If you are reading this, you are certainly someone who is getting married. At this moment you realize how much will it costs to create your perfect day. First you book the venue and church and then comes the wedding dress and followed by booking a wedding photographer.
Wedding photography market is quite big and competitive. Sometimes it can be quite hard to choose the wedding photographer. If you choose on price, you will wonder to see the variation. In most cases, get what you pay for and here are few reasons why:
1. For a full professional photography, your photographer may work for several hours or even days on a single go.
2. A good photographer has full public indemnity and liability insurance.
3. The photographer always keeps a backup set of equipment to assure photography goes on even in case of equipment failure.
4. The wedding photographer will always keep backup drives and off site storage to make sure your precious images are safe in case his studio is burgled or there is data loss.
5. The good photographers keep on making frequent investments with their skills and equipment to assure client is getting satisfactory services every time.
To conclude, even a small size photography business has significant costs to be covered to stay in business.
When you book a wedding photographer, you may not realize but you are buying almost a full week's work. Here is a brief summary, where time breaks down.
1. Initial consultation and booking
2. Preview wedding meeting to confirm timing and photography requirements.
3. Preparation of wedding photography
4. Wedding day travel
5. Wedding photography.
6. Travel back to studio
7. Download and backup images
8. Sort and select images ready for editing.
9. Edit images
10. Photoshop editing of key images
11. Create presentation slideshow
12. Customer viewing and choosing album selection.
13. Design album
14. Album proofing and changing.
15. Upload album design to lab.
16. Meet couple to deliver album.
This whole process is going to take a week. And certainly the photographers are going to charge on the basis of their overhead and the number of jobs that they can handle. If you book a wedding photographer who offer full service outlined here, he is merely going to do one or two weddings per weekend. And that alone he has to meet all the expenses and overhead for his business. The wholesale price of a good album is several hundred pounds and that is also to be included in the overhead costs.
When you sum up all these costs, you will realize that the prices charged by wedding photographer are quite fair and they are generally charging a reasonable rate based on their skills, time invested and material required. On the other hand, this is also an indication of the fact, that if a photographer is pricing his services too low, he is certainly going to offer inferior quality services. Perhaps quality is being compromised your photographer isn't a full time professional.
So it all depends on how much you value your wedding photography.