Wedding Photographer Questions

If you’re soon to be married and you haven’t yet selected a wedding photographer,  you might need some advice and have some questions about how to select the best one for your wedding.  Listed below are some ideas and a few wedding photography questions to help you in your selection process.  There are things to consider and questions to ask your prospective wedding photographers.  Think about the issues involved in selecting a wedding photographer and compare the answers to the questions from each photographer your interview.  Educate yourself , compare, and then select the best wedding photographer based on the knowledge derived from the answers to the wedding photography questions listed below.   Good luck!

You might want to find a wedding photography directory in your area.  That way, you can go from wedding photographer to wedding photographer  and look at many web pages without getting sidetracked by pages that that appeared in the results of your search without any business being there.

Please visit the Pittsburgh Wedding photography directory

By looking at different photographer’s web pages, you can get a really good feel for the style of wedding photographer specializes in.  Styles are not always apparent and many photographers don’t really have a distinguishable style to their photography.  Even if they don’t have a style that you can articulate, you can get a feel for their shot list and how they go about shooting their weddings.  You can see if their pictures look exceptionally artsy or more normal in appearance.  The style of wedding photography you prefer may or may not match a particular photographer’s style.  If you don’t really like what you see, move on.  Most towns have quite a few wedding photographers in them, so there’s a lot to choose from.  Keep moving until you find the one, two or three you’re interested in.  If one looks interesting from their web page, go ahead and bookmark the sight and move on. 

After you’ve gone through all you care to, it’s time to go back and do a little more research.  Now it’s time to go back through your bookmarked pages and look for other clues that you can use to widdle down the competition.   Go back through each wedding photographer’s page and look for the following thing: 

Experience level – Make sure the photographer has more than one Bride shown on his web page.  Make sure that there are quite a few.  That will tell you that the photographer has been around a while and has shot more than one wedding.  At the same time, it would be nice to see a complete wedding too.  If there are twenty photos on the wedding photographer’s web page and they’re from twenty different weddings, that may tell you that they’ve done at least twenty weddings, or it may tell you that they only get one good shot a wedding.  If they have twenty good shots from twenty different weddings AND another twenty good shots from a single wedding, you’ve learned something…

Wedding photography price and packages, including extras – Most wedding photographers list their packages and prices on their pages.  This of course, is something to take into account unless your daddy’s really rich…  But most brides like to take this into account (big time).

Who‘s shooting the weddings? – Some wedding photography studios have multiple photographers.  Look to see if there is any indication that this is true.  If so, make sure that the shooter you’re talking about hiring, is the same one that shot the pictures you like.

Availability – Some photographers will list their open dates on their web sites.  If so, this can save you the trouble of calling, if you see that your date is not available.  If your date is available, this shooter may still be in the running.

There may be other clues in the web page.  If the photographer includes a copy of their contract or a list of clients, this may give you more information to help you compare wedding photography studios too.

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Make a telephone call to your perspective wedding photographers.

At this point, it’s time to call the photographers on your list.  I’ve listed a bunch of wedding photography questions that you need to ask to complete your education.  If you’ve asked all the questions and you think you still want to meet with the photographer, I suggest that you have the photographer fax of mail you a copy of his contract.  The devil is in the details sometime, and these details may mean the difference between hiring one photographer over another.

After the wedding photography questions

The next step is to actually meet with the two or three photographers that have made it into the finals…  Before you make any decision, you really should actually meet the photographer in person.  Don’t pass up this step and send in your deposit. You never know.  He may a have a third eye or something that you think might be a little distracting at your wedding and you won’t know this unless you meet him.  A wedding photographer’s appearance may or may not be a factor to you, but if the photographer has a tattoo of a swastika on his forehead, it’s a good thing to know ahead of time…

When you meet with a wedding photographer, you might ask to see some more of his photography so that you can get a better feel for his work.  Web pages are nice, but sometimes they just don’t contain enough images for you to get a real good feel for his style. While you’re looking at the samples, try to get a feel for his personality.  Is he easy to communicate with?  Is he a jerk?  Is he someone you want to share your wedding day with?

Okay, now you’ve gone trough the process.  It’s time to make a decision…  You’ve armed yourself with a lot of information and did a good bit of homework.  You can rest assured that you have the perfect wedding photographer for your wedding day.

Good luck!