I'm looking forward to David Ziser dropping the other shoe in a couple of days. On scottkelby.com last week, in the first of two parts, he blogged about the "perfect storm" that he says has impacted wedding photography over the last few years. If you haven't read it you should. Factors David mentions include the Great Recession, the "Walmart Effect" – everything from consumers' ingrained cut-price mentality to the fact that "wedding photography has come to Walmart" (via the acquisition of Bella Photography by CPI Corporation). Plus of course the growth of digital photography (not just digital To View More >>

My clients would not dream of paying me $4000 for an empty photo album. Nor would they pay that for a book with somebody else’s photographs in it. They wouldn’t pay me that much even if I supplied them the files to print the images themselves. My clients would pay me $5000 for a book that told a story about themselves that was beautiful, personal, and emotional. The tooth fairy only pays up on the real thing. What is a sample album? Sample albums have several jobs. The main one is to set up an expectation. An expectation of quality, style, and professionalism. Our sample album(s) are what To View More >>

When Kayla and I were planning our wedding we decided... We'd rather pay someone to design and assemble our invites than do it ourselves. We'd rather pay our photographer a travel fee and have him sort out his own travel. We'd rather pay a wedding co-ordinator to run things on the day. That's us shifting the responsibility ... taking the easy route ... spending more than necessary. Whatever. But during that period, our time was worth more. Managing the process as opposed to doing it ourselves left us with plenty more time for the things we really wanted, or needed, to focus on. How valuable is To View More >>

Pre-wedding engagement shoots are fairly common these days - but Michelle and TJ Getz of Getzcreative go one step further and offer their clients post-wedding shoots too. These post-wedding "Creative Sessions" allow them to offer a distinctive and creative photography session without the pressures of the wedding day. For example, Michelle shot Lauren and Josh's wedding in October 2008 in South Carolina and the couple are working with Michelle to put together their Queensberry wedding album (they've nearly doubled their page count from 18 to 30 pages!). But Lauren and Josh also purchased this To View More >>

What does a photographer do when their client wants something ‘a bit different’ for their wedding day? Ask Steve and Heidi of Aim 2 Please Photography. That’s exactly what they were asked by Katherine and Steve who were married at a stunning golf course resort north of Toronto on a warm spring day. The bride and groom were married by the bride's Grandparents, who are both members of the Salvation Army, then headed off to several locations around the resort where Steve and Heidi has set specific shots up. They posed with chairs in a grassy field, under a white canopy bed and set up a shoot To View More >>