If you’re getting married in Perth, the South West or Margaret River and have started looking at wedding photography, you might of wondered, “why the huge price difference?” Why do some wedding photographers charge $500 and others charge $5000? There’s no denying there is a huge difference in price range, but there is also a huge difference in service, quality of imagery, wedding albums and professional skill.
Towards the lower end of the price range you may be offered what’s called in the industry “shoot and burn”, ie shoot the photos, burn the images to cd. The cost for this service will be relatively low as the input of time and labour is minimal. S/he turns up on the day, shoots a few images, down loads and burns the images to a cd. The images are likely to be shot as jpeg, not raw files. It’s unlikely the images will have had the density adjusted, colour corrected, or be colour balanced. The service provided is unlikely to include: meeting prior to the wedding day, or any specialist or creative work carried out on the images. The camera used may be semi professional or professional, but s/he’s unlikely to have a spare on hand. It is unlikely that a photographer offering this service will provide any after service or accept any responsibility for the images provided once the cd is handed over.
The mid-price-range wedding photographer will more than likely produce an album in which to display your wedding photographs. The mid price will perhaps reflect: the type of camera equipment used, the type of computer hardware and software, whether they shoot jpeg or raw files, if the images are density adjusted, colour corrected, colour balanced and printed by the photographer, sent to mini lab or a professional photographic laboratory that has it’s equipment mapped to an ICCS profile, – the colour fingerprint device. The price will also reflect the style and quality of album used: it may be an “off the shelf album” that has a preset design and number of pages. You may also find that some companies employ a number of photographers in which case you need to be sure that the wedding photography you view is the work of the photographer who’ll be at your wedding. In most cases there will be one photographer with you on the day.
Photographers at the top end of the market will most likely produce an exclusive, one of a kind wedding album of your favourite wedding photographs. The album will be individually hand crafted for the number of images you choose and each photograph will be matted to enhance the image. The album cover will be crafted from leather and the finest hand made alternatives. All the images will be shot as raw files. The photographer will convert the raw files, adjust density and colour, colour balance and professionally print and enhance each individual image that you’ve chosen for your wedding album. The process of photographing the wedding celebration to the final presentation of the album will most likely take approximately 40-50 hours of the photographers time.
Your specialist wedding photographer will have not just one camera, there will be a backup camera and not just one lens, but three or four lenses and more memory cards than will be used in one shoot! To get special effects they will have various flash units, video lights, radio slaves! Of course camera equipment doesn’t come cheaply and you can expect your professional wedding photographer to be carrying equipment to the value of $20 – $25,000 with them on your wedding day. At their studio they will have computer equipment and software for processing the raw files into readable picture files and the software to give your images tone, contrast, colour saturation and pizzazz! This could easily be another $20,000 worth of equipment.
A quality wedding photographer will offer the following services: a meeting and perhaps a pre-wedding photo session (this is valuable to discuss what’s important to you on the day and the specialist wedding photographer will also prompt you to consider options you may not have previously considered), generally 6-8 hr coverage on the wedding day, two photographers or a photographer and assistant, s/he will also liaise with the wedding celebrant, the car drivers, the reception coordinator and your MC, after the wedding s/he will assist you in choosing your wedding photographs and displaying them in an individually crafted album. A specialist quality wedding photographer will most likely make available a cd of the preview images and possibly a dvd of your printed album images.
A wedding album is a unique collection of your wedding images showing special moments on a special day at the start of a journey. A one of a kind, individually hand crafted wedding album will be a treasured possession to enjoy and reflect upon with family and friends over the years.
Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives. William A. Foster
