually what tends to separate a very intuitive photographer from one who may just photograph what common sense says a photographer should get. Time and time again when I ask a bride what she’s looking for in her photographer I hear that she wants a photographer who can make her wedding look like a magazine wedding. Now there is only so much a photographer can do to create such an appearance, especially if the wedding details aren’t planned well, but most brides want the guy/girl who can take finger paint and create the Sistine Chapel. It’s not ridiculous to want that, I did, and believe it or not there are a lot of great photographers who take a more photojournalistic approach to capturing day. Now all that means is that they’re really good at picking up peoples’ actions, emotions, and know when to anticipate their next great shot. Everyone has their limits but let’s face it, some photographers are just more creative than others. I’m glad for such an environment, it allows me to continue to grow with what I do.

Regardless of the level of experience your second tier photographer may display it is most important that you like whom you are working with. Be honest with them and express to them how much this all means to you.

Price. Photographers in this tier can range between $3K-$10K. Now even though I do offer a package that is in the neighborhood of $7K I don’t advertise it on my website because it’s not for everyone. In fact I’ve only met a few brides who I thought might actually want to consider it. Every now and then a bride will come along who wants the Farm and is willing to pay for it. At that point guys like myself need to know how to accommodate such a client. For the most part we book in the middle of our pricing range. When you find a photographer who will offer two photographers to cover your wedding, a huge leather album for you, parent albums and digital negatives you should expect that it won’t come cheap.

Aside from having great equipment that makes all of that happen, there’s a lot of time that goes into making everything look like the magazine wedding that most brides hope to have. As a footnote to everything that would push a photographer into this class of business what’ll you’ll likely to find is that the photographer has some sort of liability insurance. This means that if your photographer happens to mess up really bad that even if you don’t receive a single image you’re likely to be compensated for your loss beyond what you spent. It’s that extra step that helps to set the client’s mind at ease.

The bottom line is that Ethan Allen doesn’t sell furniture for Wal-Mart prices and BMW doesn’t sell their cars for cheap. Quality is worth paying for but it doesn’t mean that you have to go broke. It is possible to book a very professional, creative and reliable photographer for a price that you can afford.

Thanks for reading.

Courtney Navey

I've never done this before...

It's fairly late but I've been test driving my recent upgrade to Apple's new OS Leopard. It's clean and very user friendly. A huge thanks to my good friend Andrew for being my gadget exchange buddy. But the real reason I'm writing tonight is because I feel bad for having not written in a while. So the last time that I blogged I was trying to be really objective and really, really helpful for brides that are having a difficult time deciding on a photographer. Well, it wasn't too long after I had started putting together several helpful articles that I destroyed my right index finger. I had gone out to lunch with a good friend of mine from church and as I was getting out of his truck, and I wasn't paying attention, when I accidentally slammed the truck door on my hand. I've never done that before so the intense burning in my finger and the surprising shock of pain had me really confused. I decided to post a few pics that I had taken with my phone just before I finally decided to go to the doctor. If you can't deal with blood and that sort of thing then you should probably stop here. But if you're like me and just can't help but look then be my guest.



Having a busted up right hand kind of kept me from wanting to type a whole lot. But I didn't break anything and I'm starting to get most of the feeling back in my finger. So I'm almost back to 100%.

Somehow I managed to pull the side of the nail away from the finger. It's crazy gross, I know, but I didn't want to be considered a lazy blogger just because it's been a while since I've posted. I've got a lot of great things coming up in the months ahead so I'll be sure to post more "attractive" photography and I'll do my best to keep the helpful Tips and Advice coming. Have a great week!