Why the Cost of Wedding Photography?

June 18, 2012 • Leave a Comment

Howdy folks, and welcome back to our blog series on why you should hire a professional wedding photographer. This time we’re going to talk about cost.

Why is a wedding photographer so expensive? A standard rule of thumb has been to spend 25% of your budget on the photography. But what are you paying for? Here’s just a few examples of what a professional photographer’s price includes:

Wedding Professionalism. You’re not just getting a skilled photographer, you’re getting someone experienced in navigating the wedding day and all of its difficulties. Strict schedules, difficult lighting, once-in-a-lifetime-memories that can’t be reshot, group organization, communication—all of these are things that a good wedding photographer has mastered. These skills are not easily obtained.
Use of equipment, travel, and assistants. Travel and assistants’ wages are pretty self-explanatory, so we’ll focus on the equipment. Most wedding photographers will be using somewhere in the range of $3,000 to $10,000 in photographic equipment. That includes camera bodies, back-up bodies, lenses, lighting, memory cards, spare batteries, and a host of other things, all of which must be purchased and maintained. And yes, this gear is necessary; a good photographer knows that using less than adequate equipment will give less than adequate photos.
Time. It’s not just the 8 hours of the wedding. Your photography package includes days of processing, color correcting, developing, and printing. The professional photographer you hired is going to be spending weeks designing, discussing, and applying his or her creative skill to your final product.
Business expenses and cost of living. In addition to taxes, your photographer most likely pays for a lawyer, an accountant, advertising, insurance, and crucial equipment maintenance. The overhead costs are huge, and beyond this they still need to be able to support their family.

Hopefully this sheds some light on the cost of hiring a wedding photographer. As before, I’d like to leave you with a bit of personal advice, this time from my wife’s experience. Great photography can help you remember the best parts of your day, even when things didn’t go as planned. Even if the cake fell and the best man got sick and the DJ didn’t show up, you’ll be reminded of the best moments of the day you married the love of your life.

Cheers!

-Jason

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Why the Cost of Wedding Photography?

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