You’re engaged! You’re planning your big day and already the costs are adding up. The venue, dress, feeding your guests, dj, band, flowers, chair covers, suits, table centres and oh yeh, a photographer to capture it all. When we got married, the choice of photographers available was pretty slim compared to now so finding the right one was fairly straight forward. These days, anyone with a camera from Argos and a facebook page with a few decent photos on their timeline can call themselves a South Wales wedding photographer. With everyone displaying their best images online to encourage you to get in touch and to book, it’s hard to justify why you should pay two, three or even four times as much as the last person. Thankfully, according to the Bridebook UK wedding survey report of 2018, 77% of wedding couples booked a full-time professional wedding photographer, while 15% of couples chose to book an amateur photographer.
When weddings costs start to break the budget, it may seem like the easy choice to cut the photography spend and book someone of a similar style for a lot less. According to the same Bridebook report, 39% percent of coupes went over budget with their weddings. If you’re on the fence or are set on booking a cheap wedding photographer, check out these reasons why we truly believe in booking a professional instead.
From the word go, a professional is emotionally but also financially in invested in you.
Photographing couples and families, giving them the best possible service we can is our priority. We live and breathe our businesses on a daily basis, so making sure we meet and exceed your expectations is paramount to us. Anyone can write a beautiful email and tell you how amazing your day is going to be but it’s the behind the scenes actions and processes which are just as important as communication and and getting along with your photographer.
–Equipment. Cameras, lenses, flashes, they are the tools of our trade. They are what makes that amazing gallery at the end possible. Many guests these days carry a DSLR or an expensive camera of some sort, but a professional will turn up with far more than just one camera, one lens and one battery. A true professional will have invested in his or her equipment heavily over the years, not so that they can enjoy new toys or the latest in camera crazes but so that should something break or malfunction, they can carry on with their job to the highest standard without any problems. We’ve had a camera completely destroy itself mid way through a ceremony at one of the smallest coverage weddings we’ve ever done. Even though we were only there for an hour and a half, we arrived with our usual kit case and just pulled out another camera to carry on shooting within 30 seconds. We’ve photographed in heavy rain, soaking our cameras (and ourselves) and by the time we got inside it took 15 mins to defog a camera and lens. Again, we grabbed others from the bag and carried on with the job we were paid to do.
–Backups. Nearly every person I’ve talked to has lost pictures through their lives, one way or another. Be it a broken phone, faulty hard drive or lost memory card. There’s a story of a local photographer who left her only memory card in a laptop, which fell out of a motorbike storage box while travelling down the motorway losing all images from the couples wedding day. To a professional that’s business suicide. A true professional will follow a strict backup regime to make sure that your images are safe before, during and after working on them. We keep at least 3 copies of your images in 3 locations even after delivery, so that you don’t have to. Our backup system comprises of two Synology raid systems which sync automatically, a 5 disk archive storage hard drive array in our office building, which is then linked to a cloud based backup system in the USA called Backblaze. If by some miracle all three physical copies get stolen, corrupted or lost, your images are but a click of a download button away.
–Insurance. More and more venues are asking for proof of insurance from suppliers, and rightly so. Any professional supplier, photographers included should be able to prove that they are professionally insured against loss or damages to their equipment, damage to a venue caused by the photographer, and any other damages caused by mal practice of the photographer. The last call you want is an apology that the photographer can’t make your wedding tomorrow because their equipment was stolen from their car when they nipped to Tesco, or their property was burgled overnight.
All this stuff doesn’t come cheap, but a professional sees it as an investment into security for you and for them, not just another new toy or unnecessary expense to stop you going away on holiday next month.
A Professional has a wealth of Experience
Taking photographs of already happy smiley people is easy, but pre-empting those fleeting moments, bursts of emotion and unexpected (for some) tears is something only a professional will excel at. When you live and breathe photographing weddings and families, you develop a sixth sense that comes with years of experience and understanding. The moments that are here and gone in a split second are often the most emotional, engaging and connect you to that time and place. Being able to read expressions, moods and be sympathetic to everyones personalities and boundaries is something that can only be developed over time. An amateur will still be working out who the bride parents are and checking every shot on the back of the camera to make sure it came out ok, missing those all important shots.
From a technical perspective, a Professional will have the ability to take a great image in any condition.
“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!”
― Ansel Adams
This was true in the days of photographing on film, and it still stands today. digital cameras are fantastic tools, but they are also still stupid and not mind readers. A professional photographer will understand how to use light to his or her advantage to produce images that need little editing or fixing, but also so that you’ll be delighted to hang them on the wall to admire for years to come. There’s only so much you can fix later, and a badly taken shot still looks bad after it’s been edited. An amateur will stand among the guests capturing the same images while you squint in the bright sunlight, or making a silhouette of you when the sun is behind you as you smile with bliss on your special day.
From an organisational point of view, a professional photographer will understand exactly how a wedding runs, where people need to be at certain times, and liaise with the venue to make sure you get the very best out of your wedding day time line. It’s not just a case of looking at your wedding day timing board outside, but prior planning and communication leading up to your day helps everything run smoothly and for you to make the most from your photographer. To make sure we record all the details of your wedding day, and do so safely, we use a cloud based business management system, Sprout Studio, so we don’t have to worry about losing paper work or keeping your data safe.
A professional is driven to succeed and not just get by.
This draws on all of the points discussed above. A professional needs to succeed, needs to be recommended and has to have the best reputation they possibly can. Just getting through a wedding or getting by doesn’t cut it. Your wedding day isn’t next months holiday money or this months spending money, it’s how we pay for our homes, how we feed our children and how we present ourselves to other couples who may be attending your day and looking for a photographer of their own. It’s one big circle of providing a professional and quality service while providing for our families. An amateur may have a part or full time job, and providing their services at such a low price, they are unlikely to be financially dependant on photography and therefore less financially led to do the best job they can. If you feel underpaid compared to a professional, you’ll automatically feel undervalued and less enthusiastic.
If you still cant afford £1500-£2500 on a professional.
Don’t fall or the quantity over quality ideal. Just because you cant afford a professional South Wales wedding photographer to cover the whole day, why not consider part day coverage? We offer photography by the hour and you’ll be amazed at what we can achieve together in just 3 hours. Don’t let an amateur ruin the memories of your wedding day, consider booking a professional, even if its for a few hours. Check out our “Wedding Photography By The Hour” post.
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