Trade Secrets Revealed...I bet no one else will tell you this!
While attending a five day professional advanced portrait workshop
given by one of the nation's top master photographers a few years
back, we'd all get together afterwards in the evenings for a bull
session of shop talk (as everyone there owned or worked at studios).
When the talk turned to photographing weddings, what really
surprised me was that of the 20 photographers there, only about a
fourth really enjoyed doing weddings, about half said they did it
only because their studios couldn't survive without the revenue it
produced, and about a fourth said that they absolutely hated doing
weddings and would give anything if they could find a way to be able
not to do them.
Locally, we've got one top studio owner who swears off of
photography weddings about once every two or three years. Then after
awhile, he decides to go back to doing them. So, as you can see, not
everyone is exactly excited about doing your wedding photography for
you...(just thought you would want to know!)
You also can not necessarily determine how good a full-time
professional photographer is by how much he/she charges, either.
Some pros who love to photograph weddings (yours truly included)
tend to keep their prices lower in order to get more weddings to
photograph.
And, I know more than a few full-time pros who absolutely hate to
photograph weddings and use a very high price to keep from having to
do any more weddings a year than they can absolutely stand to
photograph.
You see, sometimes photographers use price as the total controlling
factor for how many weddings they get to (or have to) photograph
each wedding season. The last thing these photographers would ever
tell you is how they really feel about photographing weddings. Some
photographers I know don't like doing Sunday weddings (and won't do
them either), but they won't tell you that...instead, if you call
them about doing a Sunday wedding, you will simply be told that they
are already booked and are not available to photograph your wedding.
If I am able to pack in such value in my packages, why don't other
photographers do it?
Other photographers are taught at workshops and seminars to "charge
what ever the market will bear" and to continue raising their prices
every 6 months until too many people start to complain about their
high prices, then to back off a bit. ("If few are complaining about
your prices being too high, you simple aren't charging enough!")
You see, photographers aren't only trained to take good photos; they
are also trained to intentionally extract the maximum cash total
possible from each and every customer. (I know of "carriage trade"
wedding photographers who charge $90 for a single 5x7 wedding
reprint! Does this keep people from hiring them? Yes and no. It
seems there are enough people out there who are willing to pay it,
so that these photographers manage quite nicely with those prices.)
I'm sure they make several times more per year than I do, but that
has never bothered me in the least.
I have never held with this pricing philosophy and only charge what
I personally am comfortable with charging. I don't believe in
gouging a customer, just because I can. As long as I can make a
decent living...comparable to a factory wage, while working hard
only 40 or so days a year (and piddling the rest...with filling
orders, booking weddings and such) and stay as busy shooting all the
wedding I can handle....I'm happy and life is great! And I have the
good feeling at the end of the day, knowing that I have given my
clients the best value available for their hard earned money!
Pray You Never End Up Hiring
This Guy!!
Know what should really scare the beejeevers out of you about hiring
wedding photographers? The number of so-called "photographers" out
there who book weddings, then frantically go online just before the
wedding and post "HELP ME! ADVICE URGENTLY NEEDED!!" messages on
photographers' website bulletin boards. I see it all the time,
with frightening regularity!!
Like this one (a copy and paste from such a photographers' bulletin
board):
OK. I have my first all digital wedding with my new D70
kit and SB 800. I am shooting some local events as prep and I am
finding some interesting differences from film I use the histogram
to check exposure and find that the camera will under or over expose
in different settings. I am constantly adjusting the EV value on the
flash and body. Is this normal? As well I am shooting normal and
find it very good for up to 8X10. I don't like taking the card out
since I bent a pin in my first week. Shooting normal gives me almost
600 shots as opposed to 300 for fine. I am planning to mix the
quality using normal for PJ and fine for portraits, formals and
ceremony.
[End Quote]
How would you like for this guy to show up as your wedding
photographer??? (Do you think this clients have a clue about this
guys true "abilities"?) Unfortunately, these "photographers"
are out there booking weddings. They are a dime a dozen, too!
I have over 20 years of wedding photography experience and I
pioneered shooting weddings totally digitally in this part of
the country since early 1998, so you'll never have to worry about
that when I am your wedding photographer!!
The big thing that
photographers are doing these days is using an online query form to
show you if they are available for your wedding date or not. This
keeps you from seeing how under booked they really are, if that's
the case!
(I was booked for every Saturday in June, July and August of '05
by the end of January '05, with 34 '05 and '06 weddings booked at
that time!) I also use such a form, but on my wedding
availability page, I list all my booked weddings for the entire
world to see. I'm sure other photographers that are so fully
booked would do the same, too, as it is a good indicator of just how
good and how popular you really are! So, just figure that if
the photographer isn't showing you his booked dates that he just
isn't very busy...and maybe either terribly overpriced or maybe not
very good!
RESERVE TODAY
before your date is unavailable.
