We all love photography. It is what we do. We are artists and sometimes the business end of the business doesn’t really seem like our cup of tea. We would all be happy if all we had to do was shoot and edit and not have to worry about marketing and selling our services. Convincing potential clients of why they need to choose you can seem daunting but I am here to give you some advice. I am here to help you understand why you need to make them understand they need you.
Weddings can be such inspirational events. The grace, the charm, the elegance, the beauty, all things that make for great photographs. As a photographer I love to photograph weddings for exactly these reasons. They inspire me. They truly bring forth the meaning of a fairytale. Everything seems possible on a wedding day. As a photographer it would be ideal for us to be able to control all aspects of a shoot from lighting to setting to color to positioning. Unfortunately during a wedding this is just not possible. Some of the hardest shots we take are on the move with less than ideal lighting with very limited timeframes in order to achieve beautiful timeless photos that will capture client’s memories forever. It is because of this reason that wedding photographers are both in high dollar demand and can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. It’s also because of this that your client needs your professional abilities.
Wedding photographers get a bad rap and unjustly so. Everyone with a digital camera calls themselves a professional these days. They print up a few business cards online, make a website, put up some cheap prices and start selling to everyone out there who wants to save a little bit of money on their day. They charge $300 bucks, shoot the entire wedding with their camera on automatic using an on-camera flash and give the client a CD with badly edited images and they call that professional and it makes us look bad. We’ve all seen it, we’ve all experienced it. I admit, my wife and I were no different and have experienced it ourselves.
I wasn’t a photographer 10 years ago when we got married. I had aspirations, I had my wife’s 35mm Canon Rebel but I had no clue how to actually use it and thus my mindset for the wedding was exactly that, “Let’s save some money and have a family member take the photos.” We’ve all heard it, we have friends who have said it, heck we’ve had clients tell us this but it truly is the biggest mistake they can make on their biggest day. When we got our photos probably 80% of them were unusable. It was terrible. My wife cried for days. We didn’t have many decent wedding photos at all because we wanted to save money and figured anybody with a nice camera can take photos right? Wrong, dead wrong.
Your clients need you because of that exact reason. As my friend Raul Salazar of Raul Salazar Photography would say, “They need the monkey behind the lens” and that is true. They are hiring you because you are educated in your craft; you have taken the time to do dozens and dozens of shoots to get comfortable with your camera. A wedding is a living breathing ever changing photoshoot and not just any photographer can handle that. You have to be able to make decisions on the go and quickly to capture those timeless moments that will last their lifetimes. You have to let your client know that yes, you are more expensive than the guy down the street for $300 bucks and for good reason; you know what you are doing. They are paying for what they get.
That old saying doesn’t hit home anywhere better than it does with wedding photographers, you truly do get what you pay for. Now I admit every now and then you get that diamond in the ruff but really, does your client want to risk these memories that can never be recreated on some guy just because they are cheap? I think not. That is why your client needs to hire you as their wedding photographer and that is why you need to be comfortable with letting them know this. They are not the professional in this business relationship, you are and as the professional it is your job to help them understand why they need to make this a priority for their once in a lifetime event.
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My name is Robert Hillis and I operate Memories of Your Lifetime Photography. I specialize in wedding and portrait photography in San Antonio, TX. I am an artist at heart and I love to “Paint with my Lens”! I’ve been shooting professionally for about 5 years but I’ve been doing it for fun forever! I truly love what I do and I think that shows through in my photos.
I like to tell my clients that because a wedding is truly a once in a lifetime event, what I offer them will stand the tests of time. Of all of the things that you buy for your wedding, what I offer will outlast them all. The food gets eaten, the cake goes away, the tuxedo is returned and the limo is a distant memory. The dress may stay in the closet out of view for years to come but my images, my photos, will outlast you, your kids, their kids and even their kids kids. I’m not just taking photos, I’m preserving your family history. I am capturing the Memories Of Your Lifetime!
Robert, Thanks for sharing your experiences and your perspective. You’re right on so many of your points!
Thanks Chris. It really does make a difference. Our clients need us and we need to share with them the importance of having us capture there events.
thank you for putting this together so that others can know how it really is. Im going to ‘pass this on’ and hope that it opens up some more brides eyes who are trying to save a buck! Thankyou!
I agree. They are saving, they are putting their memories at risk.