Reply To: WOAH! Serious fauxtog alert!

[fstopper89]

I’m not really seeing ‘crap” photos on her page either. The photos didn’t totally wow me, and she has places she could improve, but I would not consider her to be a fauxtog. I wouldn’t hire her for a wedding though, as she doesn’t seem to have the experience. I agree 2nd shooting is a great way to get that.

$2000 is actually pretty average for wedding photography. $500 for an entire day is quite frankly ridiculous. My first wedding I shot was under that… I was not advertising myself as a photog for hire and looking back my equipment and skill were lacking at the time, but my co-worker was on a tight budget and liked my photography and asked me to do it. i don’t think I was a fauxtog, since I was not advertising or trying to pirtray myself as something I was not, but some of my images from then were quite sub-par, but for what they paid me they got a good deal. They could not afford an established wedding photog and I was certainly much better than Uncle Jim with a camera.

this spring I was asked by another co-worker if I’d shoot her wedding. Now I’ve been established as a photographer for awhile and have since shot more weddings, as well as invested in much nicer equipment and learned a lot more since the first wedding. She asked me for a price and without knowing much about her wedding plans I told her it would be around $2000 if she wanted a disk of edited images or less without. I felt very insulted when she said “That’s insane!” I said “Well, weddings are big events and I take a lot of photos, and I carefully choose the best and edit them professionally which takes a lot of ti,e and skill.” She said “Oh well I don’t need all that editing and stuff. I just want photos.” That was kind of the end of our conversation. Of course I am not about to give away work that I don’t feel is the best representation of my skill, and editing is part of photography for me. I don’t have perfect SOOC shots except once in awhile. Turns out she was having a wedding in the park, was begging people to be her bridesmaids, was trying to get everything including the dresses for dirt cheap, and having the reception at a bar, and then her fiance left her a month before. Not exactlyan ideal wedding to shoot anyway.

Point being, there’s a reason wedding photography costs a lot and asking someone to make an exception on the price to suit your budget can come off very insulting. A photog isn’t going to change their mode of business for one person. If that photog booked 3 family sessions for that same weekend, and spent a few weeks editing the photos, they’d already make probably more than $500.