How much would you pay for your wedding photography?

[claiireee 10]

I know this isn't the point of the thread, or your post, but vicars work a lot more than just three hours on a Sunday!

[Chez2 10]

Hi Chez2,

 

im not going to answer you question with a breakdown of a photographers time and motion, rather give a few things to consider.

 

This is mostly just for fun and not to be taken too seriously

 

In the film days a photographer attended just at the brides house and church normally around 3 hours. They only took around 80 images in total and most didn't process the images themselves rather just sent to a lab. The client came to choose the 40 images to include in their album. The photographer slipped them in and away the client went with the album.

 

A Vicar gets an average wage £22K and works just 3 hours on a Sunday thats around £150 ph.

 

I have a friend who owns a restaurant, he buys 10Kg of onions for £3 which makes around 300 onion bhajis. He sells these at £4 each serving making a profit of £1,197. Thats a return on investment of 39,000 % ouch..

 

A lot of people in the UK work for minimum wage of around £6.50 ph. I queued to have my car washed the other day, on average it took 5 mins for 1 guy to wash one car for £5. Thats £60 an hour. ???

 

Wayne Rooney gets £140K per week? But that week he didn't play he sat on the bench.. Yet he still gets £140K for doing nothing...

 

A Tea Bag costs 1p and sells in a cafe for £1.99 ???????? Thats a ROI of 19,800 % ( no wonder its hard to get a cup of tea in an indian restaurant, theres enough mark up on it for them to bother with. )

 

Just a few of my funny thoughts this morning please feel free to add your own.....

 

Very funny. You should be a politician! You have illustrated my point nicely. In the good old days film and developing was expensive, so was good camera equipment in relation to what you can get for your money now. Also it wasn't easy to cover up mistakes. I'm not going to hog the thread but the thread does ask how much would you pay so I will summarise my points.

 

I realise you have to pay for experience and results so you can't make the comparisions you have done. In my opinion photographers ask far too much money, I don't blame them if the can get it. I would pay the going rate for a basic package from an established photographer. I prefer random shots to capture the real person and their personality rather than posed shots. I only had the 'standard' posed shots so nobody was missed off. I was on a budget back then but I still wouldn't go overboard now. Its a good job I'm not your average client.

[Rjh147 10]

I didn't want to get involved in this conversation again as it is beginning to feel a little argumentative however I feel this should be addressed.

In my opinion photographers ask far too much money, I don't blame them if the can get it.

 

I would strongly disagree with the inference that photographers are driving up prices intentionally in any way. Quite to the contrary due to market being flooded with so many new young photographers with entry level cameras willing to charge coppers for their time, we regularly have to review our prices to try and stay competitive.

 

What has changed since the digital revolution is the clients expectations. As Trupix was saying, where previously clients would be overjoyed with 40 images in their album. Now clients are expecting discs of all of the images taken over the full day provided to them as well.

 

Often this can equate to hundreds of images all of which need processing. If anything since everyone, including "Uncle Bob" with his entry level d-slr, has gone digital, I spend significantly more time, 4 or 5 times more, developing images.

This is also perpetuating by, as you put it, more and more clients -

prefer random shots to capture the real person and their personality rather than posed shots.

- which requires, again more and more images are taken, processed and delivered.

 

Therefore it could be argued, and I know many professional photographers that will cite this same reason, though the overheads have decreased, the time investment has increased significantly and to be honest that increase in time far outweighs the cost of the actual film and processing costs that may have been the base foundation for the prices photographers previously charged.

[Tom Walton 10]

I was having a conversation recently at the Norton Farmer's Market, where I had my wedding display. The lady was looking at my prints and remarked that she and her husband would have been married 50 years this month but that he has been dead for 47 years. All her memories of him are now contained in her wedding album which contained 15 black and white images. She looks at them every week.

That is the joy of a wedding album, looking at your memories. Not filled away on a computer.

On the many points about wedding costs, apart from the wedding shoot and a pre=shoot (that's two days) there is at least 2/3 working on the images even if they are going to be supplied only on a disc. The disc images are all printable. There are other associated costs such as travelling to take into account so a wedding under £1000 inc. an album is very good value for money.

 

Tom

Tom Walton Photography.