Well yesterday we photographed the wedding of Rob and Taylor at Hotel ZaZa in Dallas and what a party that was, we will have a lot of photos to share from that event in a few weeks but now that the big day is past, I can post the bridals we did at Hotel ZaZa in the Rockstar Suite.

If you haven’t been to Hotel ZaZa, you gotta go, if nothing else but to hang out at the Dragonfly club!

Let there be bridals!!

Having photographed Taylor now a few times, I do have to say that she is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. Rob is really a very lucky man and Jabeen and I are truly lucky to count Taylor as one of our friends.

Here is a session that I just shot in the Dallas area for Evan and Salim. We caught the last day of the cherry blossoms at the Arboretum so while they were not in full bloom, I still think we got an awesome session.

Looking forward to photographing Evan and Salim’s wedding later on in the fall.

Why do photographers charge so much?

One of the biggest issues that we professional photographers face is why do we charge so much, when we’re only there for 10 hours taking photos. So i’m hoping to write this note to hopefully better educate clients on why we charge what we charge. The same also applies to pretty much every vendor that you hire for your wedding, but more specifically to your wedding photographer/videographer.

Here is how a typical wedding goes for a professional photographer from start to finish, but before I start, let me define the parameters for the wedding:

• 10 hours of coverage
• Engagement Session
• Enlargement from the session
• Bridal Session
• Enlargement from the session
• Framing
• Album Design and Production
• Shipping of various products
• Consultations

As you will see when we go through this list that the 10 hours are actually the smallest part, but let’s dive in:

The initial consultation

For a good photographer who really wants to get to know you and wants to get to know your day, this consultation can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to sometimes 2 hours. After all how can a photographer really cover your day if they don’t know who you and your fiance are as people and as a couple. A good consultation often goes over what you like, your time spent together as a couple, interests, dislikes and places that mean something to you. To be conservative we’ll factor in 1 hour for this process.

The Contract Process

Nowadays it is rare for a client to simply sign on the dotted line at the initial meeting. This is actually good, because it shows that clients are savvy and want to get the best vendor for their event. A photographer will typically spend over two hours, maybe more going over the contract, generating the invoices, processing payments and the back end book keeping. To be conservative we will factor in 1 hour for these tasks.

The Engagement and Bridal sessions

We will combine these as they are fairly similar but once the consultations are done a typical bridal and engagment session, each will last around 2hours of actual photography time and an equal amount of time in processing the photos and retouching the enlargements for final production. So we take 8 hours for the total time spent on the engagement and bridal sessions and the production of the prints.

The actual wedding shoot

We will typically for a full day spent 10 hours on a regular church wedding and the reception. This includes 2 hours of getting ready, one hour for ceremony and formals another hour for location portraits of couples and 6 hours at the reception. However for each hour we spend at the event, we are spending 2hours behind the computer.

This includes the time to download the files, sort the keepers from the rejected photos, process the proofs, which typically involves fixing the color, the brightness, cropping and also time spent backing up files, creating web galleries and also burning DVDs for shipping. So a typical 10 hour shoot results in over 30 hours of work, the majority of which the client never sees.

Sure there are photographers that can have your photos online within 24 hours and of all the galleries that i’ve seen that were put online the day after the wedding, there was only one photographer who did a GREAT job and currently he is wanted by 30 brides because he is out of business.

The Album Design Process

The album design process can typically take anywhere between 10 minutes to 20 minutes to design one layout in the album. A layout is two sides in your wedding album and often photos have to be cropped, retouched, put on the actual canvas and moved around to create a harmonious design.

The designs can be simple or complex but at the basic level the photos have to be pulled from the master gallery, sorted, categorized according to the time of the event, then put together on the layouts and then when the client approves the album, fully retouched. If the client comes back with changes that also adds additional time to the entire design process. So with that in mind let’s say a typical layout will take anywhere between 20 to 30 minutes, given that no album is approved without some changes being done.

With the above numbers a typical 15 layout album will take approximately 450 minutes to completely design, from start to finish and including changes. That’s roughly 7.5 hours, we’ll drop the 30 minutes because the computer is running really fast, so we got done in 7.

Shipping

We’ll factor in an hour of shipping over the course of the entire event and this includes, packaging and shipping, proof DVDS, contracts, receipts and the actual album.

So where do we stand?

Looking at the time we have the following:

Consultation – 2 hours
Contract – 1 hour
Engagement and Bridal – 8 hours
The wedding shoot and processing – 30 hours
The album design and approval – 7 hours
That’s a total of 48 hours worth of actual work that a good photographer has to do without cutting any corners (and the album design process is VERY conservative) to produce a good product.

But I found XYZ photographer who is only charging 50% of what you are charging.

The wedding photography market currently is diluted with thousands upon thousands of photographers entering the industry on a yearly basis. Some of these new photographers are really good, while others are really really bad.

We have seen some photographers charge $600.00 for an entire wedding with albums and a year later, they are gone. We have also seen Groupons for ridiculously low session fees and the photographer ends up selling hundreds upon hundreds of sessions. They have no idea how they will work them all but they do so.

A good photographer knows that in order to give their client time, process the photos in a good way and actually come up with a great album and not rush through the whole process takes time. They also charge for their time to cover taxes, insurance and health care.

Sure you can always find that diamond in the rough that has not figured out their value, but do you want to take chances with your wedding day and someone just discovering their calling?

So hopefully this will shed some light on why photographers or your wedding professionals charge what they do. There is just too much work on the back end that the client never sees.

We shot this session during the state fair in Dallas and really the sun went down  fairly quickly once we started.

We had a great time shooting this session so I hope you enjoy and do leave comments as I would love to hear back from you.

You don’t have to wait for thanksgiving to be thankful for all that’s around you.. Be thankful and enjoy and appreciate your family, your health and the fact that you woke up today and can start all over and make another run towards your life ambitions.

One of the things I absolutely love about weddings is the constant new ideas regarding decor.  I love decor around my house (when my wife let’s me) and one of the cool things about showing up to the reception is that I’m usually one of the first people to see the decor in a pristine condition.

Take a look at some of the inspiring shots done by me and my team at some of our weddings in the past year to get some inspiration.  Below the images you’ll find links to some of the top decorators around the Dallas area…

Here are some AMAZING decorators around the Dallas/Fort Worth Area that we have worked with in the past:

Donnie Brown Weddings

Jordan Payne Events

Wildflowers

Lagniappe Weddings

Timeless Elegance Weddings

Freesia Dallas

Affair to Remember

Elegant Affairs

It is always nice when you are recognized for your work and effort.  It’s feels even nicer when you are recognized from within your own industry.  A few months ago I was invited by London based publishing company Oliver Cameron Publishing to submit photos for their upcoming book Wedding Photography – A Guide To Posing.

The purpose of the book is to help up and coming and established pros ease their struggles and also provide inspiration for relaxed and contemporary posing.  Little did I know that I would end up getting 17 photos selected for inclusion in the book along side some of the top photographers in the world.

I should call this post “How Time Flies…” simply because it feels like yesterday I was photographing her parents Binish and Shaayan’s wedding.. Here are some photos from the session we photographed a few weeks ago in Fort Worth.

So let’s see…   what has changed since the last time I blogged?  Wel…

1. Lost is off the air
2. 24 is off the air
3. We have a new American Idol

and quite a few other things have gone on, but rest assured, during this time i’ve been working on creating a whole slew of new work to share with you guys.   Starting with a fabulous wedding I photographed for Nikki and Tony in Fort Worth.   Nikki and Tony are both Veterinarians and really put together a fabulous event with the reception taking place at the Fort Worth Club in downtown Fort Worth.

Here are some of my favorites from their big day.

A few days ago I had the pleasure of photographing my good friend Johnny and his family. I’ve known Johnny now some 15+ years and gotten to know his kiddos since they were little ones. We had a great time photographing the session in Irving, and I think we came away with some pretty cool portraits.