Expert: Wedding Photographics - 2/25/2008

Question
John,

I've read some of your posts and have checked out your website.  You seem to be very busy with weddings. Aren't you putting in a lot of hours and is it worth the money with all the custom processing of the digital pictures you give to your customers?  Why did you decide to give your customers the photo quality JPEGs on DVDs?

Thanks Jennifer

Answer
Hi Jennifer,

I've been shooting weddings with medium format film using Pentax 645 cameras for over 23 years. Business was good.  After a few years I decided to provide the film negatives to my wedding customers.  I still allowed myself what I felt was a fair profit for my talent, time and labor.

A little over two years ago I started shooting digital. It didn't take me long to decide to provide the digitally mastered photo-quality JPEGs to my customers - at what I feel is a fair profit for my talent, time and labor.

Brides today have so many album options available to them.  I've simply switched around charging fairly for my talent, time and labor: instead of keeping the "digital negatives" and charging high prices for post-production assembly of albums and framing large wall portraits - I charge for my photography & photoshop talents by selling the photo-quality JPEGs which I have custom processed.

Now I do offer upscale wedding albums such as GraphiStudio and other albums which are available only through professional photographers.  This is a legitimate service and I don't feel I need to hold my customers "ransom" by keeping the hi-res JPEGs and charging for my album services!  That's all.  Over 50% of my wedding clients order albums from me even though I provide them over 600+ custom processed JPEGs on their DVDs!  If they don't want me to provide my legitimate album services, that's fine with me because instead of spending time in album post-production, I have more time with my family and/or shooting another wedding and providing better customer service.

My customers love the OPTIONS I provide with this arrangement.  It also enables me to charge a lower entry price point for my services than most of my competitors.

To be honest with you, there is a lot of "resistance to change" and even hostility by some other pro wedding photographers and other wedding industry people about providing the hi-res photo-quality JPEGs to wedding clients.  But you know something?  They all can have their opinions.  The bottom line is that I'm very happy with my working arrangement and it is also making a lot of happy brides.  My arrangement benefits the bride and me as well.

I receive emails now and then from photographers who aren't really happy with their businesses.  They admit they wish they were more successful .  .  . and then in about the same breath they criticize me for providing the digitally mastered images to my clients!  Well, bottom line is I'm happy and my customers are happy.

How much time does it take?  Well, I can type over 50 words a minute.  (I'm also a home-based website designer).  With this typing dexterity, I'm able to process RAW files using Bibble and photoshop CS3 for tweaking the JPEGs to produce about 1,000 digitally mastered JPEGs in a day.  Bottom line: I spend about 40 hours per client between shooting engagement, bridal and the Wedding Day and processing all those images.  I now shoot between 25 to 30 weddings per year. This leaves me a few weeks for vacations, shooting general portraiture during the week and designing websites. After all business operating expenses and shooting up to 30 weddings per year (to avoid burn out), many self-employed photographers make between $35,000 to $90,000 a year.

Wedding Photographer John Wilson
http://www.weddingphotographics.net
Chattanooga, Tennessee