Photographer selection and hints when buying services

Hi Alen,

I will leave the recommendations to others, but look for someone who is relaxed and can show multiple weddings that are consistently good. Be sure they will be happy for your to talk with a past couple/bride about their services. Look them up on Google and see who they are. Look for reviews of that company/photographer.

Hope that helps get you started.

Hi Alan,
First off, congratulations are in order! :)

A few general pointers to add to David's:
- make sure it is someone whose personality won't clash with bride & groom's :)
- I am assuming it is you who is paying for it? In any case, make sure the contract is very clear about all eventualities, about the timelines and about the deliverables (incidentally, who will be signing the contract? You or your daughter?)
- for video, ask for final edits from a number of weddings. I don't much care for raw footage. In fact, I don't much care for video at all ;-)
- check out Junebug Weddings for a list of top notch photographers in various states.

Along with the above recommendations, you really want 2 people to cover this. A photographer who is also trying to cover video at the same time will do poor job of both. I'd suggest looking for 2 separate companies who specialize in each genre. Earlier in my career, I worked for a video production company and we also did weddings. It takes full concentration to produce a good video as does still photography.

If you are looking for some of the top shooters in your area, check out this site. Wedfog. zfor video, I can't suggest a site that lists them. Good luck and congrats!

I have to disagree with Peter on looking for two separate companies. One of the perennial posts on this site is photographers complaining about uncooperative videographers who made their jobs difficult. I'm sure the opposite happens on video web sites. I much prefer the idea of a wedding photographer who also employs videographers as part of his crew. (Or even the other way around.) That way one person is in charge of the photo/video work at the wedding and you don't have one getting in the way of the other or arguing over whose work is most important.

#1 thing to look for: rapport. Content is king when it comes to wedding photography. How well everyone interacts with the photography will either have a positive or negative effect on the images.

#2 Vision. Hand two people a camera and tell them to take a picture of the same thing and you will get two different images. You want the who takes the image you like! Does the photographer see the world/wedding in a way that you hope to see it. Look at more than one wedding a potential photographer has shot. Albums should be from one wedding and not favorite images from several weddings.

#3 Competence. This really boils down to trust. You either (or perhaps you had better) trust your photographer or you don't. You trust they have the proper equipment (I could be the worlds greatest photographer but if I don't have the right gear, it won't matter). You trust they have the experience to do the job. You trust that they are knowledgeable about photography.

And then the three points above are tempered by your budget!

Craig, certainly that is a good idea. I suggested 2 different companies only because, going with one that does both will greatly restrict your options. Most photographers don't offer both services.

Maybe what I should have said was, find the photographer first and ask them for recommendations. Any good shooter will have favourites that they have worked with and share their business ethic. But the main point is to not have one person trying to do both.

Here's a link for some New York-based shooters:
http://junebugweddings.com/best-wedding-photographers/New-York-City.aspx

Yes, I agree with Peter, I'm not familiar with any one person that mixes still and video well at a wedding, so that's best avoided... You'll either want just a photographer or just a videographer, if you definately want both go to the one you find most important/prefer and ask for personal recommendations from that business. Mixing video and still between two different people at one event is a skill in itself, so you have to make sure these people like working together.

Most people don't really sit down and watch their wedding videos very often (if at all). Currently many photographers can combine a small video clip along with still images (Animoto) as a slide show presentation. Perhaps this approach should be given some consideration...