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| HOME : FORUM : COMMUNITY : Wedding Talk : Music, Photography & Video : how much for photography? |
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Post#1 @
08-08-02
, 06:18 PM
again, I'm sure I'm going to get slaughtered by New York/New England prices, but anyone have ideas on how much wedding photography costs? I've seen some packages that cost thousands of dollars, which seems nuts, but hey, everything seems crazily expensive when it comes to weddings somehow. why are we getting milked so badly by the bridal business? |
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Post#2 @
08-08-02
, 06:32 PM
for our reception, we are going to get a photography student from the college of craft and design to take pictures. we will pay for the cost of supplies (film, photo paper, development chemicals) and for a 4 hour reception, i will offer $200. that is not bad for a student. that way they get the experience, we get cheap photos taken by someone who knows a thing or two about a camera, but we don't get flogged for $$$. all together, it should cost us $500 or $600 for labour, pics, supplies, a contact sheet, negatives, and a pile of photos. i think it is great to give students the opportunity to show their talent and management skills. they are managing a project, one of their first projects. they will go out of their way to make it what you want. they take way better candid shots and photojournalistic styles. i find that many professional photographers (the only kind i can afford are the cheap ones) only know how to take these awful portrait style photos in really bad poses. (i hate that kind of photography) so that is an option. just thought i would suggest it. we are getting milked, because marketing for weddings have become a great way to make cash off brides. every bride wants their day to be perfect, unique and beautiful. it only happens once in a lifetime, so that is why we pay through the nose. finding alternatives is always a nice way to beat those marketing weenies. |
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Last edited by cinnamongirl : 08-08-02 at 06:34 PM.
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Post#3 @
08-08-02
, 06:45 PM
We are paying about $2500 for our photographer, with no album... We can get a custom album from her + our package for $3500. I don't know if I want to go that high or not. Guess it will depend on how our budgeting is going. We are also doing Magic Kingdom photos, where you go in the park before it opens and take lots of pictures. I figure, spend as much as you want on photos & video, because in the end, it's really all you have left of your day. Jess |
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Post#4 @
08-08-02
, 06:48 PM
i forgot to mention that we managed to strike a deal with a fellow professional photographer friend. grooveh is a computer nerd, and our photographer offered to do free wedding pics in LA in exchange for a website. yay barter system! |
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Post#5 @
08-08-02
, 07:54 PM
I'm in Chicago and the prices are inflated here also. I found a young photographer who is just getting started. I have a huge package including an album, unlimited time, locations and film. It also includes an assistant for $995. It is an absolute steal!!! |
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Post#6 @
08-08-02
, 08:51 PM
Oof... photography. Well, we're looking at between $1500 and $2000 - and it's the cheapest professional photographer we've found in the Seattle area. It's almost 1/2 of our wedding budget.  Em |
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Post#7 @
08-08-02
, 10:22 PM
Wow cg.....that's a great idea using a student 
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Post#8 @
08-09-02
, 01:15 AM
Melissa didn't have any luck finding a photog student - even though I go into all the local universities and colleges I couldn't find any students willing to do weddings. But we lucked out. On the www.windsorpeak.com website I saw a post from a bride who just casually mentioned (off-topic) that she'd found a young photog's assistant who was trying to strike out on his own. I emailed her, she emailed him, he emailed me and before we knew it we'd arranged a meeting with him to see some of his work. Well, we fell in love! He was terrific, his work was cutting edge - photo journalistic w/enough "posed" formal type shots to make the grandparents happy. And his price is half or less of what anyone else around here is charging. As we left the place where we met him I told Melissa "we need to grab him and sign a contract before we can't afford him anymore!" Since she signed, we've recommended him to a lot of her friends - one of their weddings was in April and everyone just raved about him, his style and his personality. When the pics came back (400 of them!), they raved about those, too. Another couple is getting married tomorrow, so we get to see him in action again, and another friend of hers got married a month or two ago (but she didn't go to the wedding, so didn't get to see him). Anyway, to make a really long story short(er), another couple of friends got married last week (it's really the season!) and used a photog who was three times more expensive than ours. The only thing people mentioned about this photog was "where was he?" He didn't seem to have taken pics of any of us all night long, and in fact we never saw him or his assistant making the rounds of the tables or taking pics of anything. WHile Melissa was helping at the church after the ceremony she saw one of the photogs open a camera to load new film in and the roll in there fell out - it hadn't been loaded properly! They tried to round up all the ring bearers and FGs (12 of the angels) to retake photos, but many of them had left for the reception - what a mess! I hope our friends get some good shots out of the deal, but I feel so sorry for them and so fortunate for us! And yep, our photog's price has gone up $500 since we booked him, because he's just that good! I'll try to load one of his shots of Melissa and her fiance, Travis, taken at our friend's wedding in April...Oh, and to answer your question - photographer around here, for photojournalistic, start at about $2000 if they're good and go up from there. No wonder we were so happy to get a "deal" for only $1000! |
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Last edited by Sugarpike : 08-09-02 at 01:17 AM.
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wow!
Post#9 @
08-09-02
, 11:22 AM
$3500 for photography? That's almost 3 times what our entire wedding budget is. I guess we are fortunate in having a friend of a friend who is an amateur photographer. She is the one that did our engagement photos for us. To see some of those photos click here. ...chad... |
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Post#10 @
08-09-02
, 11:30 AM
cheesecake I just looked at your engagement pictures. Your friend did a wonderful job!!! I bet she won't be an amateur for long! |
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Cinnamon--Once in a LIfetime????
Post#11 @
08-09-02
, 02:39 PM
Cinnamon: you said in your post weddings are a "once in a lifetime" experience for brides? maybe in the 1930's---but certainly not today. Today's bride can plan on having at least 2 and maybe three weddings.!!! Cynical old mars |
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Post#12 @
08-09-02
, 03:41 PM
*LOL* at Mars* Yes - we pay be in for three or four weddings - but I think for each one every bride hopes it will be her last - first or fourth! I know I am *crossing fingers* |
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Post#13 @
08-09-02
, 06:24 PM
LOL mars... honestly, i was only commenting on bridal marketing. i don't care if anyone ever gets married, or gets married a million times...as long as there is a party to go to 
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Post#14 @
08-18-02
, 04:32 PM
Here in the Detroit suburbs, photographers go for between $1,300 and $10,000. Can you believe some places chrage $10,000 for photos. Unbelieveable. Talking to DJs as well, average price for a GOOD DJ is about $1300-1700. I am in the wrong line of work. I can't believe people are stupid enough to pay these prices for two common things....taking photos and playing CDs! As for our wedding, I have an uncle that is going to do part of the photography portions, he's a chair of a photography department at a well known fine arts college. I don't want to bog him down too much, so I've found another photographer that is willing to just show up and take 150-200 pictures and just hand us the negatives for $800. About a DJ, I don't know what we're going to do. We want someone excellent but do not want to go over $1000. This is tough to find. |
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Last edited by Domino : 08-18-02 at 04:33 PM.
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Post#15 @
08-18-02
, 06:28 PM
I wish we had a photographer friend. Sigh. The photography was very important to both of us, so we purely looked at ones with a great photojournalism style. Of course, they're quite a bit pricier than traditional photography. We were lucky enough to find one who had a good portfolio but was still up and coming, so we paid $1800. (The next year, her prices jumped up to close to $3000, which is the going rate for around here for photographers who specialize in photojournalism.) That included only 6 hours, an engagement session, and really nice 3x5 proofs. |
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Post#16 @
08-18-02
, 06:50 PM
In the wedding of my niece at the entrance of the wedding it was given to every couple a dispossable camera with a list of the main events, this way they had about 60 couples taking pictures of the funniest moments, impossible to capture by a single photographer, it was very cheap, the pictures are of very good quality and they have some of the funniest pictures I have seen of a wedding. Each camera was numbered and at the exit of the wedding was a basket to put the cameras when leaving, if you wanted some copies from this pictures, with the number of the camera you was able to order the copies. |
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Post#17 @
08-18-02
, 09:58 PM
Em, I know someone in Seattle that has just decided to go back into photography fulltime. He was in the process of changing over to digital and buying some new equipment when I was in Seattle last week. I have a black and white self-portrait of his from about 10 years ago that is wonderful. He is the son of one of my closest friends. He does freelance work, no B&M studio. PM me is you want me to get his phone number. |
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Post#18 @
08-18-02
, 11:57 PM
I havent really looked into photographers at this time. Can someone provide any sites I can check out that would visually explain what photojournalism pics look like in relation to wedding photography? Thanks, Judy
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RE : how much for photography?
Post#19 @
08-27-02
, 01:21 AM
Judy - just look in any bridal magazine - most of the photogs advertising in those these days do the photojournalistic shots. Anything that is in B&W, any shot of just the back of the dress or just the flowers or just the silhouettes of the bride and groom - the kind of "artsy" shot that my husband doesn't "get"  - that's photojournalistic, instead of the traditional posed shots. Our photog is doing a good mix for Melissa's wedding, using both formal posed shots and a lot of the candid type of photojournalistic shots. I'll try to find some websites and post them, but I got rid of most of the links when we found her photog...
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Photojounnalistic Wedding Photography
Post#20 @
09-06-02
, 06:59 PM
http://www.billfredericks.com We're using Sam LaHoz out of Bill Frederick's Studios in NY. This is the link so you can see his style. It's photojournalistic. Photography was one thing my fiance and I would not cut corners on. When all is said and done I think it's going to cost almost $6000 That's for 11 hours of coverage, 1 album, 2 parents albums and 800 5x5 proofs. My fiance is a hobby photographer and was very picky about the way the pictures will be processed. In this case he was very impressed with their method of hand processing. Very time consuming, takes about 40 minutes per print, but you get better quality black and whites, which was very important because we want 50% of the pics to be b&w. Just because a picture is B&W doesn't make it "photojournalistic" a photographer has to be pretty talented and artistic to capture a moment or a feeling. Anyone can snap away using b&w film. If you look at enough pictures you'll start to see the difference. |
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RE : how much for photography?
Post#21 @
09-06-02
, 07:02 PM
P.S. My girlfriend hired a student to take her wedding pictures in an effort to save money. HE CALLED IN SICK on the day of her wedding!! My fiance ended up running home and grabbing his camera to take her wedding day pictures. She's still devestated though that she missed out on professional picutres in and effort to save a few thousand dollars. Try to find someone that's within your budget, but try not to cut corners too much on this part of the wedding. |
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One of my friends also had a horror story hiring a student for her wedding. She hired him from an art school in Chicago and she thought she would be getting someone good. She saw his portfolio and was impressed. Well, apparently there were a few details she left out when she made the arrangements. First, he showed up in jeans and a t-shirt. Now I'm not saying the guy had to wear a tux, but he looked rather grubby. He never went to the church they were married at to scope it out to see if he needed any special lenses, flashes, etc. All her church photos are very dark. Finally, he was an HOUR late getting to the reception because he stopped at Wolf Camera to get more film! He missed the announcement of the bridal party, reception line, AND taking formals of them at the hall! She was SO pissed she wrote a letter to the school telling how horrible he was. When we realized he was late for the reception (we weren't even sure if he was going to show up at that point) one of her dad's friends who's into photography took a bunch of photos for them. At least they have some pics but to this day she still moans about how she tried to save $ on the photographer. She said her #1 mistake was not getting a reference from the guy. She thought just being a photography student was enough. |
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