Top 10 Questions to ask your wedding photographer before you book
Can I see the three most recent wedding Stories?
This answers a lot of questions in one go. It’s easy to photograph a few weddings, (or styled shoots, for that matter) and select 20 top images to put on your site and portfolio. But you’re hiring a photographer to document my wedding day. Your once-in-a-lifetime event, celebrating with friends and family, and you want to know if they can consistently deliver on any given day. Weddings are an uncontrolled event, and typically have the worst lighting conditions 90% of the time. Regardless of the venue, are they able to deliver on their type of style of photography? We blog every wedding with the intention of each post being a complete set of images that tell the whole story of the couple’s day. Our hope is that complete strangers could look at any one of them and feel the wedding day as they see each moment. We believe these types of photos are what will last and be cherished for generations.
2. What happens if you’re sick and can’t come to my wedding?
I think every wedding photographer’s biggest fear is not being able to photograph the wedding. A recurring nightmare is that we are halfway through the wedding and I realize I haven’t taken any photos yet! Photographers gotta photograph, and when they can’t, it’s terrible. I have yet to miss one of the 350+ weddings I have photographed, but I have my wife who’s been photographing as long as I have, and Louis who started working with us back in 2019 as backups.
3. How do you edit your photos ?
Today, anyone can buy a camera, take a ton of photos, and use AI to cull and edit their images. Someday this might look good, but it just doesn’t yet and that might be why the photographer in question is so cheap. Back in the days of film, photographers used to dodge and burn (lighten and darken) areas of an image and apply contrasting gels to help bring the photo to life. This was a natural part of the whole process. We have adopted this type of editing in our workflow and all our images are edited using this technique in our editing software. The results are breathtaking and help to tell the story. It’s a ton more work, but we think it’s worth it. I tested out AI out for parts of my workflow, but it consistently missed the moments from the day and was just looking for the generic posed shots, and when it came it editing it was just applying a simple filter and basic cropping to the images. I still ended up needing to go through and do my normal fine-tuning to help each image pop and tell a stronger story.
4. Walk me through a typical wedding working with you.
It’s more important to find out what the photographer is like and does before you tell them what you’re looking for, in case they just agree with what you say you’re looking for. And you’ll be spending all day with this person, so you want to get an idea what that will feel like. How much will they intervene? How flexible are they with getting their photos while also enhancing the day for you? Will it feel like paparazzi (some couples love this!) or a little more behind-the-scenes?
I like to get a good hour or two of the getting-ready time while you’re hanging out with your friends and family. If things are slow and not much is happening, I might take some quick detail shots, but mainly I am getting to know your crew and family and they are getting to know me. I used to set up the first look if couples were choosing to do that, but I have found it’s far better to not get involved as much in directing so I can capture more genuine moments. If you want to see each other before, just go see each other—I will document it. If you do want to do the group portraits before, I will do those (typically not more than an hour) and I get couple portraits, bridal party if you have one, and family portraits. This is where I do my directing and use my “outside voice” to keep everyone in line. My goal is not to bore everyone + keep it short and sweet, so we can get back to the celebration at hand. Then comes the ceremony, where I typically move around and then stay mostly in the back during the homily. When the rings and vows start (the emotion and moments), I move closer to the front area and get a mix of tight and wide-angle shots with my two cameras. Right after the ceremony, I like to call the “Golden 10 Minutes. Some of the most amazing moments happen right after you are married. I will just document what happens. If you join cocktail hour and you have added a photobooth, I or the second photographer will man it. This is a great option if you want more professional portraits with friends and family. It creates way less stress and a great setup for these types of photos. Then dinner, where I will take a break, start looking through some images for a sneak peek if you got one, and set up lights if they are needed for the reception. Once the reception is in full swing, I am just documenting as things progress, and usually stay until either the send off or the slow-close of the party. We actually made up this timeline to help our couples have a stress-free day.
5. How long is your turnaround time?
I have heard some nightmare stories of couples waiting 2+ years for wedding photos! That is so much more time for something bad to happen to your wedding photos. We typically take 2-4 weeks to deliver your whole wedding gallery.
6. What is your image backup system?
I am nuts about image backup. I shoot with two cameras on me at all times at a wedding, both having two memory card slots—one slot’s only job is backing up. This is in case one of the cards fail. As soon as I get home, I load the images onto my computer and back them up to my hard drive. This means that just after a few hours after your wedding, your wedding photos are stored in three different locations. After I edit and deliver the images, the raw files get stored in a fire safe, and the whole edited wedding gallery is uploaded on an online platform (Smugmug) where it will be safe for life. Or until AI takes over and destroys us all. Another reason that printing is becoming more and more important.
7. Do you travel for weddings & what is your travel fee?
Sometimes a wedding photographer from out-of-town + travel fee is actually a better price than a local photographer because of local pricing. And a photographer whose style you love & who you connect with is the most important!
I love documenting real stories, so if you have a story that needs documenting then I am happy to travel anywhere. Right now we are actually offering free travel to anywhere in the USA when you add two add-ons to our ultimate documentary package.
8. If your style is mostly candid,
will I still get formal, posed portraits?
This is important to ask because you can get a good idea of what it might look like working with that photographer on your wedding day. Do they direct the whole time? Do they never direct at all? Our style is for sure mostly candid, and we prioritize getting great leading lines and epic lighting to capture the most important unstaged moments. All that said, posed portraits are important—you spent time to look like a million bucks, so we want to make sure to show you off. You also have family coming in from all over the place and getting some nice portraits will be important to you and to them. My portrait studio is my other passion, which has honed my skill of getting beautiful portraits much faster so you can enjoy more of your day.
9. What is your experience with working in different lighting situations?
“Natural light wedding photographer” is often code for: they don’t know how to work with external lighting (aka off-camera flashes). If you're getting married in a stunning location close to sunset, you are gonna have a hard time finding any photographer that takes really bad photos. They call it golden hour for a reason—it’s stunning soft light and easy to shoot in. But what about that unexpected rain storm, the high noon harsh light for portraits, blinding brightness for the ceremony? I have been shooting weddings full-time since 2011, shooting in hurricanes, 110+ heat, Mt. Hood blizzards, dank church basements, etc., and still capturing the moments. It’s so important to be well-educated in different lighting options because weddings can have many unforeseen lighting issues. This is why it’s so important to look at past weddings photographers have photographed to see how they did in different lighting conditions.
10. Do you want me to give you a list of specific shots we would like?
This is respectful & helpful for understanding their shooting style. Pinterest & blogs might tell you to make a list of the “can’t miss” moments, because you don’t want to get your final photos and realize your photographer missed all the important stuff, right?? Well, yes, but we believe this is more about the photographer you choose than you having to stress out about getting them to take the right photos.
For us, if the specific shots are bride and groom with particular family members then, for sure! The family photos shot list is so you can relax, and enjoy your people instead of having to be mentally/loudly ticking off photo combinations.
If you want specific shots like “mother zipping up the dress,” “dad seeing me for the first time,” etc, we vote to let the moments happen, and hire a photographer you trust to capture them. We’ll be by your side and sneaking around to get the moments unfolding in other locations that you might not have even seen on the wedding day. We don’t want you staging photos and we don’t want to be staging photos either. We want you to celebrate, have a great wedding, and have a photographer you can trust to truly capture what happened!
