Wedding Photography

happy_snapper

Hello

Im Thinking of starting up a wedding photograghy business and whilst this isnt a plea for work by any means i am just interested in peoples past experiences of the services you have recieved ..ie good, bad ,too pricey, value efor money for what you have recieved etc.

I am a brilliant photogragher have many years hobby experience and now i have the oppotunity to turn it to a profession. My business head has a narrow margin.

Thanks in advance

Me

happy_snapper

bump .....:D

Softstuff

I know quite a few wedding photographers in the North West, some were struggling, some were doing quite well. The ones that were doing quite well tended to be the ones that were competing on price, they were less than half the price of the others.

Being in London your market is going to be different, but my advice will be the same, and this works for any business. Don't base your prices on what other people are charging. Work out first what you want to earn, what are your fixed costs, what are your variable costs. You have to account for the idea that in the first year you could only do about 20 weddings... so how much would you have to charge for these to make a profit?

Most wedding photographers begin to do it as a second job. Given that it happens mostly at weekends it's pretty easy to try it this way. Once they have built up enough advance bookings (some brides will book up to 5 years in advance) they then take the plunge and go full time. Once you have done quite a few weddings a continuous source of income is reprints... since you own the copyright to all the wedding photos, legally they should come to you for these.

Aside from the expense of your equipment, your biggest expense is going to be advertising. The best that I and my friends found was wedding fayres. Though you may do a few of these and not see much response, what we found was that up to 2 years later we were getting people coming to us to book saying "I saw you at a wedding fayre at...".

Also be careful with your insurance. Should any of your equipment fail entirely (and this has been known to happen) the photographs are such an integral part of their day that they WILL sue. Your insurance should cover you for every eventuality. I know one poor photographer who whilst photographing a bride on the way into church had a heart attack and collapsed... he's fine now, but was ever so glad of the insurance.

As for past personal experience of photography, my wedding photos sucked (bad light, quite expensive, not my style at all), my mothers were great (she hates having her photo taken but was so comfy with this photographer they looked fantastic) This highlights another part, communication is by far the biggest part of your job, finding out what the client expects from you, having them move/pose/stand in the way you can imagine... one client is going to expect a very different service than another.

Oh, and last best piece of advice, this is the biggest thing I learned in all my years of doing weddings - there are some customers for whom 10 quid would be expensive, don't base your prices on those customers, and at the same time don't rip anybody off. The most important thing you have is your reputation, if you are good and fair you'll have word of mouth bookings pour in, if you do a bad job or overcharge people will see you coming

Hope some of that might help a little

welshmountingsheep

INSURANCE

INSURANCE!!

INSURANCE!!!!!!

Have insurance enough to fly a family half way around the world to re-take the photos after your equipment fails. This happened to somebody I knew years ago; equipment failed ( back in the good old days of film photography) and he had to re-organise re-taking the pictures at his own expense. Luckily, he was insured enough for the brides parents to be flown back to the UK from Australia.

teddyandpaul

Having several children married and paid for a lot of wedding albums over the years my favourite remains the one with the 'artistic' poses as well as the traditional. Reflections of the happy couple in a mirror for instance and some black and white shots as well! Offer something a little different and be reliable and you will get plenty of work I am sure, good luck.

Mizz_Pink

Hi we got wed last May,

My tips are:

Have a good website, to include portfolios of other work, prices, contact details etc.

We loved our photographers and we paid a good price of £500 for 30 8X8 in a traditional album. Our photos we amazing and they took over 700 on the day.

However all this good feeling was tainted when we asked for a disc with all the photos on. They agreed and said if we paid £250 on reprints we could have the disc. We did this, it wasnt too hard at £20 each, then they sent us a disc with just the album photos on. When we told them we asked for a disc with all the photos on they said oh, thats another £300 :eek: We would of paid the £300 for the disk and not bothered with the reprints if we had known.
We felt ripped off and have susequently had nasty emails being sent back and forth.

Make sure your client knows what they pay for and its set out clearly what it will cost if they want a disk.


Also our photographers were fun, we had a photo of the 'lads' pulling mooneys as this is tradition, its called the ring shot :eek: They had no prob doing this. They worked really hard on the day and took whatever photos we wanted.

We have also had the experince of other photographers not allowing guests to take photos, they hurry each shot up so no-one has the time, which i think is unprofessional.

achtunglady

Hi happy snapper,where in London are you based? If you are in the North I may have some work for you, I have a wedding anniversary party coming up in June and wanted some nice pictures, interested??

vickylee

The photographer at my wedding was downright rude to the guests that we had invited. Whilst the photos we got were excellent, there were a lot of photos that I wanted (and had suggested) that we didn't get.

MrsTinks

I am going to move this thread as it is not really Money Saving sorry

Regards

Tine

Glad

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere (please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]!!!!!![/EMAIL].

sashabella_2

A good start for any business is to get your name out there in the market. Advertising yourself, with your USP as your for front. USP stands for unique selling point, which sets you apart from all your competition. Then find a decent good quality printers at reaonable prices. When I started out I found this new company Print24.co.uk which were very helpful for me, adn very reliable.

Good luck