You Must Need a Great Photographer

Look At Full Galleries, Not Portfolios

Anyone can show you ten perfect frames. A portfolio is a highlight reel assembled from years of work, and it tells you very little about what you will actually receive.

Ask to see an entire wedding, start to finish, including the awkward middle hours when the light is flat and the room is dim and nothing photogenic is happening. That is where you find out whether someone can work or only wait. The photographer we booked sent us three complete galleries without being asked, which told us something before we had even opened them.

Meet Them Before You Book

Your photographer will spend more of the day closer to you than most of your guests. They will be in the room while you get ready and the last person near you before you walk in. If their company is tiring at a coffee shop, it will be exhausting at seven in the morning on the day itself.

We met four and liked two. We chose the one who spent most of the meeting asking about us rather than explaining her equipment.

Questions Worth Asking

How many weddings do you shoot in a weekend? What happens if you fall ill? Do you bring a second shooter, and is that included? How long until we see the gallery, and how many images should we expect? Do you charge for travel, and does the day rate include the evening?

Get the answers in writing. Not because anyone is dishonest, but because a friendly conversation in March is difficult to remember accurately in December.

Then Let Them Work

The best photographs from our day were the ones nobody posed for. My father adjusting his tie in a doorway. A flower girl asleep under a table during the speeches. Esabella laughing at something her aunt said, entirely unaware that anyone was pointing a camera at her.

We gave our photographer a list of six group shots and nothing else. Six is enough. Every additional formal grouping costs about four minutes of your reception, and you will not miss the ones you left off.

What It Is Actually For

The flowers wilt, the cake gets eaten, and the band packs up at midnight. A year from now you will remember perhaps a dozen moments from the day with any clarity, and most of what you think you remember you will actually be remembering from the photographs.

That is why we spent more here than we planned to, and why it is the only line on the budget we would not change.