I seem to be sending the same email over and over again these days, so I figured I’d add it to the blog and maybe that will help explain things a bit. Essentially what happens is that someone will have their heart set on us photographing their wedding, send through a price request a year in advance – a perfectly reasonable time frame btw – find out that I don’t have any dates open for that month, and send through another email wondering how it was possible that I don’t have their date available.

I shoot 40-50 dates a year, I try to space them out so that I shoot four a month, except for Jan, Dec, June and July where I shoot three. Once I have those four days in the month booked, I close that month off. So while I may have your particular date open, I can’t actually shoot that much from a post production and admin perspective. In other words, I may have the actual date open, but I can’t actually fit in the post production, album making, printing of photos, photoshoping, contracts etc. I made the mistake this year of booking a couple of extra dates because of various reasons … I got emails from cool people, people who sounded like the kind of people whose wedding I would love to photograph, or they were in cool places, or they mentioned the word baobab. Anyway, August was a terrible month for me, I barely slept, I hardly saw my friends. I shot some amazing weddings though, met very cool people, got some killer photographs, and I wouldn’t swap it for all the little plastic toys in China.

I also got really run down and stressed. I did investigate getting an assistant to do some of the album work and answer emails and all that, but in order to cover their salary I would have had to shoot another eight weddings a year, and then I would never get to see V. So that is the reason why I don’t have a Thursday available in November 2009, as unlikely as it seems.

The second situation, is that because of … I actually don’t know what, but it’s getting worse, couples are booking 16+ months in advance, add the fact that sometimes I wait months for the signed contract, can’t get hold of the couple because they used a disposable email address that they hardly check, and I don’t feel I can take their date away without telling them. Couples are also canceling a lot more often than they used to, I suspect as a result of booking so early, and this isn’t just me, a lot of photographers I am in contact with have mentioned a similar trend. I’m not sure why, but I suspect that it is related to such early booking, but it means that I have to try and book someone fairly last minute, because while the retainer does take the sting out of the cancellation, it doesn’t cover for the loss of income for the month. At the moment I have an opening in January, two in March and one in May, so you’re looking at people who canceled anywhere between four and eight months before their wedding. I do contact people who have asked to be notified if there was a cancellation for their month, but I really don’t want to start a waiting list type of scenario. It isn’t fair to anyone, you, me or the photographer with who you’ve booked just in case.

This entry was posted Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Andrea, Info, life.