How to Choose a Wedding Photographer Part II – What to Ask
Welcome back to my little corner of the internet. I feel so at peace when I begin to tackle another blog post like this, and I’m so glad I get to share more advice with you. A lot of photographers are terrified of blogging, but I love using this opportunity to reflect on my experience as a wedding photographer in Northern Virginia, working with dozens of brides at dozens of weddings, and letting it spill into a more tangible realm where it can help others with their wedding planning!
In our last blog post, we dipped our toes in the water with some initial steps you can take to start your search for a wedding photographer. And even though it was just the tip of the iceberg, it was a LOT! That said, much of what was included in Part I was focused on what you as the client are looking for – the overall style of their photography, the pricing you can afford for the services you’re looking for, etc. Now that you’ve narrowed down a list of photographers who have work you love and are in your budget, it’s time to get down to business. The less pretty stuff. The stuff that helps distinguish between the photographers who will really deliver your dream wedding photos, and the ones that are in over their heads or lack real experience. So if you’re ready to ask the REAL questions during your consultations with all these dreamy photographers, read on!
Licensed and Insured
It is so easy for photographers who are just starting their business to do it “under the table.” They may put their early business funds into a decent website, pretty pricing guide, essential camera gear, and the like – but wait to become a legitimate business until they feel like they’re more established. Your photographer of choice may seem like they have it all together. They may have a beautiful portfolio (more on that later). They may display a well-designed website and pricing guide – that they bought from one of the many shops that sells these materials for photographers, cheap or even free. They may talk like a professional photographer – because of their experience as an assistant photographer, or even just from using some of the plethora of wedding photography education sold by fellow photographers. A tell-tale sign of an inexperienced photographer is their lack of insurance and business license.
It’s important to note that not every county requires that your photographer be licensed. In some counties, a business license is only required if they’re bringing in a certain amount of revenue – usually high enough that a decently established wedding photographer who does more than a couple of weddings a year will meet the minimum, but still possibly not applicable to your photographer. However, it’s always good practice to ask your photographer if their business is licensed. If they are not, ask why – it’s going to give you great insight into how seriously they’re taking their business. There’s nothing wrong with hiring someone new to the industry, especially if your budget is tight and they’re offering a great deal while they’re getting established, but it’s worth asking the question to find out if they’re not licensed for a legitimate reason like not meeting a minimum requirement for their jurisdiction, or if they get nervous and give a shifty answer to the question. If they don’t have an answer that satisfies you, be wary of hiring them as they may not be operating their business legally in an attempt to avert tax requirements and required fees.
Insurance is not a legal requirement, but it is definitely important for photographers to have! So much can go wrong surrounding a wedding day, especially for your photographer. Their gear may malfunction, an accident can cause their gear to break or photos to be lost, they may trip while shooting and sprain an ankle… Nobody wants to think about a crisis on their wedding day or something terrible happening to their wedding photos, but it does happen and your photographer needs to be prepared in order to give YOU peace of mind. Your photographer should have business liability insurance, professional liability insurance (aka errors & omissions insurance), and property insurance. A photographer who is insured will be less worried about the financial cost of any malfunctions or accidents. If something goes wrong on the wedding day that entitles you to a refund or other compensation, you’re much more likely to get what you’re owed when your photographer is insured. It’s also less likely that the photographer will try to come after you in the event anything goes wrong on your wedding day. Insurance is generally not super expensive compared to other expenses for wedding photographers, so not having insurance is another sign that your photographer is new to the industry and trying to keep their costs low. You should also note that many wedding venues require proof of insurance from all of your wedding vendors, including photographers – so this may not be a negotiable point depending on your venue requirements.
Contracts
Much like with business licenses and insurance, this topic isn’t the most romantic part of your discussion with your prospective wedding photographer, but it is an important one. Will they have you sign a contract? Where did they get their contract, and what reassurance can they give that their contract is legitimate? At Beauty of the Soul Studio, we use contracts that were drafted by a Virginia lawyer who is well-versed in photography businesses and therefore the needs of photographers and their clients. Be wary of any photographer who doesn’t have you sign a contract, who wrote a contract themselves (even if “based on their experience at weddings”), or who got their contract from another “professional photographer” (who may have just drafted their contract themselves as well). Having some contract is better than having no contract, but a contract that hasn’t been reviewed by a lawyer in your photographer’s jurisdiction is less likely to hold up in court and therefore less likely to protect either of you in case anything goes wrong.
Backups and Dual Card Slots
I know, I know – yet another unpretty topic to cover with your photographer. But while you’re chatting with them about their beautiful portfolio and all the pretty images you admire, this is yet another important topic to bring up when it comes to how seriously your photographer is taking your images and their security. Backups. Everyone knows, technology is great when it works and terrible when it doesn’t. Sometimes, technology really messes up and that’s especially true of storage devices like SD cards and external disk drives.
Ask your photographer if they shoot to two SD cards at the same time throughout your wedding day. Ideally, they’ll answer yes – as most professional cameras nowadays include two card slots and allow your photographer to shoot to both cards at once. This decreases the (already low) chance that a card will fail and the images will be corrupt. If your photographer says no, they don’t shoot to two cards at once, ask why. They may have a totally legitimate answer! Personally, I wouldn’t hire a wedding photographer who doesn’t shoot to two cards at once all day because those memories are fleeting and precious and can’t be recreated; I’ve heard too many horror stories of photographers who got home and realized that the entire ceremony was corrupted, or that a card failed and they were only able to recover bits and pieces from the whole day. This is usually because of the card itself, or the individual process of the camera writing to that card and very very rarely caused by the camera itself, which is why shooting to two cards at once is a lifesaver – there’s just a nearly impossible chance that something will malfunction and cause BOTH cards to be corrupt.
SD cards are one piece of the puzzle. What happens to your photos in the time between the wedding and your gallery delivery? Does your photographer store them on an external drive, and if so what kind? Do they back up the photos somewhere other than just their laptop? If you aren’t super tech-savvy, there are two types of external drive storage – disk drive and solid-state drive (SSD). SSDs are more expensive (think Macbook vs. standard PC laptop) but disk drives are far more fragile and more likely to fail unexpectedly. In an ideal world, photographers would back up all of their unedited and edited photos to SSDs. That said, it’s super expensive even for a true professional! If they aren’t using SSDs, there are still measures they should be taking to protect your photos.
For perspective, at Beauty of the Soul Studio we always shoot to two card slots on both of our cameras on the wedding day. After the wedding, we keep unedited files on something called a Network Attached Storage (NAS). This means that while we use disk drives for our storage, they are connected to the computer using our internet connection and not physically with a cable. The benefit of this is that we never have to move or touch the external drives, which significantly decreases the risk of failure. It also uses “mirroring” drives, meaning that it’s always using two external drives at once – a lot like using two SD cards while shooting! This means that if one drive does fail, the other one still has everything on it.
In sum, we wouldn’t recommend that you rule out your otherwise perfect photographer just because they don’t shoot to two SD cards during your wedding day, or because they keep their photos on a regular external hard drive connected to their computer. But consider this as part of the greater picture of your wedding photography service and don’t be afraid to prioritize the security of your wedding photos.
Styled Shoots vs. Real Weddings
One aspect of wedding photography that we are especially passionate about at Beauty of the Soul Studio is showcasing a portfolio true to our skill and experience. A major trend in the wedding photography industry that a lot of our clients don’t know about is styled shoots. Styled shoots are essentially fake weddings and carefully-curated portrait sessions that are designed to grow a photographer’s portfolio and give the appearance that they’ve photographed a high-end wedding. And guys, they are all over photographer’s websites.
We intend to make another blog post more deeply addressing this issue in the future, so stay tuned for that, but for this blog post we found it incredible important to alert you, planning couples, to this trend and advise you – ask your photographer about their experience shooting real weddings. If there are photos on their website or in their portfolio that you really love, ask if it’s from a real wedding or a styled shoot. In short, styled shoots can be dangerous to planning couples because they may be a misrepresentation of the skill level of the photographer. Styled shoots are carefully curated which means they may look like they were a perfect candid moment or the photographer found this beautiful spot on a client’s wedding day when in reality they may have rescheduled the session three times because of rain, spent a ton of time scouting the location to find this perfect spot, and devoted themselves to getting this perfectly “unposed” pose from the model (not bride).
To clarify – we don’t hate the entire concept of a styled shoot! It can be a great way for your photographer to network with other vendors, spend time being creative, and capture photos that are more reflective of the type of work they want to do. But be wary of a photographer whose portfolio seems almost too perfect, especially if they have a lot of photos from the same perfect weddings – those few perfect weddings may not be weddings at all, and your seemingly experienced high-end photographer may be severely lacking in real wedding experience.
A Full Gallery
Asking about styled shoots is one way to test the quality of your photographer’s portfolio and their real wedding experience. Another important part of your discernment process is to review at least one full wedding gallery during your consultation. Your photographer should be able to show you a digital gallery full of all the photos delivered to a past client. Not just the highlights pulled from their website portfolio or sample album, and not just a series of their favorite photos from one particular wedding, but the full set of photos from a past wedding so you can see exactly what sort of final product you can expect on your own wedding day. Did they deliver around the number of photos you’re looking for? Did the photos consistently come out in focus and sharp? Are they edited consistently? Was the posing of the couple awkward during their portraits? Did they get a variety of portraits? Was the reception well-lit? If they did a send-off, did the photos turn out well? Don’t be afraid to take your time looking through the photos and ask the photographer if anything seems different from what you would want; ask them about the challenges of this wedding and how they handled things. It’s totally okay for the wedding gallery to not be completely perfect, but your photographer should be able to honestly answer your questions about the gallery and have legitimate reasons for any issues and there shouldn’t be CONSISTENT problems throughout the gallery like photos out of focus or missing important moments.
How many photos?
This topic may have come up during the initial phase of your search but if not, it’s important to address it during your consultation. There are a ton of different philosophies among photographers when it comes to the final number of photos they deliver. Some photographers have a “shoot and share” approach – you pay for their time and maybe prints or albums, but they always deliver all of your photos digitally with no upper limit to the number of photos delivered. Some photographers charge less up front but limit the number of photos you can download with that price, charging extra for additional photos. These photographers will also often charge extra for your friends and family to download the photos and restrict your freedom to share the files. Other photographers are product-based – they are focused on providing you with a beautiful, large album of photos as well as other prints and photo products, and sell the digital files separately.
Among the photographers who do provide digital files, it’s important to understand how many you can expect. What is the average number of photos delivered, and what is the minimum you can expect? Some photographers choose to be very selective with the photos they deliver and may only provide 200-300 from a full 8 hour wedding day (whether because they do extensive, detailed, high-end editing or because they have high turnover and don’t want to take the time to edit a large number of photos). On the other hand, some do light editing and prefer to hand over ALL the photos so you can expect to parse through 1500+ photos regardless of quality or repetition. Beauty of the Soul Studio opts for an in-between approach, doing a moderate amount of editing and delivering an average of 100 photos per hour (though the specific final number varies by event).
Personality (do they care?)
We have one final thing to consider as you conduct your consult with your top choices of wedding photographers. And it may be one of the most important questions of the entire meeting – do they care? Do you feel like they want what’s best for you and your wedding day? It may seem like an obvious question – of course they care! Why else would they want to photograph weddings? But we’ve heard plenty of horror stories of photographers turning away clients because their wedding wasn’t the right style, or even asking a bride with glasses, “So you’re going to wear contacts for your wedding, right?”
What they say matters, but so does what they don’t say. Does the photographer ask questions about YOU? Not just your wedding plans, not just whether you’ll hire a coordinator or where you’ll get ready, but you and your relationship. Do they seem ready to celebrate your unique relationship with you, or are you just another photography job for them?
Photographers who care about the wrong things, or who don’t care at all, may produce pretty pictures. They may have a lovely portfolio. But do you want to spend your entire wedding day with someone who doesn’t really care about you and your marriage? Or would you rather spend it with someone who will laugh with you, cry with you, pray with you, and celebrate with you to help you experience your wedding day with joy instead of spending it trying to get the most picture-perfect moments possible? Hiring a photographer who cares means likely getting better customer service throughout your experience – someone who will give thoughtful engagement session ideas instead of just listing off the most picturesque spots on their bucket list; who will go above and beyond to make sure you are able to enjoy your wedding day even if it means having less time for those pretty detail photos or cutting short the portrait time; who will be honest with you and compassionate if any issues come up along the way because they recognize the importance of this day for YOU, their client, not just for their portfolio and bank account. If you leave feeling like you haven’t met someone you want to spend your entire wedding day with, trust your gut no matter how pretty their portfolio or how great of a deal they can cut you.
