Finding other photographers to shoot at our wedding is a bit difficult given that I come from a family heavily involved in the photography business. Sacha's advice was to interview photographers and make sure they know that John Chua will be at the wedding.
The father of the bride happens to be a professional photographer with over 40 years of experience in advertising. The bride herself is a photographer, with a quarter of the experience but is also tough as nails. They've both got a booming voice and overwhelming personalities.
The father of the bride happens to be a professional photographer with over 40 years of experience in advertising. The bride herself is a photographer, with a quarter of the experience but is also tough as nails. They've both got a booming voice and overwhelming personalities.
At Sacha's wedding, her photographer was initially shaking in his boots. Lucky for her, he was a good sport and listened to well meaning advice. Training from mom meant I needed to ask questions that people don't usually ask, even when they're recommended questions based on numerous websites. Our set of questions we found on Wedding Photo USA.
With this is mind, John and I set to interview a whole slew of Dutch photographers before finally settling on the perfect one.
Among the many characteristics we were looking for, we wanted:
- A classic style - available light, some movement, candid and lots of emotions.
- A photographer that was either young enough to be eager and hungry for information, or seasoned enough to be confident and not buckle under pressure.
- We wanted raw files, and if they really feel they must submit retouched photos - then it had to be in 8-bit TIFF and not JPEG.
- Our guest should be allowed to take photographs if they wanted, even if they used a flash (which I doubt they would.)
- Options for with or without the photo album
- Flexibility in terms of style and direction
- Lastly, we were looking for rapport.
We needed to balance price with quality and our own impressions. Since we had no idea how much photographers normally charged for weddings in the Netherlands, John and I canvassed and averaged the price. Then we set our limit on how much we were willing to pay extra for someone we wanted. If it was within €200 difference, then we would consider - if it was more then we would keep looking.
Of course, to help bring down the cost, we needed to make some concessions and made a list of what we could do ourselves - or have done at a later stage when we stop reeling from the expense of two weddings.
We opted to:
- do the retouching ourselves if cost could be separated from the photography
- put together our own album (so we could include the photos from the Philippines)
- and forego the standard canvas printed photo (we can do that ourselves once we figure out where to put it)
- Trim the number of hours required from the photographer
- Do the pre-nup photos ourselves
In the end, we needed to be very fair with ourselves - so we chose our photographer the same way we chose our church and venue in the Philippines. John and I plotted all the photographers together on a spreadsheet (thank you Numbers for the modifiable car loan comparison sheet). We rated them per criteria on our questionaire plus one for rapport. The ratings ranged from best to bad, with three more steps in the middle (excellent, good & fair). These ratings were automatically averaged - you could do the same on any other spreadsheet by using a scale from 1-10.
In the end, Stephan won us over with his promptness, professionalism and his ability to make us utterly comfortable. He was also the very first to reply back to our email inquiry, and called us straight after to say hello. We found it wonderful that he ran an operation similar to ours, four photographers a studio and an excellent reputation. He also had a working history almost as long as my dad's and expressed that he'd be comfortable even when most of the guests might turn out to be photographers. John and I also asked around, and his was the name everyone mentioned off the top of their heads.
We loved the way he and his team welcomed us into their office. It was nice that they asked us about who we were and what we were envisioning for our wedding. After that, they showed us who they were and what their portfolio was before talking about business.
I learned to look at contact sheets from my dad, so I asked to look at a set from one of his more current weddings. He shoots digital the same way he would have shot in film, a few key photos here and there, then a change in location. This is good since it saves time with sifting through photos. We also noticed that his he had a different set of portfolio pictures than those found in his website - this gives us a good indication that he's got more good stuff than we had already seen.
John and I felt comfortable knowing that they had a standard rate sheet for work - and they weren't going to over charge us because they thought we could afford it. It also felt good that Stephan took the time to research about us beforehand. He saw the Adphoto link on my email and decided to visit the site before we even came. The conversations came easy, and when we left - John and I both felt that they were people who could possibly be like friends. On a day that is reputedly stressful, a couple could always use more of those.
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