Things always seem to work in trends. When one person has a question, comment or rant on a a particular subject or niche, I get the in multiples within that same niche.

That’s the way its worked lately with the niche of wedding photography, and in today’s post I thought I would share a couple of comments I’ve received in the past week on wedding photography that really opened my eyes.  Take a look:

“This past weekend we shot a wedding in Seattle, and had a girl there with a Rebel shooting. I didn’t mind, in fact, I got her involved instead of her stuffing herself in a corner and avoiding eye contact with me at all costs (because she knew what she was doing was incredibly disrespectful.) But that all changed when I jumped on to facebook to upload some sneak peeks for the bride and groom, only to find pictures already up…..and logo’d…..with the name of her photography business.

And the bride and groom signed a contract stating we would be the only photographers at the wedding.

Half of me wants to send a legalistic letter saying take em down right now, or die a legal death. The other half wants to take this poor, misguided stay-at-home part-time photographer with a kit lens to the side and explain having a Rebel doesn’t make you a business. Snapping someone’s wedding doesn’t make you a photographer. And if you’re willing to put a shot that you snuck of the first look up on facebook that you took through a window with glare and reflections….then….well….I feel bad for you.
*rant ended*” ~Stephanie

Stephanie has every reason to rant. This completely gets into a legal issue of what’s right and wrong, and how far some people are willing to go.

The key point is the bride and groom signed a contract stating Stephanie would be the only photographer at the wedding. With that in hand, she has all she needs to carry forward, and should definitely do so.

The first thing I would do is to find out if the “photographer” is related in any way to the bride and groom. Was she just a friend shooting to get some prints ready for her own business, or did the bride and groom know she would be there shooting with that idea in mind?

If the bride and groom knew about it, you obviously have to tread a bit lighter. In this situation, simply remind the bride and groom of the contract they signed for you to be the exclusive photographer. Explain that you don’t mind friends and family there shooting a few photographs for their own use; but you must be the only one who credits the wedding as a professional, and uses the images in any way for public view and marketing.

Usually a simple reminder is enough. The bride and groom will talk with the “photographer”, and everything will be down and off the web in no time.

If the “photographer” is just a friend and the bride and groom had no idea what she was up to, that’s when the legal side of things kick in. Send her a cease and desist letter immediately, asking for all photographs from the wedding be taken off the Internet, and never used again in any capacity to market her business. Continue on up the chain, getting a lawyer involved and even filing a formal complaint if action isn’t taken in an appropriate way. Yes, it may take time, energy and money to make this happen, but from an ethical point of view its always important to make sure you protect what is yours, both business and copyright information.

I wouldn’t appeal to her personally – even if she is just inexperienced, a threat of a lawsuit should open up her eyes enough to start down a path of learning right from wrong in the business world. Because you are too close to the subject matter, have her approach someone else or learn the “rules” from another party instead of taking that on yourself.

“Well I have shot some of my friends weddings with my kodak camera and they allways end up happy with the results, specially since I’m free, I usually have a list of 6 to 8 pics that must be taken, next weekend I will get my 21st wedding and really don’t know what the fuss of hiring a “pro” photographer is, those guys just offer mirrors and smoke to steal peoples money” ~Amateur Photographer

Dear Amateur Photographer, all I can say is  Wow. I’m not even sure of what to say or where to begin, as I could talk for the rest of the year based on your comments. So lets just start by addressing specific things you had to say.

6 to 8 pics that must be taken? Wow, hopefully your brides won’t be crying some day when you’ve missed all of the perfect moments throughout the day. A true professional doesn’t need the list to know what images need to be taken, and what should be left to creativity.

Hopefully your lighting is spot on in the dressing room, outside, and in the darkest of reception halls.

Hopefully you know how to deal with the out of control mother in law, and the bride who ends up in tears because something didn’t turn out quite the way she expected it.

Hopefully Grandma doesn’t fall down when you have her walk outside for a photograph, and she ends up suing you and wiping you out because you have no business insurance.

Hopefully nothing happens to your one camera, and you’re left with nothing to shoot with as the bride walks down the aisle with her dad.

Hopefully you enjoy spending hours working again and again for free. It’s very difficult to replace your camera equipment for free. Its also increasingly difficult to give up all your free time to shoot weddings when you’re always doing it for free. Do you have a reason to improve at what you do? Probably not because free just isn’t that motivating. Yes, you probably care about your photographs, but if a few don’t turn out, oh well. You’re doing it for free. Professionals don’t have that luxury, so they are always improving, backing up, and looking for the best way to do everything to make sure it turns out the best possible.

Okay, that’s enough from me. Anyone else have some comments for Amateur?

We’re one of the few photography companies that actually created a lucrative business out of catering to the wedding industry. In less than two years, we went from a general photography company to one that specialized in wedding photography, making well into the Six Figure level. Then we doubled our business. And again.

But it wasn’t always like that.

In the beginning, we did what every other wedding photographer does.

We decided to offer wedding related services. We created our first wedding brochure. And we charged and shot pretty much like every other wedding photographer out there.

Dig Deeper: Doubt To Confidence: What Was Your Magical Moment?

But very quickly something started to change.

We studied what the top names in the industry were doing. We learned from the best. And we quickly changed and grew. And we discovered 3 things that most wedding photographers did that were actually holding them back.

They Create The Wrong Packages

Most wedding photographers create a handful of packages, give everything a bride could possibly want into each package, and then wonder where the extra sales are.

Dig Deeper: 3 Ways To Price and Package Your Wedding Photography To Stay In Business

A package is meant to be a starting point. It’s meant to offer a great value to the bride, and give her the basics of what she needs to relive the memories from her special day.

If she wants more, she must pay for it.

• Larger albums
• Albums for family members
• Gift products
• Engagement sessions
• Trash the Dress sessions

All of this is meant to be add-on sales, creating more profits for you.

They Limit Their Creativity

When many photographers head into a wedding, they head in with “the list”. Photograph of bride with mom – check. Photograph of bride looking lovingly at her new husband – check.

Then depending on the package, they promise the bride a certain amount of photographs.

With package A, you’ll receive 200 images.
With package B, you’ll receive 250 images.

The thing that I never understood about that line of thinking was “How can you know ahead of time how many images you’ll need to cover the event in its entirety?”

Every wedding is unique. Every wedding offers its own opportunities.

What if you are at the reception, and already have 200 images on your Flash? You know you don’t need many more, so you sit down to relax. And you may very well miss the most important image of the day.

A wedding is an event. You have to shoot it from beginning to end as an event. You can’t count photographs. You have to be there and present for every moment to capture it as it happens. To do anything else truly isn’t photographing a wedding.

Yes, even when we were still photographing with film, before we made the conversion to digital, we were shooting hundreds and hundreds of images every time. Our average wedding was around 2000 images – and that’s not “pray and spray” philosophy. We actually concentrated on creating 2000 great images that could stand alone. We regularly sold multiple volume sets, 3 to 5 albums, each with 200-300 images in them.

You can never sell what you don’t create. And the only way to grow into a successful, six figure wedding business is to move beyond what everyone else is doing.

They Attempt To Be Like Every Other Wedding Photographer

It’s easy to do. You decide you want to photograph weddings. You head out online and look at a variety of other photographers. You use their packages as your idea model, and you create your own.

Then you wonder where your profits are.

Becoming a successful wedding photographer means thinking outside of the box. It means not doing what the average photographer is doing. It means marketing yourself in a slightly different manner.

If you sell yourself as an average wedding photographer, you’ll only ever be an average wedding photographer.

If you want to be at the top of your game, you have to sell yourself as the unique individual you are.

You have to become known as an artist – something more than just a picture taker.

I have been a part of the wedding industry now for many years. And I love it just as much now as I did when we first started in it. Which is why I’m so excited to finally have ready my third Kindle/PDF ebook – Become A Top Wedding Photographer.

Inside Become A Top Wedding Photographer, you’ll discover a wealth of information on every aspect of creating a lucrative wedding business. I’ve shared all kinds of secrets that we learned over the years; tips that will help you bypass what doesn’t work, and move right into what does.

If you’ve always wanted to become a wedding photographer, or have wondered how to move from slow to “WOW” with your profit margins, Become A Top Wedding Photographer is your starting point.

Enjoy!
Lori

If you photograph weddings, you probably have a package or two in which you offer an album. And in many cases, your package probably looks something like this:

• Up to 5 hours of photography
• Over 200 images on copyright-free CD
• 20 page bridal album
• 11×14 Portrait Print
• Online gallery of your wedding photos to share with friends and family worldwide

The bride knows she will receive a CD full of images, and be able to view the images online, and share them with her family and friends from around the world.

She also knows she can take weeks or even months to select a few of her favorites, and have them put into a bridal album.

But it doesn’t matter what photos she selects, how they fit together, or how the will look side by side. She simply selects her favorites, and you as the photographer will force them into some type of order, and create an album from the final selection.

I’ve seen books like this.

An image of the bride walking down the aisle is set next to a formal of the bride outside at the reception. The first dance is placed along side of the couple kissing by the limo.

In other words, there is no rhyme or reason to the way the album is put together; it’s simply a hodgepodge of images thrown together to form a book of pictures.

Wedding albums aren’t meant to be a book of pictures. They are meant to be the story of the wedding day.

First Mistake: The Photographer Lets The Bride Make The Selection

If you allow a bride to choose her favorite images, she thinks from an individual level, not from a cumulative factor. She can’t see an album because it hasn’t happened yet. She doesn’t imagine how they will look together side by side; she simply chooses based on her best expressions, and her favorite moments.

When she receives the album, it will simply go on the shelf because it’s a book of pictures. It has no meaning – its just 20+ large images from her event.

As a photographer, you should be photographing a wedding to tell the story of the day. With wedding photography, photos work together in order to bring you back to the memories of the event itself. A formal out in the gardens is great, but it’s “just” a photo of the bride and groom. But when you have a series of images of the bride and groom walking through the gardens, talking with their flower girl, sneaking kisses along the way, it becomes a story – and a memory.

As a photographer, you need to think in story format. You need to take one photograph, and then another, and another – all to work together and provide an intimate look into the event itself. Its up to you to tell the story, and present the images in such a way that the bride and groom relive the wedding again and again.

Second Mistake: The Photographer Doesn’t Tell The Story

Our marketing has always been a bit different from other photographers.

Most photographers photograph the wedding and hand over the images, feeling their job as photographers are complete. They simply move into ordering mode, providing the final products as ordered by the brides and grooms.

We however marketed to brides that most photographers only provide 50 percent service. Yes, 50 percent of a weddings photographer’s job is photographing the wedding itself. But the other 50 percent is to tell the story of the wedding through photographs in a storybook format. If a photographer didn’t provide you 100 percent service, what are you truly paying for?

Our albums were bigger than most (my largest album sale was a 4 volume set, each with around 80 pages – x 2 because the bride’s mom ordered a duplicate). Yep, that’s not a mistype; 8 albums with around 80 pages each, and hundreds of images throughout the series.

How did I do it? Because I used album software and designed the albums myself before the brides and grooms ever saw the “proofs”. They didn’t just see a book or CD of proofs. They were presented with a sample album, with each image carefully selected and placed into each page.

I sold bigger albums, and my profits were MUCH larger than the average photographer because I took the time to show them how a storybook could actually look, based on the images I selected.

As a photographer, you take images for a reason. If you show how photos work together, and can share that will clients, you’ll see a big increase in your profits.

Third Mistake: The Photographer Doesn’t Make The Album Part Of Their Expertise

Who is better at building an album, a bride who has one wedding in her lifetime, or a photographer who shoots 40 weddings a year?

If you shoot wedding after wedding, year after year, you’ll quickly find a pattern to how the event goes. You’ll know what to photograph in the dressing room as the bride is getting ready. You’ll know how to quickly move through the formals to get everyone on to the next phase. You’ll know how to capture great dance images that people truly want to buy.

You’re the expert. You’re the one who lives, breaths and thinks weddings all the time.

And as the expert, you know how your images are taken, and how they fit together to tell the story of the wedding itself. A bride doesn’t know how to tell a story; she just likes a few photos. But a photographer can and should know how to build the best album possible so it moves from a book of pictures, to an actual storybook of the day.

Sell the expertise. It’s something that should be expected of you, the photographer. And its something the bride will quickly see the value in, and know it’s worth paying for. A photographer who thinks to the next level is surly worth more than the average photographer who just throws a few favorites into an album.

Right?

A Guest Article By Andrew Funderburg

1. Your Target Audience The main people a wedding photographer will want to target on Twitter is other wedding industry vendors. Since it’s damn-near impossible to know which Twitter users are brides-to-be, target vendors. Use Twitter to know who is doing what. Offer help if you see someone starting a project. Some suggestions:

• Magazine Editors
• Wedding Planners
• Gown Shops
• Florists
• Venues

You get the picture. Twitter is an AWESOME way to break the ice with new vendors and other industry professionals you have yet to meet. Then when you do finally get some face time, you’ll have some familiarity to start with.

2. Look for people who talk back OK, so now you’ve found vendors with Twitter accounts. How do you know if they’re worth pursuing? Look at their stream. If they send out plenty of @replies, then this is who you want to talk to. If on the other hand, their stream is just one-way announcements and links to their Web site, chances are you won’t get much out of them. (They haven’t figured out how to use Twitter yet!)

3. Reach Out Twitter is not an “if you build it, they will come” type medium. In fact, it’s the opposite. You have to REACH OUT to people. You do this on Twitter by first following the people you’re targeting and then replying to their tweets. They’ll follow back after awhile. You have to jump-start it.

4. Be Interesting This should be a no-brainer, but have something to say. If you’re not witty yourself, provide resources, tips and info. You also can have good taste in retweets. @PicSeshu is someone who does this very well and has become a great photography resource on Twitter. Keep in mind your target audience and provide relevant info.

5. Have Fun The simplest law of the social universe, if you’re having fun people will be attracted to you. People want to do business with and be around other positive, upbeat people.

There you have it. That’s how a wedding photographer can use Twitter for business.

The funny thing about buying a wedding dress is you wear it once, and it hangs in the closet forever more. I know – that’s where mine is at the moment.

Mine got a bit more use than most, as I pulled it out on more than one occasion when we were first getting started to practice and build up our portfolio doing the crazy things we dreamt up. But for most brides, it goes into the closet, and rarely is seen again.

Which is why Trash The Dress sessions have become so popular, and can enhance the images a bride and groom have from their special day. The day of the event, the bride would never risk getting her gown dirty or wet. But the day after – all bets are off. For many, Trash The Dress is part of the fun of the entire wedding process.

Not only is it fun for the bride and groom, its also a great way to enhance your portfolio, and let all of your crazy ideas come to light. What have you always wanted to do? What photograph would you love to have in your portfolio? Dream away, and pitch it to your next bride to be.

If you’ve always wanted to add a Trash The Dress package to your services, now is the time. Use these 10 tips to help build your own package, and start selling it today.

1. Don’t Include Trash The Dress Sessions in Your Packages

Wedding packages should be just that, photography the day of the wedding. You shouldn’t include engagement images in your wedding packages. And you shouldn’t include Trash The Dress sessions in your packages. Trash The Dress sessions are extra – above and beyond the norm. Not everyone wants it, and if you include it in your packages, you’ll start the bargaining process with certain clientele.

Dig Deeper: 8 Keys To A Great Engagement Portrait

2. Start With A Small Plan And Grow From There

If you are new to the Trash The Dress concept, don’t start out by having your bride do something completely over the top. Start small and build your portfolio from there. Your creativity will grow as you see the potential.

3. Focus On The Environment

Trash The Dress sessions are all about capturing the bride and groom in unique settings they would never experience during the course of their actual wedding. Lying on the beach watching the sunset. Wandering through a field of wildflowers. Climbing into a mountain stream. Find the perfect setting in your area, and bring your first client there. Ask what they are willing to do along the way – you’ll be surprised. We once had a bride climb a tree in her gown – all because we asked!

4. Build Packages For Your Sessions

Just like your wedding packages, you can have two or three Trash The Dress packages as well. Always build something for people to aspire to: a basic and a premium package gives everyone a chance to experience what you have to offer. Spend some time dreaming up ideas that you would love to do, and use those ideas to build your perfect premium Trash The Dress package.

Dig Deeper: 3 Ways To Price and Package Your Wedding Photography To Stay In Business

5. Sell It At The Same Time As Your Wedding Services

Trash The Dress sessions are designed to complement the wedding album. While I believe you should sell separate packages, you should still sell them at the same time you are selling your wedding packages. Once they decide to use you, upsell immediately. “Would you like to look at our engagement packages? Our Trash The Dress packages?” A bride and groom’s budget will quickly be expended as the move closer to the date. The sooner you can get it booked, the greater your profits will be.

6. Search The Internet For Ideas

Want to know what other photographers are doing in their Trash The Dress sessions? Google Alert it. Simply put in the keyword “Trash The Dress” into a Google Alert, and be notified any time someone posts something new. You’ll quickly find out the latest and greatest within this niche, and be able to incorporate it into your own photography.

7. Focus On The Passion

At no other time in our lives are we as passionate about our partners then we are right around the wedding date. Use that passion and show it off in your images. With just a little nudging from you, you can draw out amazing looks. Instead of posing, tell them what to do. “Put your foreheads together. A light kiss to the cheek. Pull her in close.” You can see the magic unfold right in front of you.

8. Think About Your Final Product

Do you want to sell a 30×40 wall print? How about an album with 24 pages? If you know going into the shoot what you want to sell at the end, you can shoot accordingly. Build your packages around what you want to sell, then shoot to fill your packages with the images you love. Teach your clients about what makes the best image, and sell them on it along the way.

9. Build Your Portfolio For You

Your first client to try this service may not love your “wow” images – the one’s you took just to see what you can do. Don’t be discouraged, or rely on that client to tell you what they want and don’t want. Most people don’t know what they want – you have to sell them on it. If you continue to take and showcase what you want, you next client will fall in love with that vision, and want only that look in their session.

10. Think Marketing Along The Way

The only way to experience a Trash The Dress session is to see how it’s done. Have your assistant video parts of the session, and put it together to form a video you can share on YouTube, Facebook and your blog. Once a potential client sees what is possible, they will have to have it. And that’s a great place to be in as a wedding photographer.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNCnxqVUpmg

There is one sentence in the Seattle Bride Magazine’s article Pros Of Hiring A Pro that says it all.

“I now disagree more than ever with the digital-age adage that “now everyone is a photographer.”

This coming from an amateur photographer that is doing pretty well as a travel photographer – he has had a few cover images, so he knows a thing or two about photography.

The assumption right now is if you have a camera, love taking pictures, you can photograph anything any time. And I don’t just hear this from the consumers; I hear it from seasoned professionals as well. So many people have bought into the theory that if you have a camera, you can be a professional.

Isn’t that just like saying if you have a plunger, you can be a professional plumber? Or if you have a toothbrush you can be a dentist?

Having the love, desire and passion for photography is your starting point. Then it moves up from there.

You have to know your camera inside and out, be able to shoot in any condition without thinking about it – you just know how to set your camera/flash to get the best image possible.

You have to have the best equipment possible for your circumstances. Multiple professional grade bodies, multiple lenses, flash units – whatever you need to do the best job possible.

You have to know the business side of photography. You have to be good at everything – photography, production, sales, marketing, planning. It all makes you a better photographer, and presents you that way to your potential customers.

And you have to be willing to keep learning along the way. I talk to photographers all the time that swore they would retire before they ever had to use new technology (i.e. digital, social networking, website marketing, etc) and now they are some of the best in the industry. Things change. And you have to change with it. That’s just the way it is.

And finally, you have to be willing to pay for the best, and know when to call in an expert to help you get exactly what you want. Just like you would never have a friend put in a crown over a broken tooth, you should never call in a friend to photograph one of the most important days of your life.

As the amateur photographer in the Seattle Bridal Magazine said:

“My fiancé and I are on a tight budget and had planned to take a gamble and hire an amateur photographer friend. Now? We’re determined to find a way to get a pro.”

The wedding season is just gearing up here in the states, so I’ve been seeing a lot of commentary about wedding photographers. One being this video put out by PPA.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbN-ZMDLiYU

In the video was this quote:

“An amateur photographer may get the shot right sometimes. A professional photographer is paid to get it right every time.” Mark Campbell, Professional Photographer

How true. As a wedding photographer myself, I’ve written about the importance of using a professional wedding photographer again and again.

You get one shot at getting it right. The guests will only be together one day. The formalities and details will only be available one time. Get it wrong and its disaster.

If you are a wedding photographer, two things should be at the top of the list of priorities.

1. Being the best wedding photographer you can be.

2. Marketing your wedding services to your prospects, and educating them on what is truly important.

Being The Best

The first task is the easiest. You have to educate yourself not just on photography, but also on every aspect of wedding photography. There is a big difference. Learning how to shoot is straightforward. If you’re standing in front of a waterfall, you can keep adjusting until you get it right – the waterfall isn’t going anywhere.

But that changes with a wedding. You have dozens of subjects moving and changing every second. You have a variety of shooting experiences – bright sunlight for formal images, and dark reception halls with mere candlelight as your light source.

Study with other photographers. Be an assistant to some of the top names in your community. Take their classes and week long training courses. By their books and posing guides. Do everything you can to become a little better every day.

Marketing and Educating

The second task is a lifelong challenge. Once you’ve achieved a professional status with your wedding photography, you have to prove it to the world.

This video is a great help. Why not incorporate videos like this into your own marketing – YouTube embed feature means you can easily put it onto your blog. And if you’ve joined organizations like PPA, you can also use that as a motivator that you are taking the next step to prove your experience and commitment to the photographic industry.

Not everyone will “get it”. Some people only care about price. And if that’s the case, let them go to another photographer, and take the chance of not getting the best results.

But in many cases it only takes a little education. Don’t stop with one liners and showcasing your gallery of images.

Tell people what they need to look for, and watch out for. Most people have never thought about the dangers of hiring a friend until its too late. Fear works in marketing – if you hear a horror story, you’re more likely going to try and avoid the same situation.

I was looking through a well known magazine this week, and they had a special section on weddings. Being in the industry for so long, I flipped immediately to the section to see what was new in the world of weddings. And right there, front and center on a two page spread, was an unbelievable photograph. And I don’t mean “unbelievable” in a good way.

As wedding photographers for some of the most high end weddings around, we quickly learned what worked – and what didn’t. There is a definite art to wedding photography, and the better you get at it, the better clients you can attract.

What this magazine was showcasing as a great image (they must have thought it was great, why else was it so large?) I considered to be very not so great. So I started thinking about what makes wedding photography great; and not so great. And I came up with a few things that will take your images from “yawn” to “WOW”.

Firing Squad

You have 6 bridesmaids, 6 groomsmen, and a bride and groom. What do you do? Line them up of course, guys on one side, girls on the other. That’s what many do; I guess it seems the natural thing to do. That’s how they stand during the ceremony, right? Yet this gives you no perspective, and creates what we term “a firing squad” image with everyone standing straight in a line.

Do something different. Instead of grouping guys on the right, girls on the left, ask them to partner up with whom they walk down the aisle with. Mix if up a bit. Use stairs, a bridge, a path or a chair. Stack people, place people on the floor, kneel down, or join in a group hug. If you do something fun, they’ll look like they are having fun. You’ll mix the color, and it won’t be a “boring” shot.

Fig Leaf

I bet you knew exactly what I was talking about when you read the title. Guys automatically pose with their hands together in front. Its what we always refer to as the fig leaf shot.

The easiest way to get guys NOT to do the fig leaf shot is to tell them about it and give them options. You can place your hands in your pockets, down by your side – anything but the fig leaf shot. They will laugh; and you won’t have another fig leaf shot the rest of the day.

Look For Angles

It’s easy to have a bride and groom stand together at the alter, and shoot a boring image of them in a typical pose. That’s what is expected. But if you start looking around the wedding and reception area, things come to life. How can you incorporate more into each photograph? Why did they choose this location? How can you make it a part of their day?

Look For Action – Reaction

These are the images I really love. How can you look at things from many perspectives? Sure you can grab one shot of cutting the cake, and one shot of feeding cake to each other. But how about focusing in on the hands? Or the cake with one piece cut out of it? Or the mom crying behind you, filled with emotion? If you have two photographers, you can capture even more angles. But even if you have one, don’t stop shooting during important times. Position yourself in a great position. Get what you need – the cake cutting – then start turning around, capturing everything around you. You’ll be surprised at the reactions you get.

The average wedding today here in the US is right around $20,000. While everyone has their own tastes and preference, averages show a couple will spend their money in the following way:

• 51 percent on Reception, including reception hall, catering, cake and alcohol
• 10 percent on Photography
• 8 percent on Videography
• 9 percent on Ceremony
• 7 percent on Attire
• 6 percent on Rings
• 4 percent on Flowers
• 3 percent on Music
• 2 percent on Limo and transportation

The important thing to remember here is if you only charge $250 or $500 for your photography, a bride expecting $2000 will wonder “what’s wrong with this photographer?”

And if you are a photographer and a bride comes in wanting to spend $250, she may just need a little education into why photography costs what it does. It isn’t about how much it costs to print up a few pictures – that can be done at your big box store. What costs is knowledge of the camera, knowledge of lighting, how to handle bridal stress, the cost of running a business, being properly insured, etc. Educate your clients on the costs of photography, and you will quickly be able to raise your prices.

UPDATE: After a short timeframe, the company decided to pull the video due to copyright. It’s also a sign of someone not understanding how to best use social. Instead of pulling it, they should have added logos and website addresses to catapult themselves with the free traffic they were getting.

Expensive camera equipment and walking backwards at a wedding can be a recipe for disaster. Watch the end of the video for what’s important, hint…it’s not the photographer.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8N0zq0q5s4

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