Wedding Photography: What to Ask to Get What You Want

No industry has a larger mark-up than the wedding industry. Take a perfectly innocent business, slap the word wedding in front and watch the prices rise exponentially. And it's especially true with wedding photography.

As a freelance photographer I've had plenty of experience shooting and editing weddings and engagement sessions. Here is some information to arm yourself with before diving into the saturated wedding photography market and questions to ask to make sure you get the best experience.

The wedding photography business has changed considerably in the last few years. Traditionally, you paid a session fee, which covered an amount of time determined with the photographer. For example, just portraits before the ceremony and traditional ceremony shots. Or the wedding ceremony, portraits and an hour of the wedding reception. However, while your fee covered all the shots in the time agreed upon, it did not actually include any prints. Your wedding photographer would send you a book of proofs (4x6 prints of all the best shots). Then, you chose which photographs you wanted larger prints of, made your order with your photographer and gave all the proofs back. If you chose not to order a shot, you pretty much never saw it agian. Maybe you kind of liked that funny picture of Aunt Sally at the reception, but weren't sure a single 4x6 print was worth $10. Tough luck. That's the business.

With the advent of digital photography the wedding photography business is much different. Proofs are usually digital, and most often available on-line. After the wedding, the photographer will email you the website and a password to view your photographs. Then you order straight from the photographer's website. Or your photographer will send you CD or DVD proofs with watermarked files of your photographs. These files are usually extremely small, so even if you do try to make prints on your own, not only are they watermarked, but they will have a lot of digital noise and grain.