What I wish I would have known before I hired my wedding photographer.

Before I start this article I want to make it clear that I do not recommend basing the selection of a wedding photographer purely on price. There’s a lot of difference in style, way of working and quality with different wedding photographers. If you select a wedding photographer on price alone you may end up being very disappointed. I plan to write more about this in the near future.

1) Package price
Having said this, why do I write this article? That’s very simple. Once you’ve found a number of wedding photographers that you might want to hire for your wedding day you’ll probably want to know what the cost of their service is. That seems like a simple job, a lot of photographers mention a package price on their website. But, just simply comparing the package prices doesn’t get you a proper price comparison. Something that might be included in the package with photographer A might not be included in the package with photographer B, and vice versa.

In the rest of this article I will highlight a number of aspects that you have to keep in mind to be able to properly compare different wedding photographers.

2) Photo album
The reason for hiring a photographer to document your wedding day is that you’ll be able to look back on your wedding day using beautiful photos. Therefore, it’s important to decide how you want to look at these photos in the future. For a lot of people this is by looking at a printed photo album. It’s usually easier to look back at your wedding day with a beautiful photo album than by looking at the photos on your PC.

There are a lot of different types of photo albums on the market, anything from a cheap album with thin paper to a super luxurious Jorgeson album, which is made to last for generations. These days the photos are often printed directly on the pages of the album, with the more luxurious models on pages made from actual thick photo paper. A quality photo album can really become a piece of art. Remember that these quality albums, which are made to last for years, can usually only be ordered through a photographer.

So, there are a lot of choices in the album department, but the most important thing right now is to realize that photo albums are a factor in the price of a photographer. Make sure that you know if, and what kind of, album is included in the price that a photographer gives you. If an album is not included in the price, ask what it will cost to order an album.

I’ll give an example to illustrate how important this information is. The other day I was looking at the website of a photographer who’s cheapest wedding package was 595 euros. He was very honest on his web page in including what is and is not included in the price. A photo album was not included in the price. On the next line it was mentioned that the album prices start at 395 euros. So, the package price including a photo album comes to 990 euros. That is 40% more expensive than the price that is quoted as the package price. In this case this information was properly posted on the website but sometimes you can only find out these kind of details by talking to the photographer.

3) Photo prints
In addition to a photo album, most people also want to order individual photo prints as an extra memory of their wedding day. These can be photo prints in a smaller format to put in an album or in a photo frame, or photos in a medium or large format to frame and hang on a wall. A lot of people these days also want to print photos on canvas.

Photos can be printed on different types of photo paper. There are differences in durability as well as the look of the different type of prints. One of the better types of photo paper right now for example is Fujicolor Crystal Archive Digital Pearl, which among other things, is made to last a long time without loosing it’s initial quality. These types of high quality photo paper are usually not available when you have your photos printed at a consumer lab.

Most photographers do not include the price of photo prints in their package price. Exceptions are possible of course. The other day I saw a photographer for example, who was offering a wedding package that included a large format canvas print. So, it’s important to know if any photo prints, and what kind, are included in the price.

To be able to make a good comparison between different photographers, I recommend that you make a list of the number of photos you think that you will order and in which format you want the photos. Remember that other people, for example your parents, usually also want to have photo prints of your wedding.

By the way, a good thing to realize is that a lot of photographers consciously keep their package prices on the cheaper side because they expect to make most of their money by selling photo prints. Therefore it is important to know exactly how much a photographer is going to charge for ordering photo prints in the different sizes. When you have the price list of your photographer, calculate what the prints, which you wrote down on your list, would cost with this photographer.

I’ll give an example based on the prices that I recently saw from two different photographers. Let’s say that I am planning to order the following, fourty 10x15cm (4×6″) photos, two 50x75cm (20×30″) photos and two canvas prints of 80x80cm (31×31″). Using the price list of the two photographers I have calculated that this would cost me 640 euros with the first photographer. With the second photographer the same prints would come to 1290 euros. Note that these are not fictitious amounts but prices calculated from the price lists of two actual photographers. If both photographers would have posted a 600 euro package price on their website then the first photographer would be twice as expensive if you take the cost of the photo prints into account. The second photographer would be three times as expensive as the package price listed on his website, after you add the cost of the photo prints.

4) Digital negatives
When you see the price that some photographers charge to print photos you might think that it’s better to have the photos printed yourself. This is not always the best thing to do, as I mentioned earlier, but it sure is a possibility.

To be able to print the photos yourself you would of course need to have the digital version of the photos, and you would need them in a resolution high enough to be able to make high quality prints. The photos in their full resolution, as they are made by the photographer, are often called the digital negatives. Some photographers will give you the digital negatives of their photos on a CD or DVD, as a standard service. You pay for it of course, but it’s included in their wedding package. With other photographers the digital negatives are not included in their package price but you can buy them for an extra price. Other photographers keep the digital negatives to themselves and will not part with them for any price.

And then there are photographers who will give out digital versions of their photos, either included in their standard package or for an extra amount, but the photos are in a lower resolution. These photos can be viewed on a computer, and often are allowed to be posted on a website, but the resolution of these photos is not sufficient for printing purposes.

So what does this mean when you are comparing the prices of different photographers? Make sure that you know what you get and what the price is. We’ll be able to take this into account when we compare the overall all-in price after we’ve looked at all of the different aspects.

5) Photography time
Another thing that is important when comparing the price of photographers for your wedding day is the number of hours that the photographer will be present to take photos. Photographers usually have different packages, at different prices. With package number 1 the photographer might just be present at the wedding ceremony and for a photo shoot immediately following the ceremony. With package number 2 the bride and groom might have the photographer at their disposal all day. Some photographers post a standard price that includes a set number of hours of photography. Any additional hours are then calculated using a certain hourly rate.

When you compare two photographers, make sure you’re comparing apples to apples. In other words, decide beforehand which parts of your wedding day you want to have photographed and then calculate how much this would cost with the different photographers that you have selected.

All-in price
We’ve now looked at five different aspects that determine the price of a wedding photographer: the package price, the album, the photo prints, the digital negatives and the actual photography time. Now, using the information above, you can determine what exactly you want from your photographer. After you’ve done that you can then calculate how much that would cost. This will provide you with a so called all-in price. If you do this calculation for every photographer that you have selected, will you be able to truly see what their price is. Of course, this will take some time to do. With some photographers it might even take some effort to get all of the information you need. But, without this information you will not be able to compare the prices of the different photographers. It will definitely be worth it to know beforehand if a photographer is going to set you back 1000 euros or 3000 euros.

6) Number of photos
The title of this article mentions six important aspects when comparing the price of wedding photographers. So far we’ve only talked about five of them. The sixth aspect is something that you might think is important when comparing the price of different photographers. That aspect is the number of photos that you will get from the photographer.

But, I think this aspect is important because you should NOT take it into account when comparing different photographers. I will explain why.

Some photographers take a lot of photos during a wedding day. Other photographers only take a photo when they know for sure that the photo will look good. Some photographers will give you all of the photos that they made. With other photographers you will only get the photos of which the photographer thinks that they are good enough.

Some photographers will provide over 1000 photos of your wedding day. The other day however, I heard that one very famous English wedding photographer “only” makes about 150 photos during an average full day wedding. So, remember that more is not always better. I would even go so far as to say that it’s better to have 50 photos that you really like than to get 1000 photos of mediocre quality. Now you probably won’t come across a lot of wedding photographers that will only give you 50 photos but it’s the idea that counts here. I also don’t want to imply that a photographer that only supplies 50 photos will always have better photos than the photographer that will give you 1000 photos.

So, from this information we learn that the number of photos that a photographer promises to give you doesn’t really mean very much. This leads me to state that you should not take the number of photos into account when you compare the price of several wedding photographers. It is important though to know beforehand about how many photos you will get, in order to know what to expect. Because, if you expect to get 1000 photos and you end up getting only 50 then this will, perhaps unnecessarily, still lead to disappointment.