subject: Why does the price of wedding photography differ so much? [print this page] Why does the price of wedding photography differ so much?
There are many different types of weddings, just like there are many different types of wedding photographer! You may see some photographers websites of people offering to photograph your wedding for 250 and other photographers charging 10 or 20 times that price. What causes the huge discrepancy?
As with many things, you get what you pay for up to a point. Full time professional wedding photographers rely on their wedding photography commissions to survive and lead the lifestyle they think they deserve. Full time professional wedding photographers have fairly large costs which they have to cover before making any salary for themselves. A professional camera (not including the lens) costs at least 2000 and last for 1 - 2 years of full time use (50 weddings a year). Professional wedding photographers will ahve at least 3 of these in their camera bags - obviously they need spare kit. High quality batteries are around 100 each and you wouldn't want your photographer to skimp on camera batteries would you? Lenses, which fortunately last considerably more than the cameras themselves cost between 1000 and 3000 each and of course the photographer needs to have spares. A good quality flashgun costs 500 - again, spares are needed. It's not uncommon for a full time professional wedding photographer to have a camera bag on their shoulder during your wedding containing 8,000 worth of equipment (all which needs insuring!) along with another 5,000 worth of spare kit in the book of their car.
Back at the office, a computer capable of quickly editing and storing the 3000+ wedding photographs from your day costs between 2,000 and 5,000 - not to mention the 2,000 laptop they use to create your slideshow to show on the day. As you know, computers go out of date pretty quickly and these need replacing ever 2 - 3 years at least. Professional grade software isn't cheap either. Then there's the cost of traveling to the client meetings, scoping out the venues, dry cleaning their suit every week etc etc etc. It all mounts up to quite a cost for one person to bear. It's not uncommon for photographers to have 20,000 worth of costs every year. That's before you take into account any training courses they should attend to keep their skills up to date.
So how do some photographers photograph weddings for 250? The answer is simple - they cut corners to cut costs. A photographer charging 250 - 500 will not be doing it full time, they'll have a "day" job that pays the bills and will be doing weddings on the weekend to earn a bit of extra pocket money. They probably won't have 5,000 camera and lens combinations capable of capturing stunning, high quality images in low light. They'll be using cameras that look professional, but that cost maybe 350 - 500 and their lenses will be the cheap kit lenses that come with the camera. Hopefully they'll have spare kit, but it will probably be the bear minimum. They may not have any sort of public liability or professional indemnity insurance. As they're not photographing weddings full time, they won't have the time or inclination to post process your photographs to the same extent as a full time pro. If they have another source of income, there will be less motivation to create stunning works of art that bring in more business through referrals than someone who only has wedding photography to put food on their family's table.
Of course there is plenty of room in the wedding photography market for everyone. Just because someone doesn't photograph weddings full time, or have professional grade equipment doesn't mean you definitely won't get great pictures. Similarly, spending 2,000 on your wedding photographs doesn't necessarily guarantee you'll absolutely love your images. Some people just aren't that worried about having amazing pictures and would rather spend their money on the dress, cake or honeymoon. Having a 250 photographer who's sole intention is to take photographs on your big day is far better than not having any photographer at all and in the end you'll spend your budget on what you think is important to you.
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