Pay the pro, or use Uncle Harry

Most families spend THOUSANDS of dollars just for the venue, church and food for a wedding and reception. Not to mention the dress, flowers, and the many many other details involved in planning a wedding.

 

So you have spent up most of your wedding budget (or planned most of it) on everything previously mentioned EXCEPT the one component that will be around after all of the food has been eaten, the wedding dress no longer fits, and the flowers have died eons ago.

 

The photography.

 

With the advent of digital equipment becoming more affordable to the general public, many people nowadays are starting their own small photography businesses. This is nothing new. And why not? The end result is good for most people. But when it comes to wedding photography, there is a lot more at stake that just showing up with a “good camera”.

 

Keep in mind that your photographer is creating an heirloom for your family for generations to come. There is only one chance to get it right. There are no retakes. The pro photographer will have redundancy in equipment and years of experience using it all in any situation. The pro will be well seasoned in knowing what kinds of pictures make great PHOTOGRAPHS. Sure Uncle Harry knows how to use his new camera, and has taken lots of good photos, but what will Uncle Harry do if he forgot to charge his only battery the day of the wedding? Well, I hope he has extras. What will he do if his camera decides to give an unwanted ERR message across the back screen? He better have backup equipment, and possibly a film camera that requires no power source (like we used to use back in the day).

 

As stated in a previous blog, the pro will know how to handle crowds, and people during the stressful times of the ceremony (and reception) in order to get the best result possible images. He/she will pose, direct and handle the situations with ease. U.H. may become flustered, and unsure. Not that we don’t get flustered periodically (everyone does), but generally speaking after having photographed so many weddings over the years, the experience and confidence the pro possesses becomes self apparent to others.

 

Do you want quality, well adjusted, color corrected edited images for your final album/DVD, or is a raw copy of the files from Uncle Harry “just good enough”? What if there are several pictures that were taken that you like and want to enlarge and reproduce, only come to find out that many of these we underexposed, or have color shifts? Does U.H. know how to fix these in Photoshop/other editor, or are you just going to have to figure it out on your own? The pro will provide a genuine service in delivering quality print ready images that need little or no adjustments at all. Better yet, the pro would have correctly exposed each image using his/her skill sets during the picture taking AND NOT relying in “fixing it later”.

 

Presuming that you intend on having a final copy of the images on DVD as seems to be the norm, do you really want to print your wedding photos at the Big Box store, and leave the color /printing adjustments up to the young technician behind the desk who really only leaves the machines on auto-color? The pro will have your final images printed at a professional lab using professional paper.

 

How about a top quality album? Are you really going to have time to sit down and design your own album pages (hours of tedious work) just to upload to one of the many web based DIY album printers? Or do you think your children and grandchildren deserve to reflect and reminisce looking through a genuine Italian leather/ similar album, with the pages professionally designed and photographically printed and hard bound by the album binding company, whose only job is to manufacture life long lasting products?

 

Sure, in the short run the Uncle Harry way can work. I understand people are on budgets. But if one adds up all of the pieces re/ the U.H. method and assesses a dollar value to ONE’S PERSONAL TIME during the photography process AFTER the wedding, it may come to reason that hiring a professional in the first place is not too much “out of the picture” in the big scheme of things.

 

Just some food for thought……

 

Kenneth Houston

Kenneth Houston Photographics

http://www.houstonphotographics.com

http://www.facebook.com/houstonphotographics