Lately, I often reflect on the value that photography, and wedding photography in particular, has today.
The same reflection that probably many bride to be, are trying to translate into money, wondering which is the price of a wedding photographer, but let’s pay attention : price and value are not the same thing.
You’re probably wondering what a wedding photographer earns for each hour of service. Today I will explain how you will pay your photographer just for…one second of his work !!!
The idea for this post, comes from a presentation made by the great photographer Jerry Ghionis, which contained an equation as simple as illuminating.
A wedding in one second
If we assume that a wedding photographer will give you an album with 100 photographs and assuming for simplicity that each of these images, was taken with an exposure time of 1/100 of a second, it means that you will have paid your photographer to capture a maximum of 1 second from the events of your wedding day!
In front of the evidence of this disarming insight, it has very little sense to ask what is the correct price of a wedding photographer. All in 1 second: hiring a professional photographer to take pictures of your wedding, you will not buy only a service, you will not buy just a product, you will make his skills, his studies, his sensitivity, his vision of the world, yours.
All in 1 second: you will not pay only for your photographer technical expertise and equipment, you will pay for something that is not measurable or comparable with others, you will purchase his person, and at the end, what makes him uniquely, him.
All in 1 second – Price and value of a wedding photographer
In almost all cases, the first contact we receive from prospective spouses, either by phone or by email, always leads to the simplest and most spontaneous questions: how much?
We would like to reply with the same simplicity, but in the reality of things, is not so trivial to set the price of a wedding photography service. Each bride has different tastes and needs, and if we consider that the final product, can vary from digital files only to albums that can be made in a myriad of different sizes and materials, it is easy to understand how the price of a wedding photographer can not be calculated per pound.
If we will paradoxically force any photographer to use the same equipment and to sell the same album, we will still get an endless list of possible sales prices.
Each couple preparing for their wedding, has budget constrains, but are we sure that the price is the only parameter in hiring a professional photographer, in the choice of the only thing that will remain of your wedding day?
It makes much more sense to speak about the value of a wedding photographer, rather than just about its price.
The value is not given by the number of photographs that will be delivered or by the number of pages in an album. The value is made by the personality of the photographer, by his ability to craft an unique and custom experience for each bride, by the trust he is able to convey, by the professionalism he will show in different situations, even in the unexpected ones.
No military secret protects our price list and we have no fear to share it with those who ask for it, but we do all we can do, to not just reply the question “how much?” with a quote by mail or a price on the phone. Right from the beginning, we prefer to make it clear to every future bride, how important is to know your photographer in person and when the geographical distance does not allow it, at least to “virtually” meet him in a remote video call.
Wedding photography is made on one side and the other of the lens, so it is extremely important to immediately build a solid relationship of trust, between the photographer and the couple. We have set ourselves the mission to stop selling pre-built solutions, crafting custom services and custom books for each bride, because at the end, the album has to be, “her” album.
Take all the time you need, we will do all in 1 second, to deliver a memory that will last forever.
Maurizio Mannini
