People spend $100's and $1000's of dollars on wedding photography, but is it necessary? That was the opening sentence in a TV news story over at KSTV.com. The gist of the story was to get all your guests to shoot with their digital cameras and upload them to the many picture hosting sites out there - they even give a list. Pretty scary thinking by the general public for the working professional photographer. You can listen to the news story and read the accompanying article right here. On a positive note, the news anchors loved their professional photographer and thought the best idea was a composite approach - do both.This probably explains why a buddy of mine just secured the domain name - http://www.cheapassweddings.com/. I think he may be redefining his market :~) On a similar note, I know another photographer who has a studio named "Cheap and Chic Weddings." They have college photography students shoot the weddings to help cut the costs, but the availability of add on products and upgrades gets the average sale up for them - an interesting concept - Here is their site.
My brother is planning on getting married next Oct and I offered to shoot his wedding for him (as a present), but he's pretty adamant there'll be enough people there with cameras that he doesn't need a professional shoot. Sad, but true.
ReplyDeleteIf there's one thing the digital revolution has done it's to put these sorts of ideas into the minds of the general public.
As the night wears on a professional stays true while your guests will take the cameras into the bathrooms and up dresses. No thanks. I can't imagine in 30 years reflecting fondly on 126 blurry dark pictures of a drunken toast.
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Heres the thing. I just secured a wedding/reception venue at our favorite mountain location for 10 grand for just food and the venue. The cost of a photographer was 2800-4500. We don't have the money for that. Period. I wish we were rich, but we aren't. We are more interested in everyone having a wonderful day and experience at a stunning location than having professional photographer. I'm making all the wedding decor, florals, etc myself as I'm quite artistic and we need to save money. I'm also an amateur photographer myself so I will be getting the still life shots of the bouquets, rings, reception location and general location before anyone arrives. We've already announced on our wedding website that our wedding guests are our photographers for the day/night. Their camera phones, use of instagram, digital cameras, etc will be our wedding pictures. We're taking our guests with us to various walkable locations near our reception/wedding for a bit of a tour and they can shoot pics along the way. Its worth the savings to us and the experience will be part of our wedding day. I wish there were photographers that would charge a smaller fee for a short period of time to get some candid shots of us during and after the short ceremony, but no one was willing to do a shorter session like that. Thousands of dollars just isn't in our budget. I'm sure there are arguments against not hiring a professional, but it came down to what we could afford and we had to make a choice. We either had a reception or a photographer. We deiced to feed people and have a party. So instead of giving the $1000 or less that we could have afforded to a professional for the shorter period we wanted, we aren't giving it to anyone. Its a shame, someone could have made some money...just not the 2800-4500 we don't have.
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