March 12, 2012 /

I Found a Cheap Wedding Photographer!

As in all professions and services, the wedding photography market is rife with a variety of professionals, some of whom are worthy of the "professional photographer" title while others are photo...

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As in all professions and services, the wedding photography market is rife with a variety of professionals, some of whom are worthy of the “professional photographer” title while others are photographers in name only. The truth is that a search on the basis of cost will result in a vast range of options from cheapest to most expensive. In a previous article on the selection of a wedding photographer, I used the example of the discount stores.

“If you see big differences in prices, it doesn’t necessarily mean one of the two is trying to con you. Take, for example, bargain basement products. No one really believes that buying a name brand means being tricked because the same item may be marked down 80% at discount stores. It just means that the name brand has more to offer in terms of quality and durability. For photographers, that means more experience, quality equipment, respect for the couple, time devoted to selecting and editing photos, reliability, photo and presentation quality personal attitude, creativity, business premises and many other parameters that unfortunately most couples ignore or are not aware of until it’s too late.”

In the same way that you would never shop from a bargain basement for your wedding day, you should be suspicious of photographers who offer you bargain prices. As the saying goes, “you get what you pay for.” How can a photographer respect his work and his product and, by extension, you as a client, if your special wedding moments are limited by amateur, repetitive photos taken at random? How can you get good work from a production based on a rough-and-ready philosophy? Your wedding photographs should be guided by rules related to both technical equipment and artistic approach. Such rules objectively make the difference and guarantee the result, as the professional photographer who has invested in his work supports his investment through to the final product, giving the couple the best possible outcome. Such a photographer can’t be bargain basement; he can’t come cheap.

It has been observed particularly at trade shows that many photographers, after talking with the couple and getting to the topic of cost, end up offering discounts of 30 and 40%. That seems most suspect to me because if you think about it, it could mean one of two things: either the photographer was trying to get more money at the outset, or that along with a discount in the price, there will also be a discount in the quality, though this is never mentioned to the couple.

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