[Ash]

there are also people in this world, some of whom i have met, that do not see the world beyond routine and cold hard cash in their pockets.

someone got it into their heads from observing that camera + wedding = money. Their thought process stopped there. They went and got a camera, and they advertised their services.

these are the same people that will open up little booths selling cheap unlocked phones, or sell post cards to tourists....

There's lots of horror stories but the really sad thing is that most customers don't check out the work more carefully before hiring the "photog". Then their day is ruined and it's too late.

Frankly I hope more brides sue these wannbe shooters more often and it gets lots of press. Then the cream will rise and others will think twice before basically stealing peoples money to do a job they had no business trying in the first place.

Agree on both counts.

May prove hard to ward away the uncanny profiteers when there are more and more young couples wanting to spend next to no money for photos... sort of tells you how much they value having a life-long wedding momento.

A lot of responsibility does fall on the couple to make this judgement...

[Rondec]

The proverb "you get what you pay for" comes to mind. The idea that you can get someone to shoot your wedding on the cheap and have great photos result is absurd. Even a blind squirrel will find nuts occasionally, and so too, some of their photos may turn out, but I think it amusing that this is the place where most people feel that they can cut costs.

I mean, if you suggested to the bride to shop at Walmart for her dress she would be shocked. I guess photography seems too easy. I wouldn't dream of shooting a wedding. I don't feel skilled enough and it is way too much work.

[WMBP]

The proverb "you get what you pay for" comes to mind. The idea that you can get someone to shoot your wedding on the cheap and have great photos result is absurd. Even a blind squirrel will find nuts occasionally, and so too, some of their photos may turn out, but I think it amusing that this is the place where most people feel that they can cut costs.

I mean, if you suggested to the bride to shop at Walmart for her dress she would be shocked. I guess photography seems too easy. I wouldn't dream of shooting a wedding. I don't feel skilled enough and it is way too much work.

Rondec,

This isn't quite right. You don't always "get what you paid for." I know some well established photographers who are successful not because they are very good photographers - although they are at least minimally competent - but because they're good businessmen. On the other hand, some of the low-priced photographers in the market right now are very good indeed. There ARE deals to be had. The wedding photography business is in an upheaval and some of the good and well established photographers are struggling to change their business models.

But in this case especially, caveat emptor is more important than ever.

Will

[Wheatfield]

There's lots of horror stories but the really sad thing is that most customers don't check out the work more carefully before hiring the "photog". Then their day is ruined and it's too late.

There are dozens of great cameras out there now. Plenty of web sites to advise you and lots of really great images to try and copy. That is, until you are in the field and have to nail that shot.

So with all these wannbe's, the prices have been dropping and the market is flooded. I've been at this since the mid 1980's with a couple of breaks for family and other reasons. I've never seen the quality of work at 2 extremes like this. Some really great stuff and stuff you wouldn't line the kitty litter box with.

Frankly I hope more brides sue these wannbe shooters more often and it gets lots of press. Then the cream will rise and others will think twice before basically stealing peoples money to do a job they had no business trying in the first place.

I worked my first wedding as an assistant in 1971. Around the time the Canon EOS cameras started washing up on the shores, I found myself competing with people who spent a thousand dollar bill to become an instant photographer (that was the price of an EOS 650, a 28-80 lens and a decent shoe mount flash).
More recently, I've seen photographers who have pictures they would like to have taken, but pulled them from the net, in their portfolios.
And customers tend to bottom line everything, and because of the way photography has been thrown at us as as easy as pushing the button, they just don't pay a lot of mind to anything beyond the sales pitch. The studio I partner up with shot exactly 3 weddings this season.
This was not for lack of trying to get jobs in the door, it was simply because the owner decided that this year they were not going to be cheap whores, and if a wedding was going to bugger up the smooth operation of the storefront studio, then it was going to have to make it worth everyone's while.

People think this stuff is easy, and unfortunately, the customer agrees with them, at least until they get their pictures back. They don't check references, and they don't insist on seeing an entire wedding album that the photographer had done.
They look at a few cherry picked photos, they presume that the photographer has shot them rather than lifting them off the internet and then they hire based on who has offered up the lowest price.
This is exactly like shopping for your wedding dress and tuxedo at Wal-Mart.
The second to last wedding I shot was a fix up studio job for a girl who works with my wife who had hired one of these people. I'm sure the photographer in this instance thinks that you can remove a brain tumour with a baseball bat if you hit the patients head in approximately the right place.

[Gooshin]

couple of weddings ago, i overheard one of the brides maids state that "i cant believe someone gets paid to shoot photos"



that is your customer base!

[Peter Zack]

Wheatfield:

I'm sure the photographer in this instance thinks that you can remove a brain tumour with a baseball bat if you hit the patients head in approximately the right place.

Chr*st, I'm glad you are a member of this forum! That cracked me up and I really needed a laugh today. Everything you wrote is so true. You have several more years experience than I do as I picked up my first serious camera in 1979 at age 17. First paid job was several years later after going to school and working with a couple of different pros for a few years.

I have not seen stolen images on other peoples web sites but that does not surprise me. It sure takes some balls to steal someone's work and then pass it off to get a job.

I love the Wal-Mart comparison. It is so applicable to what we are discussing. It's not all bad though. Some couples are smart and do check around. Some understand that this is tough work. Maybe they saw a good or bad Photog at another wedding and have something to use as a baseline.

What they almost always tell me afterwards is that they never realized that they would be spending more time with me than any single other service provider that they hired and how much work went into it. That I basically guide the day to a certain degree. I'm the person that answers the "what's next?" questions and tie the windsor knots for the kids who never wear ties. Which side does the boutonniere go on and can you help me get it to stay on?

Like those who have done this for awhile, I've got my emergency kit of tapes, string, needles, safety pins, hair spray, combs and a number of other things. The van always has a cooler full of chilled water and a basket of snack foods. (how many brides had a slice of toast at 6 AM and now it's 4PM and she's starving).

There is so much more to this than just dropping $1000 on some gear and stealing a few images off the net to get the first few jobs.

Something this year that I have never experienced before has happened. In 2 cases, brides who had contacted me the year before but booked a cheaper shooter, called me a few days before thier weddings. They both could not locate their photographers. So what I think happened was, the photog booked a few weddings, shot the first one and realized they suck and it's hard work. They bailed out on the others and kept the deposits. In both cases, I was able to take the deals. One I wasn't booked and the other, I got my 2 assistants to shoot (as agreed to by the bride) because it was too late to get anyone else.

As for Will's comment. Explain the new business model? For me, I'm not dropping my prices and getting actully more selective. If they want my quality and are willing to pay for it, great. If not, I'd rather be with my family than taking some bottom feeding job.

The problem is, with the market saturated with so many shooters, the calls have really slowed down from a few years ago. I promote across Canada in various forms (mostly the internet) for people who come here to get married. My site is getting lots of hits but the emails and phone calls have really slowed down.

So who's doing promo stuff that's working? Clearly there is a new business model but I haven't figured it out.

[reeftool]

It has been many years since I shot a wedding as the "main" photographer and I probably will not do it again. The times that I did do it, I was talked into it by friends who couldn't afford to hire a pro. In the ones I did shoot, the photos all came out ok and the folks were happy with the photos but the last time they bitched because I didn't send the film to Kmart for cheaper processing. I quit. It is a difficult job to do. The auto everything cameras being made these days fool beginners into thinking they can make weekend money doing weddings and then they end up shooting in places with bad light and crowded conditions and they don't have the knowledge or the right gear even to do the job.

This kind of stuff happens in lots of different businesses. There are the backyard mechanics who think they can open a garage, do it yourselfers who think they are plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. People get burned by these kind of people all the time but often they bring in on themselves because they check some prices with professionals and they think that it is too much and try to find a cheap way out. Quality work comes at a price and it it always the responsibility of the person hiring the service to check the credintials of the the business. The big difference between photographers and other tradesmen is that Joe the plumber can mess up and do the job over. The photographer has to catch the moment and if he misses it, it is gone forever.

[tlwyse]

*snip*



When I was learning the oboe my dad made me go out to the garage to practice. Fortunately it wasn't January, by the time January rolled around I was just barely competent enough to be able to practice up in my room. But I had to keep the door tightly shut.

I remember when I started out on French Horn...it was probably 3 years before I could tolerate my own playing.....5 years before OTHERS could tolerate it.....and now some 35 years later I feel like I'm FINALLY playing with some musicality! Because of this apparent 5 year gestation period before a musician is born, I've never taken up the guitar because I figured I just didn't have enough of my life left to really enjoy the instrument.

And to stay on topic, I started into photography perhaps a year or two after starting on Horn.....I'm STILL waiting for the photographer in me to be born!

Regards,
Terry

[WMBP]

As for Will's comment. Explain the new business model? For me, I'm not dropping my prices and getting actully more selective. If they want my quality and are willing to pay for it, great. If not, I'd rather be with my family than taking some bottom feeding job.

The problem is, with the market saturated with so many shooters, the calls have really slowed down from a few years ago. I promote across Canada in various forms (mostly the internet) for people who come here to get married. My site is getting lots of hits but the emails and phone calls have really slowed down.

So who's doing promo stuff that's working? Clearly there is a new business model but I haven't figured it out.

Peter,

Before I get to the business model, let me start with a couple of fairly non-controversial observations.

First, there is a glut of wedding photographers right now. You're noticing it yourself as your bookings have slowed down. Most brides are not as discriminating as they should be when they hire a photographer, indeed, I've discovered that price seems to be one of their main considerations. This may be a mistake, but it's a mistake that makes a lot of sense. They have talked to other photographers who are willing to do their wedding for $400 - in some cases, for free - and besides, the economy is rough and weddings can be VERY expensive. In short, the realities of the world outside the photographer's studio are compelling brides and their families to cut corners and shop by price.

And when they go shopping by price, the photographer is one of the easiest vendors to hire on the cheap. There are more expensive caterers and less expensive caterers, but nobody's giving away free lunches: and the client understands fairly well what they're getting from the caterer for the $2K or whatever they are spending. They understand that for $4K they get steak and champagne, and for $2K they get chicken and iced tea. Makes sense. On the other hand, they don't understand very well why one photographer is more expensive than another, and indeed, it is hard to understand why sometimes. As I said earlier, there really are good photographers out there working for very little, and there are photographers who are not much better than mediocre who are making a decent living.

And this difficulty clients have understanding why one photographer is much more expensive than another is compounded by the fact that most clients these days have cameras themselves, know how to take snapshots, and don't have any idea at all how different shooting a wedding is from taking photos of a family get-together. MOST ASPIRING WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS don't know what they're getting into - and if the people who are trying to DO it don't see what they're getting into, it's too much to expect that the brides will see it. And clients don't understand that pretty much anybody can throw up a web site, print business cards, and call themselves a wedding photographer. It seems as if the proper response to this should be for clients to be more careful making their choices, and I do think that's true - they should be. But honestly, it's hard for the client to assess the photographer's skills. The client's got this inexpensive photographer on line 1, and this much more expensive photographer on line 2 - and perhaps several other photographers on lines 3, 4, 5 and 6. All the market research I've read says that brides spend only a few minutes looking at a photographer's web site before they either reject the photographer or start thinking about price. We can regret that this is how it is. But this is how it is.

Finally, digital has changed everything. Now we're talking not about the last decade but about the last couple of years, since, oh about 2005-2006. Digital makes things look easier to the photographers themselves. They don't realize that, in a wedding, you may NOT be able to retake photos that you messed up. And digital makes things look easier for the brides too. At the large relatively low-budget end of the market, where the majority of the customers are, brides now want digital images. They don't want prints. They think they're hiring somebody for a couple hours to take photos. It's often a choice between hiring a "pro" and "hiring" Uncle Bob who has a "great camera" and is willing to do it for free. Before the wedding, when these decisions have to be made, they think they just want somebody to be there snapping photos - and to give them the photos right after the wedding is over. Again they have no idea how the photographer's skill in taking the photos will matter, and they don't have any clue at all about how much time a good photographer may spend in post-processing.

*

Okay, so how is all of this affecting the wedding photography business? I think there have been two changes, and they're major.



In the old days - at least up to the time that I got married in 1975 - wedding photographers were expensive. It was a service industry back then too of course but the real product - what people were really interested in - wasn't the service but the result, and the result was prints. Because prints were expensive, clients focused mainly on key shots and wedding photography was very much a branch of portrait photography. I think my wife and I were typical. My wife went to a pro to have a portrait in her wedding gown, for the newspaper announcement; and that was it. My brother-in-law took photos at the wedding for free. Photographers who did attend the wedding did so mainly to shoot the formals and a few other key moments, often posed.

And then along came the "photojournalistic" approach - a move away from the formal portraits and towards candid shots. This was exciting for the photographers, but it created a business problem. People liked to see these photos - but they didn't want to buy prints of them, at least not at the prices that photographers had traditionally been charing per high-quality print. For a while, top photographers were able to make enough money from sale of the more traditional prints to absorb the wasted effort of shooting a few candids at the ceremony.

But eventually - perhaps in the 1990s? I'm not sure - photographers had to decide which model they were going to use for their business. Some continued to charge little or nothing for showing up at the wedding, and to make their money from prints and albums. But others started to charge a lot more for showing up and shooting, knowing that they were going to make less on the back end from prints. Of course, they still sold prints and still made albums. But the prices for these deliverables started to drop.

That was the first big change. The second big change came with digital.


In the last couple of years, many brides - MOST brides, I think - have decided they don't care much about prints at all. They just want the photos. They will make a few prints, of course, but they'll get them done themselves and pay 30 cents per print rather than $5 or $10. They want the digital images so they can put 'em on their web site, or email them to friends, or view them on their computer. Some brides want to create albums but they're happy to do that themselves. Many established photographers have resisted these trends, but not surprisingly, many have not. And for relative newcomers like me, resistance is futile: I make money on prints for portrait shoots but for weddings, I don't expect to make anything at all from prints any more. So increasingly, the photographer is hired not with an eye mainly on the results he will provide (beautiful prints) but simply to provide a service, the service of taking the photos. And brides think they're hiring somebody for about 6 hours of work.

*

So what's a wedding photographer to do? It's a hard question without an easy answer. We're in the midst of a cultural upheaval and there's clearly no way to go back to the good old days.

I'm trying to spend less time in post-processing. It's VERY difficult for me, but I'm trying. I used to hold off showing images to the clients until I'd made my selection and carefully and fully processed all of the selected photos (about 200). That usually took me weeks. Now I'm approaching things differently. I'm taking fewer photos to start with. I'm discarding fewer in my selection process. And I'm doing only minimal processing - at least I'm trying to do only minimal processing.

I'm doing a number of other things as well that I'd rather not talk about. I'm trying to reduce the amount of time I spend without getting paid. I'm also trying to find different ways to market myself. I'm having some success, and I have the ability to be patient.

But it's just a really difficult market right now. I think an awful lot of folks shoot two or three weddings and drop out, but it's hard to know for sure.

Will

[séamuis]

I'm inclined to think that wedding photography is about the hardest kind of photography there is, at least after war photography, to which wedding photography sometimes seems closely related. An awful lot of people seem to think that it will be easy. Sigh.

I've said it before, and ill say it again. I would sooner be a war photographer than a wedding photographer.

[mithrandir]

This is a good reason to bring your camera to every wedding you are invited to and take lots of pictures. Follow the good common sense rules of staying out of the hired photographer's way at all times, Don't use flash if it will interfere with the hired photographer's shots, etc.

[Peter Zack]

Great post Will and we'll have to talk via PM sometime. I'm looking at most of the items you brought up myself. Most of what you posted, I've gone through. From having a darkroom and doing my own enlarging to now the reverse and providing a lot less printed material. I'm basically billing for the time involved. Some things (printed materials) which we'll talk about off site, are becoming more important vs the typical prints.

But like you said, in the 'old days' it was easy to take a client into the dark room and make them understand that they were getting Steak and Champaigne vs Chicken and Iced tea.

[Rondec]

I think that there are definitely two schools of thought as far as wedding shooters. Old school is still the idea of selling the photos, prints, album, etc and making the money off of the printed material. Newer photographers tend to be shoot and burn types who shoot the wedding and then give a DVD with the photos for a set fee.

Either way, the cost for a good photographer will be considerable. Someone like David Ziser (Digital ProTalk) is convinced that part of being a good photographer is being a salesman. He has a studio where he shows his photos to his clients, explains what he did to them and walks them through what he likes. At the end of the day, he sells a lot of photos.

I personally think that at the end of the day, wedding photographers need to offer more than a DVD with photos. Photos on a disk, or on a hard drive are seldom looked at and may be lost. Those made into an album are much more likely to be treasured and remembered by family for years to come.

[Ash]

Excellent discussion going on here.
Thanks for your contributions Will, Peter and the rest.
Not knowing the background of wedding photography in the pre-digital era, I have a good appreciation for those who've been in the business before then.

Will, your synopsis puts things in perspective and explains the relative ease of people just wanting to capitalise on the market for little more than the money it offers. This reality also disturbs me somewhat, making the likelihood of couples on a tight budget being deceived all the more probable. Having offered wedding photography in the past (but will be taking a break from it soon), and starting off with the most basic of gear and experience, I have come to realise what it takes to do the job well, better each time and better than just 'good enough'.

But what's more important to me is to know my limitations and be explicit about any such deficiencies I feel I have to the couple before they engage me - this requires some self-appraisal and awareness, and I can appreciate some can do this better than others.

Couples being unhappy with results couldn't be a worse outcome for me as a photographer, so I have it in my mind not only to get the shots that the couples want, but create them in a way that makes the perfectionist in me proud of them. This is the attitude I go out there and shoot with, regardless of the subject. This is no guarantee of client satisfaction, but along with a servant heart, I believe most couples would be happy with this kind of service.

[WMBP]

Either way, the cost for a good photographer will be considerable. Someone like David Ziser (Digital ProTalk) is convinced that part of being a good photographer is being a salesman. He has a studio where he shows his photos to his clients, explains what he did to them and walks them through what he likes. At the end of the day, he sells a lot of photos.

Yes, success right now has a LOT to do with being a good salesman, good with customer relations, good marketing, and very good handling general business matters. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at all of these things.

I personally think that at the end of the day, wedding photographers need to offer more than a DVD with photos. Photos on a disk, or on a hard drive are seldom looked at and may be lost. Those made into an album are much more likely to be treasured and remembered by family for years to come.

You're thinking like a photographer. Unfortunately, clients think like clients. They demand what they want, rather than what's good for them. I accept that it's part of our job to try to educate them - but boy, it's tough.

And frankly, I'm not sure there's any hope. I think what I'm dealing with as an event photographer is like what musicians and record producers are dealing with in their world - a change in the way the world works. The world is becoming digital. I don't see photography going back to film in any significant way. I don't see vinyl records becoming the primary means of distribution again. It ain't gonna happen.

Will