Wedding Photography Buzz - Digital Wedding Secrets

I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that engaged couples are still getting married despite a recession. It’s bad enough that almost all business industries are getting hit with the economic crisis, but what’s a starting-up wedding photographer to do if he or she cannot get clients who are willing to dole out money for a set of wedding pictures to be taken by a professional?

What if engaged couples just go with the trend of purchasing disposable cameras and allowing their guests to take their pictures? Or maybe they will just borrow a pretty decent digital camera from a friend and allow a trusted uncle or cousin to take the wedding photos?

This is where your business sense as a wedding photographer should come in. For me, offering scaled back wedding photography packages is a must if you want to keep clients coming to you for their wedding coverage amidst the economic recession.

I do have a few ideas in mind regarding this. First, you can take a look at the current wedding photography packages that you are offering to your clients. If you know that they are really on a shoestring budget, there is still a way for them to enjoy professional wedding photography without paying an arm and a leg for it.

Usually, it’s the prints which make up most of the cost of the wedding photography package. What if you offer them a purely digital wedding photography package? You can probably squeeze in 8R prints of five of their best wedding shots, but the other photos will be on an online gallery and on CD or a DVD copy. This will significantly lower the costs, and they can just order a physical wedding album later on.

If the couple does want a printed album, then you can try to lower the costs of the wedding photography packages that you are offering in other ways. Instead of paying an additional photographer, you can probably just cover the entire wedding by yourself and just use additional equipment.

The point is, you need to go to the financial level that your clients currently are in order to keep up with these tough economic times – and the best way to do this is by offering scaled back wedding photography packages.

I’m quite proud to say that the best aspect of wedding photography where I excel at is setting the expectations of a couple about the results of my work as a photographer.

After the wedding ceremony and reception are over, the only thing that will be left of the couple to remember their big day by are the wedding pictures. This is exactly the reason why wedding photographers are carrying a huge responsibility on their shoulders. The engaged couple are entrusting us to capture on film the events as they unfold during one of the most important days of their lives, so we might as well do a darned good job out of it, right?

And this is where your skills at setting the couple’s expectations should come in. You will not be chosen as the wedding photographer if either the bride or the groom does not like the style of work that you have. Since they already have a preview of the wedding photos that you did before them, the couple might give you feedback on which particular shots it is that they fell in love with.

You may want to recreate a similar shot during their wedding, or take an entirely different shot that the couple previously agreed on. Yet another important aspect of setting the couple’s expectations is asking them to create a list of the must-have weddings shots to be taken on their wedding day.

This way, the couple will get to see the pictures that they expect to see – and more. If you want your reputation as a wedding photographer to improve, word of mouth is still the best way to go. And when you exceed the expectations of a couple about the output of the wedding album that they will receive, word is bound to get around and you will get more clients in the future.

More importantly, make sure that the couple is aware of the terms and conditions of your covering their wedding event. After showing them your style of work, make sure to ask the couple about the number of shots that they want, the moments during the wedding that they want photographed for posterity, the prints that they will receive, the price of the wedding photography charges and the possible additional charges that they may incur, if any.