In the previous post, we discussed how planning a wedding often involves making some very difficult budget compromises. But before you give just about every aspect of your wedding an equal turn at the chopping block, remember that your wedding photographs live forever. Everything else from your wedding gets either eaten or put away, but your photographs are enjoyed, shared, and handed down for generations.

But just how do you select the right wedding photographer and why are some so much more expensive than others?

Consider this short story:

Picasso, waiting in a restaurant for his food began to doodle on his napkin. A customer came by and asked if they could buy what he had just drawn. He said sure, $20,000. The customer said, “It only took you 5 minutes.” Picasso agreed, then said, “However, it took me 40 years to learn how to do it in 5 minutes!”

Side-by-side price comparisons don’t work for visual arts, like contemporary or fine art painting, and they don’t work with wedding photography either. Take-home point here: choose the best photographer you can afford – and if you need to stretch your budget a bit to hire that photographer, pull from something else. For example, my wife and I created our own floral centerpieces for the tables for our wedding (with the help of the wedding party) so that we could afford to hire the photographer that we really wanted. Sure, if we could have afforded to hire a florist or decorator, we would have, but since we were on a limited budget at the time, we chose to make compromises on many things, but we didn’t compromise on photography. And we are so glad we did it that way.

As wedding photographers in the San Francisco Bay Area and now also the Seattle Area, James Thomas Long Photography has had the opportunity to work with so many amazing couples over the years, with budgets that range from under $20k all the way up to several hundred thousand. We’ve photographed small, intimate weddings, and huge events with 500 or more guests. But no matter the size or the budget of the wedding, we always create beautiful works of art for our clients. Always. Not just when they’ve spent a lot of money on the venue and all of the other details, but always. Whether you spend $40k on décor or just $3k, we will find and capture the beauty. Whether your dress was $15k or $500, we will capture you (and your new husband!) looking absolutely radiant. Doing so requires intense focus, a very careful eye, and impeccable attention to detail. And it requires all sorts of talent and experience. No matter how much you spend on everything else, you deserve to have your wedding photographs really make a statement.

Whoever you decide to hire to photograph your wedding, make sure that you absolutely LOVE their work! Make sure that they have plenty of experience and be sure to review samples of their work from several different weddings under different lighting conditions. They should be able to create beautiful images for all of their wedding couples, not just sometimes when the lighting is just right. Not just when the venue is really, really amazing, or the bride looks like a Vogue cover model. They should be able to capture the beauty of each and every couple. Every. Single. Time.

James Thomas Long Photography photographs weddings in and around the Seattle, WA area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and wedding destinations worldwide.

For more information, please visit:

https://jamesthomaslong.com/weddings

Contact: james@jamesthomaslong.com

415.567.4979