Hi everyone and welcome to the blog! if you don’t know me my name is Kimberly Taylor owner of KTay Photography. I specialize in sunset sessions and helping couples feel relaxed and secure on their wedding day! Having been a wedding photographer for a few years now. Here are some of the most important things I think you should consider when trying to choose a wedding photographer.
1. Personality
The most important aspect of your wedding day is if you enjoy it. Because you have put a lot of time, energy, and often money into planning this day the last thing you want is to feel uncomfortable or frustrated. Out of all the vendors you hire the wedding photographer is the one that you will spend the most time with. Therefore it is vital to make sure you guys get along! They are going to be there from the moment your make up artist starts to the sparkler send off that night. Capturing your amazing personalities and the relationships. all of the moments you can never recreate. Since they are the vendor you spend the most time with, it makes sense that you should take the most time finding the one that brings out the best you.
2. Back up systems
In my eyes, this comes before quality. Wedding photographers are working with several different forms of technology these days. Therefore if anything goes wrong they could lose all of the photos from your wedding. Dozens of things could happen from a bad SD card to a virus on the computer. This is a photographers worst nightmare. So professional photographers should have precautions in place to prevent these tragedies from causing a lasting impact. make sure the photographer has two camera bodies and two SD card slots. It allows for them to sync your memories to twice as many locations, in case one of the cards becomes corrupted. Ask them their process for storing the photos. Finally make sure they are insured in case any disaster happen. this protects the photographer as well as you and is often required by venues before they will allow a photographer to work.
3. Ideal Style
The final thing I will mention, is making sure the style they shoot aligns with your vision of your wedding photos. There are Dozens of different wedding photography styles. For example, photojournalistic, moody, bright, film, editorial, expressive, creative, modern, contemporary, clean, natural, and many more. It’s all of these different styles that make photography art! However, 40% of couples are unhappy with their wedding photos! That is just shocking to me! Choosing the perfect photographer can be time consuming so start early! If you can’t decide on a style try some out. Book an engagement shoot or a mini session with them. Some of the most common styles are bright and airy, dark and moody, high contrast and colorful, film, journalist, and many more. EVERY photographer is different. Even within those styles no two photographer will capture photos and edit them the same way.
Things worth mentioning
Once you decide which style you prefer then you can start sorting through which photographer you want in that style. Now this is important look through 2-3 galleries of the photographer to make sure their work is consistent and you like how they photograph throughout the entire day. As photographers we all have our strong suits so this is where budget will play a key role. The average photographer that has a consistent portfolio will charge 3k-5k. You can find photographers to do it for next to nothing or that will do it for 10k. It is all about how important these photos are to you.
My personal wedding photographer
On that note as a photographer (and someone who has been married) be sure you invest in photos you love! The wedding is just one day but those photos will last forever. I didn’t play any part in hiring my photographer. My husband and I were young and got married very quickly. Thankfully my MIL hired someone who had done her family photos. So I have some photos to remember the day by. However I only can look at 2-3 of them. The photographer did no editing and didn’t understand lighting. Skin tones are all over the place and most of them we are squinting or exhausted. Now I am planning a vow renewal for our ten year anniversary so that we can have gorgeous photos. Don’t do what I did, take the time and get the right photographer the first time.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and come this far! I hope this is helpful to you. I know it was a lot more typing than my normal blogs. If you have any questions or need clarification please comment and I will get back to you ASAP. Please leave me any ideas you have or other topics you would like advice on.
Brides Magazine and Artifact Uprising offer great articles about different things you should keep in mind when finding the perfect wedding photographer.
If you are interested in more personal advice please reach out with any questions or you can click here to get a snapshot of what I have to offer as a photographer
