Formals, formals and fluffy marketing pieces
So this one is kind of for photographers but also for clients, of mine and other photographers, well, because blogs can’t just be fluffy marketing pieces where you see new pics week after week with a small description of how gorgeous X looked and how handsome and brave Y looked. We’ve grown up in an age where people have been marketing to us for years and we can see through that. So I’m adding this one to the 5 Reasons you shouldn’t hire me category.
Not all photographers are equal, you know, some shoot in more traditional style, some in a more free flowing style. At the end of the day, it depends on what you’re looking for. Most photographers will do a little bit of everything, but they will fall somewhere along that line between traditional and contemporary. If you’re looking for someone who will do 30+ formal group photos, you’re looking for someone more traditional. Do yourself and them a favour and ask. You may be someone who is looking for a more traditional portrait on the mantelpiece type of photography, or set up shots with a suitcase, or a bathtub or that one where the bride and groom are standing next to a wall where the photographer has added a X loves Y graffiti. You may even want spot colouring in your photos (that’s where the image is in black and white and a single area like the flowers is in colour – now you know what it’s called).
You may like what the photographer is showing on his fluffy marketing piece blog, but you need to ask how many formal portraits they take, how long they need for each one, how long do they need to do a portrait shoot before the ceremony (for the bride and bridesmaids, if they do that, and for the groom and groomsmen, if they do that). These are all factors that go into putting your timelines together. If the photographer has a bit of experience they may let you know that although your ceremony ends at 16h00, and you plan your 3 minutes per group for 20 groups, planning to finish at 17h00, your friends and family may want to congratulate you after the ceremony and that may take 20 minutes which you may want to budget for. That those 20 minutes will probably end up being taken out of the bride and groom shoot if they aren’t budgeted for, because the caterer has to have the food ready at a certain time or it will be cold. Which means that all those gorgeous portraits that you see on the fluffy marketing blog will have to be shot in 15 minutes.
The formals is a touchy subject, it used to be that wedding photography was all about the formals. Formals before the ceremony, formals after the ceremony at the church, and then the bride and groom would go to a nice garden area for some more formals of the two of them, or they would go to the photographers studio and have their formals done there. V reckons I need to explain the difference between formals of the b&g and portraits. Its very hard to explain, its really the difference between the kind of freestyle, fashion editorial type shoots that you see on this blog and the kind of images that most parents or grandparents have of themselves posing stiffly in front of some studio lights or under a tree. Then of course there are the formals for the guests (tableshots), which seem to be making a comeback.
I had to turn down a prospective client recently who wanted, I didn’t count but, at least 80 formals during the day and table shots at the reception. It wasn’t just that a traditional photographer would have been better for them, but when I did the math on the amount of formals, there just wasn’t enough time. I did try to work out the timelines for the client, but she insisted that it was doable. She couldn’t understand why I was turning her down, so I explained about the types of photographers and referred her to some friends who were more in line with her expectations.
Anyway, point of this story. Know what kind of wedding pics you want, know what kind of pics your photographer takes, not just the stuff in their portfolio/blog. For your sake and their sake. In our society we have grown up expecting to tell the service provider what kind of service we want and expecting them to deliver, try to imagine photographers more as chefs at high end restaurants, they have their specialties and they have their way of doing things and while you can get photographers to take whatever photo you want, its often like ordering a steak at a sushi restaurant. They will probably make it for you, but don’t be surprised if its raw.
Where was I, yes, budget your time, because at the end of the day when you’ve only budgeted 45 minutes for the bride and groom shots and are running 20 minutes or 30 minutes late, because maybe your guests wanted some quick snaps outside the church which you didn’t budget for and you only budgeted 3 minutes for that group shot of the entire wedding and Uncle Herbert decided that he needed a drink right then and Aunt Mildred couldn’t be found anywhere, the bride and groom portrait session is where that time will be taken out of. Yet, the bride and groom portrait session is often what wedding photographers sell themselves on. Odd isn’t it?
