| Why Are Wedding Photographers So Expensive? |
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One question we hear all the time is, "how come wedding photographers charge such ridiculously high prices?" And to some extent, we actually agree. That's why we're constantly working to find better ways to do things, to be more efficient, so that we can keep our prices as reasonable as possible. We will never be the cheapest photographers in town, but our goal is to provide the very best value -- to offer great photography, products, and services at extremely competitive prices. That being said, some people still don't understand why wedding photography costs what it does. How can we charge so much for just a few hours of shooting at a wedding? After all, this is the digital age -- how much can it cost to shoot a wedding? Well, a surprising amount! Let's look at some of the expenses we have to cover: Office expense: If you are shooting weddings every weekend, you better be well organized. When we book a wedding, we open a file for that couple, and every single scrap of information about them goes into the file -- the initial contact sheet, the contract, notes on phone calls, and printouts of every email we exchange. Over all, to keep organized and make sure we treat every couple with the care they deserve, we spend about an hour and a half every day of the week updating files, preparing contracts, answering emails, talking on the phone with couples, and meeting with couples. We are also required to file quarterly sales and income tax reports -- this means we need to keep meticulous financial records -- another 15 minutes a day, on average, and a hefty fee for accounting and tax preparation. Employee expense: When you work for a big company, you take the benefits for granted. But wedding photographers are self-employed, which means we have to pay premium prices for things like health insurance and medical coverage. Then there are social security and income tax, salaries (photographers have to eat too!), car payments and insurance, phone bill, internet connection, electric bill, heat, air conditioning, a few days of vacation every year, studio/office mortgage and property taxes, and many other expenses. Since we are a full-time studio, all these expenses are covered by what we charge you for your photography. Equipment: In this digital age, equipment, computers, and software are a major expense. We just upgraded our computers and software to allow us to turn around our photos more quickly -- they will allow us to cut weeks off of our delivery time, but the cost was in excess of $7000. Cameras and lenses are expensive too -- we're in the process of upgrading all our cameras -- that's two a piece for each photographer, plus a complete backup system. There's another $20,000 or so approximately every two years. And the little things add up -- we recently decided that on weekends where we are shooting two weddings, it is too risky to try to get all the images off the cards from the first wedding, and use them for the second. So we bought a second set of memory cards (five 8GB cards) so that we can shoot two weddings back to back without overwriting the cards. Then there's the outrageous amount of disk space we require -- on average, we add 2TB of computer disk space every year -- another few hundred bucks. There are a million expenses like this that even an advanced amateur photographer doesn't think about. Business insurance: With the average wedding costing over $30K, there is no such thing as a "do-over." So most wedding photographers carry professional errors and omissions insurance, one to two million dollars in liability insurance, and equipment insurance. Travel expense: We always laugh when we see our competitors advertising "never a charge for travel expenses." What, they walk to their weddings? Every photographer has to cover the cost of gas, insurance, and vehicle depreciation, whether it appears as a line item in the contract, or the cost is buried in the fee they charge. With gas approaching $4.00 per gallon, this is becoming a significant expense. Remember, we don't just drive to the wedding and back -- there are meetings, venue visits and location scouting, trips to the photo lab, computer store and camera dealer -- it adds up fast. Keeping up with the Joneses: It's a fact that wedding photography is a very competitive business -- and we work hard to improve ourselves every day. We want to surpass the level of service and quality of as many of our competitors are possible -- offering more and better when we can, and learning from the few "masters" who are still better than we are. This means another hour or so a day in competitive research, trade shows, seminars and classes, etc. Advertising expense: This is a big one for a lot of photographers. First you have the cost of maintaining a web site, which is several thousand dollars a year. Most photographers have extensive photo galleries to keep refreshed and up to date, and a lot of us write blogs. If you advertise in wedding magazines, wedding web sites, search engines, and attend bridal shows, your advertising expense can easily run to several thousand dollars per month. Then there's the cost of reprinting portfolios and sample books - after a few dozen showings, a portfolio starts to look pretty ragged, so most photographers are constantly reprinting their portfolio -- a few more hundreds of dollars per month. Don't forget business cards, brochures, mailers, and flyers. Post Production: We find this is the area that most couples consistently underestimate. When we get back to our studio after a wedding, the first thing we do is copy all the memory cards (usually around five 8GB cards) to a hard disk. Then we burn off a set of DVDs as back ups, and import all the images into Apple Aperture. Just this process alone takes over an hour. Then, we make a first pass through all the images, selecting the keepers, discarding the bad ones. As we go, we perform basic color correction, cropping, exposure correction, brightness/contrast optimization, and sharpening. This process usually takes about four hours. Then we spend another hour uploading the images to our web site so you can see them right away. If a book layout is involved, this usually requires two solid days of work, with another half day spent getting approvals from the couple and making corrections before sending to print. Then, if a DVD slideshow is involved, there are another two solid days of work to create that. Cost of books and videos: All that pretty music we put on the soundtracks of our video montages costs money for licensing -- the average is $60/song, and we use 2-3 songs on the average video. The cost of printing books is significant too. That's just a few of the expenses -- there are many more we didn't mention. Add them all up, and you suddenly realize that wedding photographers aren't making the killing you thought they were -- assuming they are delivering top quality work, great service, and a competitive set of products. |
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Our Wedding Photography
All the elements of your wedding, photographed with a fresh stylish elegance. We combine classic portraiture and photojournalistic storytelling to turn your wedding into lasting works of art.
Whether you are looking for a sophisticated coffee-table book, a DVD slideshow, a web site of your wedding day, or just a simple disc of images, we can provide exactly what you are looking for, at extremely competitive prices.
We want to be your wedding photographers!
A note about . . .
Just a quick note about our engagement and wedding photography: everything you see here and in our gallery was photographed by us with real couples at their own weddings. There are no staged setups or models - just real people, real emotion, real pictures.
No Discrimination
We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, creed, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, marital status, veteran status, or disability.About us
Welcome to the internet home of Paul Grupp and Brenda Tompkins.
Paul is a full-time professional photographer working on location and in the studio in Albany, NY. He has shot dozens of assignments for newspapers, and spent two and half years as staff photographer for the NY State Senate. His work has appeared on the websites and in the catalogs of many companies and organizations, and in a diverse set of publications ranging from 944 Fashion magazine to Landscape Architecture, to The Saratogian, The Troy Record, and The San Diego Troubadour newspapers. His photographs were featured in the book Erotique Digitale published by the Ilex press. Many musicians use Paul's photography on their websites, promo pix and CD packaging.
Brenda specializes in weddings and portraiture. She has a great eye for capturing the emotion and excitement of the wedding day, and many of our best bridal images were photographed by Brenda.
While we are based in Albany NY, our work takes us up and down the east coast, so whether you are in the Berkshires or the Adirondacks, Long Island or Boston, Vermont or Rhode Island, we are happy to travel to your location.
We'd love to become your photographers! You can reach us at (518) 526-9969 or email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it