My wife and I got married in early May of 2015.  Approximately a year later, we (actually, my wife did) go around to posting the pictures of Facebook.  Like many couples, we received the thumb drive with our pictures a few weeks after the wedding and took it to Walgreens to print out pictures of various sizes.  The post-wedding “positivity” combined with the fact that everything was being printed meant that I did not closely analyze the pictures.  The pictures were printed and promptly put into a box that resides either in the living room or our office, I honestly do not know its exact whereabouts.

With the rise of social media that has made taking pictures of anything and everything popular, there are many so called “photographers” running around.  I personally was not a fan of having a wedding photographer and felt that if enough pictures were taken and sent to us by friends and family, we would have enough of a supply to find a few good pictures.  Essentially it was the theory of even a broken clock is right twice a day.  However, weddings only happen once and everyone said that we “have to” get a wedding photographer.  I was outmanned and, not wanting to cause a fuss over something like a wedding photographer when there were potential larger battles to fight such as the wedding venue, I relented.

The photographer we ultimately got was recommended by a few people we knew who claimed that he was a good photographer.  As a generally skeptical person, I looked at his photos and they were fine, nothing special.  They did the job, but I did not feel that they were amazing works of art.  They most certainly did not justify his price.  They were basically the types of pictures that someone would obtain if they took a lot of shots.  We met with this photographer at Starbucks and worked out a deal.  Based on our two meetings with him at Starbucks, he is a man who likes to use venues such as Starbucks for business transactions while refusing to patronize them.  Personally, I felt that this was the mark of someone with low character, but, again, not wanting to cause a lot of chaos over something relatively small, I noted this trait and kept quiet.

Fast forward to late March of 2016 and the photos are posted on Facebook by my wife.  I hadn’t seen or looked at the photos since we printed them a few weeks after the wedding and quickly flipped through the prints to make sure everything came out okay.  After posting them, she asked if I wanted to see them and we looked at them together.  While the pictures did bring back good memories, it was amazing what the passage of time did for how I was able to view the pictures objectively.  She had done a bulk upload without necessarily reviewing each image closely.  Some of the files were pictures that were taken by friends and family.  But the majority were not.  As we flipped through, comments were made about how certain pictures were bad.  Far too many of them were the images taken by our wedding photographer.  So many things were out of focus that shouldn’t have been, people weren’t centered, objects were cut off awkwardly, essentially, the pictures weren’t that nice.  I could have sent my mom, a woman who knows the fundamentals of photography and can perform the most basic of operations with a digital camera, armed her with the largest SD card I could find and some extra batteries, and told her to run around taking as many pictures of anything and everything, and I am confident that her efforts would have resulted in a handful of nice, frame‑and‑hang‑on-the-wall images that we got from the allegedly “professional” photographer who charged us 4 figures.

The experience was bittersweet.  Looking at the pictures was a quick, fun trip down memory lane.  Looking at the pictures and seeing all sorts of basic botches was upsetting for several reasons.  First, if a picture was bad, it should not have been put onto the final thumb drive that was given to us, the paying customer.  I saw our photographer take a picture, look down for several sections to see the picture preview, and then take another picture many times throughout the night.  As a professional, I expected him to be able to see if the picture was obviously terrible and delete it.  To give him the benefit of the doubt, it is possible that he had deleted many bad pictures and what we received were his “best” efforts.  If this second scenario is true, it says very little for him as a wedding photographer and even less for the respect he feels for his customers as he clearly feels that presenting sloppy work to his clients is acceptable.

I am sure that many wedding photographers will say that we simply lucked our way into a bad wedding photographer.  They may be right.  I would argue that the wedding photographer we had the misfortune of hiring is symptomatic of the entire wedding photography industry and possibly the wedding industry as a whole.  They overstate their skills, charge obscene amounts, and then under deliver hoping that they will never be called on it by people who receive their disappointing products as happy newlyweds.  It is the ultimate in too little, too late.

We hired our particular wedding photographer because he came recommended by several people.  I don’t blame those who recommended him.  They probably looked at the few nice pictures that they had from their wedding and thought that he did a fine job, in the process ignoring all the terrible pictures that they received with the handful of nice ones.  Perhaps I had unrealistic expectations for the wedding photographer.  Perhaps photographers routinely only “hit” on only a small percentage of their photos and have a lot of duds and I had an unrealistic expectation of what to expect for a person who charged exorbitantly to give up a random Friday evening to run around pretending to be a quality photography professional.  However, what I do know is that my original hypothesis that wedding photographers are an enormous waste of money was correct.  So for all who are looking to hire a wedding photographer, be careful.  Truly consider if a wedding photographer is worth it.  A lot of them do wedding photography on the side, a real indication that they are not talented or skilled enough to support themselves off wedding photography alone.  If at the end of contemplating the situation you feel that a wedding photographer is right for you, I wish you good luck in getting the quality pictures that you expect.

 

 

 

Have a comment, question, or topic that you want written about?  Send an email to  weddingplanningformen@gmail.com.