What IS a fine photograpic wedding business?
Monday, July 13th 2009 @ 1:38 PM (not yet rated)
Yes, it's summertime here in the Northern Hemisphere, which means that weddings occur more often than the rest of "our" year. So, photographers amateur and pro spend a lot of time talking about the "biz" of wedding snappers. And naturally the various "models" of the business, from shoot-and-burn (where you shoot the event and burn a cd/dvd of all images and give to the client) to the high-end "it's a Hollywood Event" shooters with big fancy albums and wall prints and muti-media shows.
There was a question asked in dPreview's "Pro" forum recently about why some wedding photog's can get away with charging so much. The "OP" (tech term: "original post-er", meaning the post or person that starts a thread) assumed that most people can't see the difference in the pictures from one photog to another. And really, that there wasn't that much of a difference in the "coverage" of one photog to another.
He then posted a possible conclusion that the higher-price photogs are just slicker sales-people, and can essentially bamboozle and befuddle potential clients into paying higher fees for what he thought was really a similar service of picture-taking.
I'd like to quote at length from a response to that "OP", noting what the wedding photography business really IS. This was posted by Paul Grupp, a photographer from Albany, NY. And I quote, partially, from his response:
Before you can answer that question to your own satisfaction . . . you need to understand what wedding photography is really all about.
I've been harping on this subject for a few weeks here. With all due respect, the average DPReview photographer is obsessed with cameras and image quality. These are certainly factors that go into wedding photography, but they're not really the main thing. You have to look past those familiar and comfortable subjects if you want to understand the wedding business.
If you could follow a wedding photographer from the marketing phase (creating and maintaining a website, schmoozing wedding planners and venues, attending bridal shows, evaluating and keeping up web presences on places like Wedding Wire and The Knot, working with wedding magazines to achieve placement of stories, images, and ads). . .
. . . to the customer contact phase, to the getting a meeting, the sales process, the contract negotiation, and the closing, to the engagement booking and session to the hand-holding and assistance in wedding day agenda planning. . .
Note, he hasn't even MENTIONED photographing yet, or all the care and handling of the clients and their images that comes during and after the wedding ... guiding their decisions for the selection and format/display possibilities that would be wise for them.
And I'm familiar enough with Paul Grupps' other posts to know he ASSUMES we are talking about photographers who know their technical craft "cold". Paul, like many pro's, assumes that someone who takes money to photograph a once-off event of TREMENDOUS emotional importance must be capable of producing good work under ANY forseen or unforseen circumstances. Period.
A wedding photography business is NOT just a photog who snaps pretty pictures and sells them like sausages at an outdoor fair. It is so SO much more. And, as commented a couple posts later than Paul's, if you don't get the difference (and some don't) then maybe you are not meant for being a "high-end" wedding photographer.
Yes, some don't ... but many of us can learn. That's what we're here for, learning ... about all aspects of photography.
We'll have more on this as time goes by.
Neil
