How To Avoid The Biggest Mistake You Can Make With Your Wedding Photographer and Keep Your Wedding Day Pain Free and Fun
Copyright (c) 2003 by David Horland. All rights reserved.
If you're getting ready to hire a wedding photographer, don't back him into a corner. You'll end up not getting to kind of results you expect. Backing your wedding photographer into a corner is the worst mistake you can make. And it can really ruin your wedding day for you, so pay attention to what I tell you here.
Backing your wedding photographer into a corner means that you nickel and dime him to death, to the point that he becomes disinterested in photographing your wedding. Once that happens you can forget about getting him to do a great job for you. What do I mean by "nickel and dime him to death"? This means that you push the photographer for the best possible deal you can get out of him. And for you the best deal means the lowest price. You ask for every possible discount you can get.
You ask the photographer to give you a full coverage package at a 3 hour price! You ask the photographer to give you the negatives so you can go to a one hour photo and get cheap processing. You pick the photographer's packages apart in an effort to reduce the price. You even bellyache about being charged the sales tax and you may even refuse to pay the tax! This is backing the photographer into a corner and no photographer appreciates this!
Let me give you some background into what goes on in wedding photography. To start with, wedding photography prices are not where they should be. Most wedding photographers are 20 to 25 years behind the times with their pricing. This sounds unbelievable but it's true. (That right there, is the reason why the average wedding photographer doesn't make a living. But that's not your problem).
The fact is that over 50% of the wedding photography business has fallen into the hands of "weekend warriors", people who photograph weddings on the weekends while holding a full time, or part time job during the week. There is a huge amount of competition for wedding photography and photographers have fallen into the trap of competing on price. This has hurt the whole market. It has gotten so bad that more and more photographers leave the wedding photography market every year. The profit margin doesn't exist anymore!
New "wanna bee" wedding photographers flood into the business every year as others leave. The price war is on! So you are out there looking for wedding photography, and you want the very best at the lowest possible price, (witch actually doesn't exist). You know that your friend got the whole "kit-n-kaboodle" for a price under a thousand bucks so you are pretty much looking for the same kind of package.
You chew the photographer down on price until you get him to the point where he simply can't afford to shoot enough film to do the job correctly, because he's not getting enough money from you to make it worth his while. If you do this, and the photographer takes the job, you will be making this terrible mistake. You will have backed the photographer into a corner and when this happens you will get burnt! Your results will be terrible and you'll suffer the pain and sorrow of not capturing your once-in-a-lifetime wedding day with great looking photography. All because you bargained your way into a package that was no package at all!
Why would a photographer allow you to chew him down to a price where he can't make money? Probably because he's new in business, needs to get a photographic portfolio together and just wants to get his feet wet. Or he's not new to the business, but simply doesn't know how to take his wedding photography business to the next level. Granted, many wedding photographers don't know how to set their prices. But that doesn't mean you hire a wedding photographer with your eyes closed. If the package seems to be to good to be true, then it is. So how do you not make this mistake. You realize that the lowest price isn't the best package or the highest quality. So keep your wedding day fun and pain free by hiring a decent photographer at a decent price.
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