Choosing The Perfect Wedding Photographer For You…
So…you’re engaged and you’re looking for the perfect wedding photographer. You do an online search and come up with hundreds and hundreds of options. Your girlfriends tell you who photographed their wedding. Your venue gives you a list of their preferred vendors. You can’t help but visit pretty wedding blog after pretty wedding blog all with different photographers for each post. How do you possibly choose just one photographer?
This can seem like such a daunting task. After all you get no do-overs with your wedding. This is a one stop shop & you want to make sure you get it right!
Let me give you a little bit of help here with a few simple guidelines on choosing the right wedding photographer. The key here is…the RIGHT wedding photographer FOR YOU. There isn’t a one size fits all when it comes to wedding photographers. We are all different in some ways and you need to make sure you’re finding the perfect fit for you. So here goes.
- Style- Every photographer has a different style and this shows through in their body of work. When you look through their website / blog / instagram what do you see? Are you in love with their images? Or are you blah? Do you see all posed images? All photojournalistic images? Fashion/Editorial Style Images? Or perhaps a combination of all styles. Is their editing style heavy and very manipulated or more clean & natural? Are their photos light and airy or are they more contrasty & colorful? What’s important here is…what appeals to you visually? What style would you and your wedding be best represented by?
- Feeling- Perhaps most important is how you feel when you look at their images! You should definitely feel something. Let’s face it if you can feel something when looking at “Joe & Jenn’s” wedding (two people you have never met) then you can feel very confident knowing that when you get your own wedding day photos back you will have all the feels!
- Personality- You will spend a lot of time on your wedding day with your photographer. It’s important to find someone you like and trust. Photography is a collaborative process! Trusting your photographer to capture your day as you envision it and being able to laugh along during the day with that person goes a long way to making your wedding day smooth and stress free.
- Investment- I’ve left this for last because I truly don’t believe that price should be anywhere near the top criteria when you’re trying to find the perfect wedding photographer for your wedding. You most definitely do get what you pay for. However I am also well aware that there are limitations to budgets. It makes me really sad though when I see so many truly bad wedding photos all due to the fact that the bride and groom went with the cheaper photographer, decided to let their uncle or friend (who has a really nice camera) take their wedding photos, or who just searched for the least expensive option (without paying attention to anything else). I’ve found that often couples will stretch their budget for other wedding day items at the ultimate cost of not having the day fully and beautifully documented. After the wedding day what do you have? You have your awesome marriage, your memories, and your photographs.
Hopefully this will help you with your quest of choosing the perfect wedding photographer. Let me know if you have any questions info@amberkayphoto.com.
Coming soon – The Top Questions To Ask A Photographer Before Hiring Them