Picture Perfect
This past week was devoted to securing a great photographer to capture our special day. My fiancé and I met with a photographer who we loved. Here is a sampling of some questions that we asked the photographer before making the decision to hire him:
1. What’s your photographic style for weddings? Posed and formal, relaxed, photojournalistic, creative, artistic, candid, traditional?
2. Do you shoot in color or black and white? Or both? Do you shoot in a digital format that can create both color and b/w versions of the same picture?
3. Can we have input on the direction of the shots? Can we give you a list of shots to work with?
4. How many other events will you be photographing the weekend of our?
5. What kind of equipment will you bring with you? How intrusive will lighting, tripods, other equipment or assistants be?
6. How long after the event will the proofs be ready?
7. Will you provide an album or photo book?
8. Do you have liability insurance?
One of the main reasons why we’re planning to hire him is his great photo style and attitude. We felt really comfortable with him during our meeting, and also liked that he had a lot of creative ideas for our wedding pictures. Additionally, I did a lot of background research on him online and found many positive quotes about his professionalism and photojournalistic style, which we also really like. We don’t want posed shots at the wedding. We’d like the photographer to blend in and take lots of action and emotion shots. It’s important to us that our pictures to capture what happened at our wedding, not just who was there. All in all, we were impressed with his other work and are looking forward to our wedding and seeing the final product!
3 comments
Great comments about hiring a professional wedding photographer. The questions are important, but just as important is, how comfortable are you with this individual? You will spend more time with your wedding photographer than any other vendor. So, be sure to hire someone you enjoy being around. Makes the wedding more peaceful from start to finish.
Those are lots of great questions and Curtis posted an important comment as well about being comfortable with the photographer.
However, I would like to add two more comments as a professional photographer who shoots weddings and who just helped his brother and sister find a photographer for their respective weddings; Ask the photographer to see a sample of what you will get from them, ie. a set of photographs from a single whole wedding.
And the other question to ask photographers is if they “shoot RAW or JPG”. The best quality for digital is RAW photos.
And this last question is for the rabbi. “Do you permit the photographer to roam around during the ceremony”.
If you like intimate photographs from the ceremony and the rabbi won’t permit the photographer to shoot from anywhere but the back of the synagogue then you might want to consider having a discussion with the rabbi about your wishes for your photographs.
No photographer should be a distraction at your wedding, but if your rabbi forces the photographer to stand at the back then you will most likely end up with photos of the backs of your heads and not your faces during the ceremony – unless you face sideways and then they can get a profile.
I hope this info helps some people and Mazel Tov to all y’all.
A few additional points of interest…
You mention liability insurance. Although its great to have, and many venues require your photographer carry it, it offers the Bride & Groom absolutely no protection whatsoever.
Liability insurance protects the venue from lawsuits should someone fall over your photographer’s bag or get knocked down by one of the flashes.
What you should insist upon is called ‘errors & omissions’ or simply ‘e&o’ insurance.
E&O protects the Bride & Groom, should something happen like a memory card dying and losing half the images or the photographer getting in a car accident on the way to the ceremony and missing some (if not all!) of the shots.
Of course, should anything disasterous happen, and it would be a terrible tragedy, E&O insurance would reimburse you for the investment you made in your photography services as well as pay you a settlement fee for missing images.
Some photographers carry an E&O policy of $50,000 per client.
Also, it should be very important to mention the copyright to the images.
Most wedding photographers do not include the copyright to your pictures with your contract.
Yup. They own your pictures. To sell to stock photo websites, to use in magazine articles or advertisements. You have no say in it.
Plus, if you want a duplicate for your Aunt Mildred, you can be charged somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 a picture!
Make sure your photographer includes the copyright in your contract. You paid for them, they should be yours. If they scoff, or ask for additional money to ‘release’ the copyright to you – keep walking.
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