Hi all - not understanding these prices here so if someone can clarify that would be great.
My fiancé and I are getting quoted between $8500 and $11,000 dollars to have both a photographer and videographer. Without the videographer, it’s roughly $5-$6K. Do they charge this much just because it’s a wedding? I’ve been hearing that most of the time is taken up by editing the photos? I mean why the F are you editing photos? I hired you to take RAW photos god damn it.
Anyway is this right?
@samfisher5986: I'm not going to debate these points because it's just wasting time. But the last thing you say ;
"and then hold your photos hostage in the hopes you ask for prints,"
This is from the film days and has not been a thing for AGES. 99.9% of photographers give you the full size edited jpegs - you print from THESE. you don't print from a raw file. I've been giving full size, max quality jpegs to customers since the mid 2000's, and I don't know a single photographer who doesn't.
@gavincato: JPEG is not "maximum" quality.
You aren't taking Chroma subsampling and the fact that 100% JPEG quality is still lossy. As well as a ton of photo data being lost that allows you to adjust it.
A wedding photographer who knew what they were doing and weren't trying to take your photos hostage would offer PNG for starters. But they should be offering the DNG where they can include the RAW photo, but with their edits included.
Would the average "wedding" photographer even know what I'm saying? They often don't. They just buy an expensive camera, are told to offer JPG's and hold photos hostage then upsell every chance they get while cutting every corner possible behind the scenes. This is what happens in the wedding industry, you have to work hard to get a good service at a reasonable price because there are so many unscrupulous vendors.
This way the client can decide to change their edits if they don't like their effects/colours etc.
This is a completely fair ask if the client wants that and particularly as they will be paying $5000-10000 for one of these "wedding photographers"
@mauricem: Well you may not have included in your services contract that the all digital files must be given to the client, thats because many photographers are acting in bad faith and not mentioning it or using the BS excuse "thats not industry practice". Even if the client has no idea what to do with the raw files, give them a choice, I'd say 80% will never look at the raw files and will be happy with the post-processed curated photos you give them.
I'm not saying that photography is not a skilful profession, I am an amateur photographer who has done weddings (and birthdays) pro bono for friends who can't afford the huge expense. While I am not as skillful as a full fledged professional, My skills were "good enough" to meet the brief which was to capture the event for posterity.
I can tell you when I was negotiating terms for a photographer for my own wedding, I made it clear to the photographer that they would need to hand over the raws immediately after the event. Any photographer that wouldn't agree to those terms would not be hired. I received the post process photos about 6 weeks later which was fine, but at least I had ALL the raws to do what I pleased with them immediately to share with my guests, as the way it should be.
If Clients were more aware of this then they can demand photographer hand over the raws.
Those photographers who put the event photos on photo purchasing platforms so guests can "Buy" thier Photo Booth photos from the wedding are absolute Kantians, you already Got paid.
Shop around, ask for price if paying in cash ;)
Good advice.
Where are you? I have a photographer in Sydney with reasonable prices that I used for my wedding
TY for sharing! PM you
If the $11,000 isn’t enough, don’t forget to offer them a meal at your wedding as well.
They’ll be well fed and I won’t have to read a news article about it down the track of them slaving away whilst you all got to eat.
Lmao was gonna say that too
I've always wondered like do you have to give them full course meal or is a happy meal from Maccas good enough? Do I need to provide them seating for dining? And if they are dining, who's taking the photo?
At ours, v the photographer and his assistant had the main course, and I think they ate it while we were eating ours (at a time when you can't really take photos of people chewing)
Same reason the venue costs more to hire.
Price is so high because they have to deal with the bride and her family. Why do you even want RAW photos anyway?
Learn photoshop?
So you can negotiate with someone else to get them edited instead of being locked to one person OR just use them raw and convert to a regular JPG/heir whatever to save space
RAW photos 99% of the time look like crap. They need to be edited. Could just be an exposure, or colour correction.
I got family to shoot our wedding as their gift with my camera and I have the RAW files almost 2 decades later. I wouldn't hvae it any other way. I love having the creative control in post. I can and have reprocessed some of the images over the years for various occasions or just for the pleasure of it.
Yeah look it sounds like a lot, but it's one of those professions where the equipment costs a hell of a lot of money - especially if you're doing video and photo, they're likely going to bring 2/3 people with them, and edits do honestly take an extreme amount of time, especially for weddings where the output has to be perfect.
In saying that, you can easily hire amateurs to do photo/video for considerably cheaper if it's something that won't bother you - or encourage the guests to record/photograph as much as they can and then do something a lot more casual
Yes, wedding tax.
But, more importantly, ask yourself 'who is this for and am I going to watch it later?'
Granted, I wish Id spent more on photos - cheaping out isnt always smart. But somethings are just a waste of time and effort
Like birthing videos. I can count on one finger ☝️ how many times that thing's been rewatched 🤷♀️
100%.
Wedding photos - for sure.
Wedding videos? - I know I struggle to work out what I’m going to watch across Netflix, Stan, Disney and Amazon but I sure as shit ain’t going to whip out a wedding video to re-watch.
If you want to stream the wedding to relatives who can’t attend for some reason, you can do that a lot cheaper with a phone and a friend.
I would go a step further and say how often are you going to look at the photos? I got married 20 years ago, other than the day we got the photos from the photographer I have NEVER looked at them, not once. Maybe when I am older I might? Who knows, but I really doubt it. We didn't get a video done, but I imagine I never would have looked at that either.
Yep, I set up a GoPro in some flowers nearby for my wedding. Stuck that up on YouTube after the fact to send to relatives. Total cost was $60 for the Gorilla pod and I can still watch it if I ever want to (I never have).
can still watch it if I ever want to (I never have).
Good thing you've never bothered to watch it, as it must have been unwatchable. GoPro cameras are close to fisheye- crazy wide angle, huge distortion.
Even when used for their intended purpose of extreme sports action filming they need very careful editing to produce semi decent footage.
Mine has a few different modes. Had it on non-ultra wide so it looks perfectly fine (I have seen enough to check that it actually recorded).
LOL just shows the dumb ignorance … RAW images actually need THE MOST POST PROCESSING …
The cost will be due to the lack of people willing to do it … Everyone with a smart phone thinks they know better than the poor old phtographer/videographer … I got out of doing weddings a couple decades ago because the fussy couples expected product that would take me 200+ hours of processing to deliver, but would never be willing to pay the price :P
+1 just shows OP doesn't know what they're asking.
I wanted and got the RAW files from our wedding by having family shoot it and almost 2 decades later I wouldn't have it any other way. I've processed them the way I wanted on mulitple occasions or just for the pure joy of it. Not everyone is a schmuck who can't learn basic photo editing. When you're doing it for fun you can absolutely spend 200 hours doing it over the years without paying through the nose for someone else's take n the photo. THAT is the point of having the RAWs. 7ekn00 answered the question without even realizing it!
Wikipedia definition: "A camera raw image file contains unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or other image scanner." We might understand the concept of " I hired you to take RAW photos " differently. To me that means that the OP wants just the RAW files and is happy to edit them himself. For the photographer, handing over those raw files to OP is just a matter of copying them from the camera memory card to, for example, a USB stick - no post processing needed.
The way you seem to see it, is that OP demands that the photographer saves the photos in raw format in camera, to enable maximum latitude and flexibility in post processing, which they're also expected to do. But any photographer worth their salt would be shooting raw anyway in the first place. And the degree of post processing can vary greatly. You can just batch apply a basic profile, automate any exposure, contrast, saturation whatnot changes to the whole photoshoot with just a couple of clicks. But if you want to do things like crop, level horison, adjust tonality per photo to suit the contents, that's where you bog down to do it one photo at a time and there's no limit to how much time you can invest/waste to this step.
For the photographer, handing over those raw files to OP is just a matter of copying them from the camera memory card to, for example, a USB stick - no post processing needed.
Which no professional will ever do … most professionals will have thousands they cull down to hundreds … they will not want the OP seeing the accidental photo of their thumb or shoe or something else embarrassing (that could destroy their brand / name / etc) …
They will also not risk the OP complaining of "dull" or "dark" or "poor colors", etc with RAWs …
If the OP thinks RAWs is the way to go, there are plenty of amateurs that would give it a go ;)
Actually, professional photographers do normally provide RAW's. Its wedding photographers that do this dodgy stuff.
they will not want the OP seeing the accidental photo of their thumb or shoe or something else embarrassing (that could destroy their brand / name / etc) …
Oh yes, lets charge twice the price and have dodgy rules just because they need to spend 5 minutes going through the photos to remove the really bad ones.
It has nothing to do with reputation because photographers shouldn't be putting their watermark on the photos to begin with, thats another dodgy wedding tactic.
By simply having a 5 minute conversion about RAW's you can find out what the client expects and explain what they should expect.
@samfisher5986: Not once have I seen a professional photographer provide their RAW files unless it was explicitly requested/stated in the contract (and that makes it expensive) and I have quite a few mates in the industry including commercial photographers, not sure where you're getting that from.
@basketballfreak6: I don't want to pay for you to edit the pictures. Removing the stupid pictures (like taking a pic of your thumb) and give the rest of them to me RAW and charge 4000 less
@DrScavenger: You do realise in most cases particularly in the commercial setting, you're only given a license to use the photos whereby the photographer owns the rights to the images unless again, stated otherwise in the contract. The RAW files are basically your proof that the images are yours.
Also as stated elsewhere, I am not handing over my files just for you to put filter on filter and turn the photo into sh!t and ruin my reputation; people hire you because they like your style and creativity and part of that IS the post processing itself and god forbid there are actually photographers out there that care about their work.
@basketballfreak6: Ooh nooo your reputation. Just a reason to charge more. You use batch processing for 90% of photos come on man.
That's why you make a contract. If you are paid for the work I should own the photos and you can only use them for your professional portfolio or whatever
@DrScavenger: So…you don't need to build up a good reputation to grow your business as a photographer? Ok gotcha. Do you also think a reputable fine dining chef should get paid the same as a chef at your local cafe?
Also you're barking up the wrong tree bud, like I said in another comment I am not in the industry, I just pick up the very occasional side gig as a freelancer mostly from word of mouth. Sometimes I do wish I could just "batch process 90% of the photos" though, would save me a tonne of time on a lot of the stuff that I do ;).
Anyway you obviously have your mind made up about professional photographers and what they do so there's no point arguing, good day to you.
@basketballfreak6: Nothing changes that I should have the right to have the raw images. Editing is literally an extra service that people like you use it to extort some extra bucks
@samfisher5986: I've worked with commerical phitographers- interior architecture and industrial. They generate far, far less images than wedding photographers because the spend absolutely ages setting up each shot and generally don't deal with dozens of background or foreground subjects running around.
Their clients are never interested in RAWs because their clients don't have the time or resources to waste with Photoshop editing. Because the clients are business, they are not going to waste money buying then managing Adobe subscriptions. At most, the want high res TIFFs alongside JPEGs. The photography does all the heavy lifting, the client just wants usable end results.
@rumblytangara: That completely depends on the industry and the use case.
The point is that outside the wedding industry, photographers have no issues giving up the RAW's. This is generally because there is no more money to be made by holding the RAW's hostage.
@samfisher5986: RAWs are useful to a tiny, tiny fraction for any client. My wedding photographer was happy to give RAWs (I have lightroom, photoshop and other plugins that can work with them).
None of the commercial situations I was involved in had clients interested in RAWs.
Far as I can tell, wedding clients want a finished product. They very rarely want to spend umpteen hours tweaking photos after buying photoshop (and learning to use it).
another possible way is to contact Swinburne, RMIT etc and see if a photography student (last year) is interested in taking it on as a side hustle or project - it will help them build a portfolio so a bit of win win and a lot cheaper. may not end up with the same result but you can always vet them on their current work - just throwing it on the table as a suggestion.
Same idea goes for paintings for a new house.
Good photographers rarely go to university because their work speaks for itself, and you don't need a qualification to be a photographer. I would guess the same probably applies to most forms of art.
I know a few people who studied photography at university. None of them became professionals, and their photography wasn't that good. They were mostly rich kids who thought it'd be easy and a cool career.
Went through this about 15 months ago. Many refuse to give originals (although as mentioned copyright law seems at least grey), and want to watermark all the photos. As much as the industry seems wired to not do what many of us want, there aren't many good alternatives.
The conditions you want/agree need to be very clear before the event. Have heard of a few cases of photographers withholding output until they get their way. (Are you going to get everyone back together and re-do the day?)
We ended up getting primarily one friend with a helper to use our decent DSLRs/Lenses to take RAW photos. Processing them all was a bit of a slog though.
You can just do what the other lazy photographers do, process the RAWS in bulk.
If you did it manually by hand it would have been better then yoru average photographer.
OP shouldn't worry, I'm sure he will probably get another crack to get it right at his second or third wedding.
Hire 4 film and photography students for 1k each, bonus 1k to the best.
All covered for 5k.
I can video the wedding night back at the hotel at no charge to you. I’ve got all the equipment needed including an online profile
So much crap that is spent on weddings that isn't needed though because it's what others do, we go along with it.
All in all, you probably only need about 10 good edited photos of the hundreds taken. Also limit the time they are there. Do you really need professional photos of people getting ready? IMO they look terribly staged and aren't used afterwards. Get the video taken on a decent iPhone etc. Unless of course you've decided that it is the most magical day ever imagined and worth spending every last cent.
For context we concentrated on the nice venue, plenty of alcohol and good music. We all had a great time.
LOLz same as funeral's the australia tax is alive and well…well maybe your not.
Businesses see "wedding" and triple the price for everything.
Because you want your wedding photos to look good. To ensure that you pay someone who is talented and experienced and knows their craft. There is a higher risk of complaints or negative reviews for weddings due to people’s expectations, so they’ll put more into ensuring there are a lot of good shots and they get all the right people in photos. You’re probably looking at 2-3 days work for the photographer, plus the cost of their equipment. Also factor in that most weddings are Friday-Sunday so there’s a limited number of days that they can be booked, you’re paying partially to reserve that time. The photographer might not get booked every week so they need to earn enough for a reasonable annual income if this is their main gig.
Having said that, that does sound expensive. I negotiated a cheaper package for the photographer of my choosing to only do the ceremony and shoot after at scenic spot rather than having them for the whole reception. Two photographers of my choice were willing to do this. I didn’t do a video, just had a friend film our wedding dance. Also got lots of great photos from friends from the reception. You can also just set up a tripod somewhere discrete to film the ceremony if you’re not too fussed about quality and just want the memories.
My tip. Ensure you get photos with your immediate family only, no partners or spouses of siblings in at least some of the photos. Super common that one of these becomes an ex at some point and ruins the family photo. Also get one with each sibling, just parents etc.
I mean why the F are you editing photos? I hired you to take RAW photos god damn it.
Tell me you know nothing about photography without telling me you know nothing about photography. FFS.
If you know how to edit photos and RAWs there's nothing wrong with asking for only the RAWS.
An honest photographer will save a lot of time if they do that.
Would a pro photographer risk their reputation by allowing the client to do the post processing?
Its a 30 second conversion to make sure the client understands what they are asking for.
Its a 30 second job to process one photo from the RAW to show the client what it would look like.
How many bad reviews do you see that say "I asked for only the RAWS and they looked washed out"
You are just repeating excuses by shady wedding photographers so they can make more money.
I gave RAW photos to someone because they “knew someone who can edit photos”.
This was true. They had a friend with photoshop, but their style was “all sliders to 10000%”.
Made my photos look like trash.
I absolutely would not release unedited/raw photos if I did it for a living.
@YellowDieselGolf: I once had a business ask if they could use a photo of mine for an Insta post to which I said yea sure just give me photo credit and they went and add some weird filter effect on the photo which made me regret so much lol…
Yeah definitely shop around. I think we paid 2.5K for photos and maybe the same for the videographer, who gave us all the original footage. Videographer I think we found on fb marketplace. Send me a direct message if you want the details of both, happy to pass them on.
And of course they're going to be editing photos, good chance a RAW one will need touch ups and most people who hire a photographer just want them looking perfect when they receive them.
This is going to shock you. Most dont even give you the raw. Lol.
You might as well buy your own camera and have a family member take the photos.
I did that and don't regret it. It was their wedding gift to us. They used our cameras which we then took on a 3 week honeymoon to New Zealand.
Sure a more practiced photographer might have got some images that would have been technically superior to some of our shots. But then again do you have any idea how cool it is to have your bride showing off the photo you took of her at your wedding? Or how awesome it is to be able to make your own artistic choices at your leisure with your wedding images?
Shop around. You won't get raw from anyone. We spent $2k on a photographer and have no regrets.
You can 100% get raws from honest professional photographers. I did.
The problem is wedding photographers are generally bad and shady and won't give you the RAW's for shady reasons.
What total nonsense. Of course you can get RAW images if you work with a photographer willing to provide them. There certainly are such photographers around.
Forget photos and videos, just ask guests to take them, then upload to a cloud service to share. Save the money for the honeymoon, or better still deposit for house. Stop wasting money.
Yeah, for our sons wedding we supplied all the guests with Insta 360s and a couple batteries!
Was a hoot to edit all that footage together for them!
It depends what you want.
This will result in some nice "in the moment" shots, but the actual picture won't look that good and it won't really be suitable for putting on your wall unless its a collage or similar.
Also many people over the age of 50 take terrible photos.
Why do people want to print large portrait pictures of themselves in incredibly staged photos at their wedding? Who wants that on their wall? I have never understood this, I always find it weird to walk into someone's house and see large pictures of them on the wall.
A good photographer can get both nice staged shots as well as great in the moment shots that you can print.
People are probably just more likely to print the staged photos.
I hired you to take RAW photos god damn it.
At least you've confirmed you have no idea.
Anyway is this right?
No.
Why do you even want RAW photos anyway?
If the OP got provided with the Raws, i'm sure they would be posting saying "I paid for wedding photos and they don't look at all like the photographer's portfolio". I'd be shocked if any good wedding photographer would even provide the RAW's, that's not what you are paying for, you are paying for their finished product, and the 10's of hours of work it takes to get the photos there.
They'd probably give them a 1 star rating and say that the photos are so dark and they look crap. I did my cousins engagement photoshoot and she also asked for the RAW photos. I showed her a before and after and she was like ohhhhh I see what you mean by the RAW photos are "unusable".
Thats not even true.
So many lazy wedding photographers are just batch processing their RAW's.
The Raw's from my photographer are impressive because he's actually a good photographer with a great camera and he picked the correct lens.
Sure I understand someone might say it looks washed out and its a bad photo but you are just using a typical excuse not to provide RAW's to make more money.
Idgaf about wedding RAWs but picking the right lens does not mean you don't have to process a photo… shooting at 50mm instead of 85mm or F2.8 instead of F5.6 (or vice versa) doesn't somehow mitigate the requirement to process a RAW file. It's absolutely being held back in a massive way if you don't process it.
@eecan: I never said you didn't have to process a photo, I'm just saying you can see its a great photo in RAW form.
If the op was provided with RAW files he'd probably be complaining that his computer or phone can't open the images.
They sell it to you this way because you only have once chance to get it right. So pay up.
I've seen a lot of people's wedding photos and they are cringeworthy.
One thing that someone did was (before digital cameras) to put a disposable camera on every table and ask the guests to take pictures as they please then harvest all of those photos. Maybe tell best friends to bring decent pocket cameras and just be generous with taking photos.
I've seen a lot of people's wedding photos and they are cringeworthy.
I lol'ed.
I would say the price is normal if you enquire within Australia. They are charging you what we call "local" fee, compared to "immigrant" fee, for probably lower service and quality.
Please look into hiring someone from Thailand or the Philippines, fly them here and it will end up less than half of what the "local" people quoted you.
And on top of it, overseas talent are actual talent with passion not trying to rip you off.
peak ozbargain spirit. f dem rats who downvoted you.
This is exactly why I stopped doing photography 10 years ago. People have absolutely no idea the amount of work that actually goes into providing professional quality photos, it’s not just turn up for a few hours on the day and push a button on a camera a few times. What did it for me was when I was shooting a wedding one time, I heard a grooms man ask the groom how much he paid for the stretch hummer they had hired. The cost of this hummer for 2 hours was more than I was being paid for 8 hours, and that’s not even considering the full week of work I had ahead of me to finish their package off. I decided I was done after that, working 7 days a week for lousy money and still listening to comments like all of these ones on this thread just isn’t worth it. Just get a friend to do it for you and then be disappointed with the quality of your photos if you don’t want to pay someone to do the job properly.
You charged 1.5k?
It depends on what the client wanted. I charged a base rate of $200 per hour for two photographers (and that doesn’t just cover the hour of shooting but the hours and hours of post processing work as well, not to mention all the other costs associated with running a business). Plus extras on top like albums, slideshows, prints etc. would usually see what the client wanted and bundle it all up as a package deal type thing but every client is different. Some wanted 4 hours on the day and that’s it, some wanted absolutely everything like 12 hours coverage, engagement shoot, boudoir shoot, every print imaginable, multiple albums etc etc.
Not to mention the stress at weddings. So many things you can't miss: Cutting of the cake, rings, I do's, first dance, first kiss, walking down the aisle, getting out of the limo, etc, etc.
I gave up professional photography when I realised it had ruined my passion for photography and that I could get paid more elsewhere, then use that money to take photos that I actually enjoyed taking.
lol, I didn't say anything in that comment about expecting people to pay more for stress, but since you brought it up, most people 100% expect to be compensated for the stress of a job.
Accusing me of being "mentally weak" because I decided I can get paid better for less stress is pretty funny tho.
Weird take :|
Savage.
Stressful jobs are generally more highly paid. It's pretty standard.
@brendanm: Incorrect.
Jobs which require decision making that impacts a lot of people or the impact is high are better remunerated.
Jobs like photography should be bottom of the list.
But because those services are offered by "local" people using fancy/pretentious words to market themselves, they charge more.
Tech firms, marketing firms, telecom firms all hire people working from overseas, and this is what make their success. Let's face it, locals here have zero talented, they are just pretentious.
If you want a photographer for cheap, fly someone from Thailand, Philippines or China, instead of paying those greedy untalented "locals".
Add in the fact there's always an Uncle Bob who's a pain in the arse to manage (always try to get him to be your secret little helper / sheep dog - otherwise he'st the one holding everything up)
And the fact that Aunty Bev wants to take a photo with her new Nokia 3210 while you're trying to take photos you're getting paid to take.
And that it's an emotional day.
(our wedding photographer told us a story of a wedding he was at where the mother of the bride took the opportunity to serve the father of the bride with divorce papers. He'd been avoiding her for months, and she knew he'd be there… served him the papers as he was helping is daughter out of the wedding car.)
Looking forward to OPs future post- 'I paid a wedding photographer for RAW photos and was ripped off, the colours are all washed out'
Ever had to deal with bridezillas?
A mate used to do wedding photography and the necessary post-processing, organising and album work. Got out of it - too many unrealistic expectations, too many whinging parents of the bride, so much work involved - way more than people realise. It's also becoming a race to the bottom in certain cases, price wise.
They're expensive because expectations are high. Even those who say they just want a bunch of digital photos after the event. Doesn't matter how the proposals/contracts/disclaimers look - everyone wants perfection.
Yep and when the images aren't perfect? People lose their minds but forget they paid the lowest amount possible but expect the highest results.
You're paying for the person to get the job right on the day, to get those shots that those starting out can and do miss, the blurry shots, the shots with things not quite in frame right, bad or no real post processing, knowledge and experience.
But this is the wrong site for that.
Whenever a quote is unreasonably out of line with the market that's the service provider telling you to get lost.
@gavincato:
So what? If a client asked for RAW's, you would obviously have the conversion to check they know what they are asking for. 99% of the time you are either getting people who know what a RAW is and what to do with it, or people who just want the security of owning the original so they can do something with it in the future.
Nobody said you should give them completely blurry shots, the suggestion is to give them all the imperfect shots if the client has asked for them. The point that was made was that most of your extra shots are going to be photos that can be enjoyed. I'll also add for a partially blurry shot? Thats actually a "thing" at the moment and people can still appreciate the photo if it was particularly unique.
Did they ask for the panorama originals? If so, include them in a folder called panorama and tell them they can stitch the photo. Why are you making up imaginary scenarios where you've given it to them secretly and they stumble upon it?
Personally I would love the nervous photos. Yes you should exclude the photos with unfortunate eye/face movements but is the client asking for these? Generally not.
Overall you seem to not get the overall point. If the client asks for something and its reasonable, then just do it. You can charge them for the little time it would take for you to stick them in a folder. The point is that you go to sleep and forget about them the next day so there's no reason not to be reasonable and many non wedding photographers are very reasonable.
The overall push I've made against particular wedding photographers is that they charge exorbitant prices and then hold your photos hostage in the hopes you ask for prints, ask for edits etc down the line. (as well as many other bad things some wedding photographers do)