I was listening to a podcast from The Butterfly Journal this weekend and it made me think in a different way about what its like for the bride putting together all of the details of the wedding. Its really difficult understanding the vast array of photographers, packages, album types, and copyright, not to mention actually choosing a wedding photographer.

The podcast interviewed Julia Boggio, one of the most successful UK photographers who also writes articles for Photo Pro Magazine. Brides may know her for the famous Dirty Dancing wedding video on her own wedding day, that went almost viral on YouTube.

She makes some very interesting points that perhaps we wedding photographers take for granted.

Experience and Trust

I wrote an article on this subject in a previous blog post, listing the most important areas of choosing your wedding photographer. The post is here, but talks about how to look for experience and trust. A summary of this post was featured in Velvet magazine.

How many pictures do we get.

Typically I’ll take around a thousand images for a 12 hour wedding. Only the very best of those are presented to the bride and groom, and most albums contain roughly a hundred images. Additional images are available digitally, on slideshow or DVD. So why take so many ? Well there’s the inevitable blinking, particularly in group shots, knowingly taking a multiple shots to capture the split second of the kiss for example. Children rarely keep still. This is where you’ll see the results in the photographers portfolio or sample albums. Ask for some examples of this when you meet with your photographer.

Price

Julia sits at the top of the industry, deservedly so. This allows her to command the type of fees she does. But actually I think its not about fees, its about value. At any price, the bride has to know that she is getting value for money, and all that she feels she deserves, at the budget she’s set.

Copyright

I confess this is not one I’d really encountered much until a bride I met this week asked about it. A friend of hers had a few problems in getting copies of images from their wedding.

The copyright remains with the creator of the images, the photographer. But this shouldn’t really matter to you if you have an album of printed images, as I can’t see any bride trying to put their wedding album in the scanner. For digital images, this is quite different. Again the photographer owns the copyright. The key question for the bride should be, what do I want to do with the digital images ? Then they can ask the photographer if they can do this within their wedding agreement. A couple may see copyright offered by one photographer, and may assume it adds additional value without fully understanding what this means.

Food

Do we need to feed our photographer ? Yes, definitely. For a photographer, its a long day. For most, the only break they get is when everyone sits down for the wedding breakfast or buffet. Personally this is a chance for me to backup photos, while taking a reasonable break for food and drink. ( Your guests won’t appreciate being photographed while they are eating ). Some photographers will specify eating to the same standard as the guests, but all will welcome a bite to eat and some soft drinks.

The photographer on the day

I’ve heard on podcasts and read on blogs, that the bride and groom have ended up with someone different to photograph them on the day. Fortunately I’ve never heard of this happening in real life. Always ask, and take a look at the details of your contract with the photographer you’ve chosen.

I hope the information is of value and would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Here’s a link to the podcast on the Butterfly Journal.