Your wedding day is one of the most significant days of your life. In the years that follow, while you’ll personally look back with many memories, having a wedding album with high-quality photographs that have perfectly captured the day is something you can share with your spouse, your family, and your friends.
For such a wedding album to be possible, it is essential that the wedding photographer you employ for the day is one who, not only is professional enough to get the basics right, such as turning up on time, but more importantly, but is also capable of capturing photographic images of the highest quality. Here are some tips to ensure you pick the right one.
Decide in Advance What You Want
It will help enormously in picking a wedding photographer if you already have an idea of the sort of wedding photographs you want. You might want them to be traditional, or in a fine art style, or you may opt for a more relaxed, or even humorous angle to them. By deciding this first, you can approach photographers who specialize in, or who are capable of, producing a series of photographic images in your desired style.
Recommendations and Referrals
This is an obvious one, but there is never harm in following up on recommendations from friends and family. You might also find them as you plan and prepare for your wedding through some of the businesses you deal with, such as your wedding car company, who might refer you to a specific photographer. While these can all be helpful and you should follow them up, you shouldn’t ever choose a wedding photographer simply on the say-so of someone else. You need to carry out further research and due diligence.
It may well be that a photographer is extremely capable of taking traditional wedding photographs, but if the style you want leans more toward fine art, they may not be suitable. Also, a friend recommending someone who is their friend is no guarantee of their suitability, so by all means, follow it up but only make your decision with all the facts in front of you.
Interview the Photographer
If a photographer is a professional, then they should not have an issue with you asking to interview them. You might not even use that term, and instead, ask them for a ‘chat’ in order to ask them some questions. During this chat/interview, you should first of all try to get a sense of whether or not the photographer’s personality is one which you feel comfortable with.
This is important because they are going to play a very important role in one of the biggest days of your life and they’ll be mingling and communicating with your family and friends. by meeting them face to face you will know if they fit well in that scenario. Obviously, the other points of discussion are what they can do in terms of your wedding photographs, and other matters like costs.
Testimonials and Wedding Album Portfolios
Nothing will tell you more about whether the photographer is capable of doing a good job for you than examples of their past work. Ideally, samples of wedding albums they have produced for past clients is what you want, and even better is if you are allowed to contact those clients for testimonials. Any photographer who is confident in their skills and abilities will happily give you the names of clients who have volunteered to vouch for their work.
Ensure You Have the Full ‘Picture’
Sorry for the pun, but what we mean is that before you make your final decision, ensure you have all the details relating to what you want. This should include things like the number of photographs, what poses the photographer will capture, the times and duration they will be there, how long it will take for your wedding album to be processed and delivered, and obviously what price they are quoting.
This is where you may have to weigh up the differences in price against what a particular photographer will do for their fee. Saving a couple of hundred dollars might seem like good sense, but if it means that photographer gives you 3 fewer hours of their time and only 75% of the number of images of a competitor, then it is actually a poorer proposition.
The last piece of the jigsaw is the simple matter of when you select your photographer, ensuring you get everything which has been agreed in writing. This is of benefit to both you and the photographer and should mean that your wedding day photographs become images of a happy, and stress-free day.
Brad is a seasoned photographer whose journey began in 2006 with a 3.1-megapixel digital camera. Over the years, he has specialized in various photography genres—from weddings and portraiture to product and studio photography. Based on the Sunshine Coast of QLD, Brad combines his love for education and photography, sharing his expertise on DSLRAD.com, a platform committed to capturing life’s treasured moments and empowering photography enthusiasts.