I have to admit, when I got married I had no idea what I was doing. Planning such a big event was all new to me, and I didn’t get a lot of help from experienced people. The best advice I received was from one of my Matrons of Honor: “Just enjoy yourself.” So that was exactly what I was determined to do, and that’s what I did. Of course, I read several bridal magazines and websites. I repeatedly read the advice: Don’t skimp on the photography. But really . . . I had no idea what that meant.
At the time we got engaged, I was working on a project with my brother, scanning old family photos to create a digital archive. I was spending a lot of time scanning, and then retouching old photos. So, when looking for a wedding photographer, I was easily seduced by one in particular. She did all digital photography. She was priced just below the average professional photographers (less than $2,000). And she came with the promise that she was not only able to take a multitude of nice sharp photographs, but the copyrights were included with the price.
This photographer’s site was full of photos, all very vivid and colorful. So we met with her. We only had a few particular requests. Reception photos were very important to us. It was very important to me to have photos of our guests enjoying themselves. I mentioned that I wanted to put disposable cameras on every table, and she discouraged that. “I have a digital camera,” she boasted. “I can take loads of photos. And it’s not a problem for me to photograph every table.” I trusted her word, and didn’t buy the disposable cameras. She was full of confidence and bravado, bragging about how she covered more weddings than some of the more established professionals that were still using film. This constant bragging, comparing herself to her competators and putting down of "amateurs" I now look as a big red flag. At our meeting she emphasized that she did not want competing "amateur" photographers taking photos during the wedding, because she said the flash could interfere with her work. Again, a red flag.
After looking at her photos, I realized that I didn’t like the look of her photos that had that romantic out of focus look. It didn’t really occur to me at the time why I didn’t like them. I just thought it was something that didn’t fit my personality. Now, after the fact, I realize that I do have an appreciation for nicely shot photos that are partially out of focus. The problem with her photos was that she doctored them after the fact. They were already bland digital photos to begin with. Doctoring the out of focus affect just made them look like cheap, unsophisticated imitations of real professional photographs. (And yes, we ended up with the doctored out of focus photos, despite our request, as you can see.)
When we met to shoot the engagement photos, I started to realize that I had made a mistake. She had a mental list of poses that she wanted us to do. The poses were silly, unsophisticated and had a cookie cutter quality. We tried to make it very clear to her that silly cutesy poses were not our style. We were already getting close to the wedding day. I thought of just losing the $500 deposit and trying to find someone else, but the lure of “copyrights included” was very strong.
This is a warning to all those who are considering a photographer like this. Chose carefully. Because getting the copyrights to a lot of crappy photographs is not worth it.
At the day of the wedding, this photographer seemed to have completely disregarded everything we talked about at our first meeting and during the engagement shoot. Despite the fact that we had been clear about not liking silly, cute poses during the engagement shoot, she came with a long list of her favorite cute poses ---none of which we felt comfortable with. (The photo of me wrapping the string of flowers around my head is the most painful to look at.) Also, she insisted on taking the majority of the formals against a yellowish wall, that had a flat statue covered by a fake ficus tree. I kept asking to move the shoot out on the grass, by a tree, or by the fence. I didn't like having photos up against a wall, and I really hate ficus trees. But she insisted that it was too sunny. Her pushiness about the location turned out to be just part of a larger problem. She boasted throughout the formal shoot about how great her $1000 camera was and how superior her work was to all the amateurs that surrounded us, and she became even more vocal after my cousin pointed out that she wasn't paying attention to our posture. The location she chose gave all the photos a dull yellowish color. And all but a couple of the photos have a flat mug shot look, because she shot only one perspective, straight on. There was no effort to capture something unique about her subjects. The "cutesy" cookie cutter poses were all she knew about creating something that stood out from the bland and flat.
This is a direct scan from the album to show not only the photography skill, but the clever cropping. Our best man didn't need the top of his head anyway.
Here is another direct scan. This was the photographer's favorite spot at the ceremony, right behind us. Nice photos, but redundant.
Despite the fact that the sun was too bright for her to shoot formals on the grass, the ceremony photos came out very sharp and well exposed. Though, after the fact, in studying the photos more closely, I realized how redundant her work was. The whole ceremony was shot from only four angles. And the last position she chose, straight behind us, is where she stayed for almost half of the ceremony photos. So I can say that they look nice. But it's a lot of photos that look the same. She didn’t move around to find interesting compositions, or to even occasionally turn her camera on the guests. It gave us little to work with when assembling the album. For lack of better choices, we ended up with several pages with the same angle.
I didn’t spend any time during the ceremony thinking of the photography. During the formal shoot, I knew all the formal photos were going to be a waste. But I still hoped that she would come through for us with the reception photos and provide the multitude of reception photos she promised. Well, we didn’t get unlimited photos. And I have to admit that I didn’t even look closely at the story the photos told until recently, after she wrote an email threatening me with libel if I didn’t take down my criticism of her work from my old wedding website. BTW, she offered us no apology. She showed no concern that we were unhappy with the work she did. Instead, she accused me of being a difficult bride (which I was not), claimed our wedding was disorganized (which it was not). And stated that it was a shame I didn't appreciate professional photography. (To this last point, I just hold my head down in shame, since it is a testament to my knowledge of photography that I trusted this person to be my wedding photographer.)
So you may wonder, what story did the reception photos tell? There was only one photo of the head table, taken before the wedding, which was meaningless to us. “Why didn’t you take any photos of the head table while we were sitting there?” I asked when we reviewed the photos at her office. “Your mom was being such a social butterfly and you were never sitting down all at one time,” she claimed with her usual confidence. I didn’t believe her at the time, and it didn't answer why there were no photos of the dinner at all. And it was four years later, after getting her threatening email, that we finally looked at the extended video that didn’t make it to the final movie. There was, in fact, extensive video of all of us sitting down before and during the dinner. And extensive video of the photographer sitting down before and during the dinner! She only took a handful of photos of guests, starting with the women seated at her own table, and then a few surrounding tables. 
Then she took clusters of photos of the toast –again while standing at only one spot. No interesting close ups, no interesting angles. She took a few photos of the cake cutting, the first dance, and the bouquet and garter toss. And then she left. There was just a smattering of photos of the guests taken in between these events. We had guests that were working harder to take photos than she was! And ironically, there was even a photo of her sitting down ---from her own stock of photos! (Obviously taken by her assistant.)
Close up of cake cutting. I have no idea what that dark blotch on my forehead is.
If you’re getting married, do consider what you want out of your wedding photos. Pay attention to small details and the quality and thoughtfulness of the camera work. How well are people posed? Do the photos show warmth, joy, and the elegance you expect from wedding photography? Look at how the ceremony is covered. Do the photos show that the photographer is constantly moving, and looking for an interesting shot? Or do they show that the photographer stuck to just a couple locations during certain events? Do the reception photos show a broad range of what went on during the reception. If there are clusters of photos around the traditional reception events, or not a lot of different angles of those events, that could be a red flag. And study the portfolios of photographers very carefully. Don’t let yourself be seduced by vivid colors and included copyrights. Because the copyrights to bad photography is not worth the thousands of dollars it will cost you.At the time we got engaged, I was working on a project with my brother, scanning old family photos to create a digital archive. I was spending a lot of time scanning, and then retouching old photos. So, when looking for a wedding photographer, I was easily seduced by one in particular. She did all digital photography. She was priced just below the average professional photographers (less than $2,000). And she came with the promise that she was not only able to take a multitude of nice sharp photographs, but the copyrights were included with the price.
This photographer’s site was full of photos, all very vivid and colorful. So we met with her. We only had a few particular requests. Reception photos were very important to us. It was very important to me to have photos of our guests enjoying themselves. I mentioned that I wanted to put disposable cameras on every table, and she discouraged that. “I have a digital camera,” she boasted. “I can take loads of photos. And it’s not a problem for me to photograph every table.” I trusted her word, and didn’t buy the disposable cameras. She was full of confidence and bravado, bragging about how she covered more weddings than some of the more established professionals that were still using film. This constant bragging, comparing herself to her competators and putting down of "amateurs" I now look as a big red flag. At our meeting she emphasized that she did not want competing "amateur" photographers taking photos during the wedding, because she said the flash could interfere with her work. Again, a red flag.
After looking at her photos, I realized that I didn’t like the look of her photos that had that romantic out of focus look. It didn’t really occur to me at the time why I didn’t like them. I just thought it was something that didn’t fit my personality. Now, after the fact, I realize that I do have an appreciation for nicely shot photos that are partially out of focus. The problem with her photos was that she doctored them after the fact. They were already bland digital photos to begin with. Doctoring the out of focus affect just made them look like cheap, unsophisticated imitations of real professional photographs. (And yes, we ended up with the doctored out of focus photos, despite our request, as you can see.)When we met to shoot the engagement photos, I started to realize that I had made a mistake. She had a mental list of poses that she wanted us to do. The poses were silly, unsophisticated and had a cookie cutter quality. We tried to make it very clear to her that silly cutesy poses were not our style. We were already getting close to the wedding day. I thought of just losing the $500 deposit and trying to find someone else, but the lure of “copyrights included” was very strong.
This is a warning to all those who are considering a photographer like this. Chose carefully. Because getting the copyrights to a lot of crappy photographs is not worth it.
At the day of the wedding, this photographer seemed to have completely disregarded everything we talked about at our first meeting and during the engagement shoot. Despite the fact that we had been clear about not liking silly, cute poses during the engagement shoot, she came with a long list of her favorite cute poses ---none of which we felt comfortable with. (The photo of me wrapping the string of flowers around my head is the most painful to look at.) Also, she insisted on taking the majority of the formals against a yellowish wall, that had a flat statue covered by a fake ficus tree. I kept asking to move the shoot out on the grass, by a tree, or by the fence. I didn't like having photos up against a wall, and I really hate ficus trees. But she insisted that it was too sunny. Her pushiness about the location turned out to be just part of a larger problem. She boasted throughout the formal shoot about how great her $1000 camera was and how superior her work was to all the amateurs that surrounded us, and she became even more vocal after my cousin pointed out that she wasn't paying attention to our posture. The location she chose gave all the photos a dull yellowish color. And all but a couple of the photos have a flat mug shot look, because she shot only one perspective, straight on. There was no effort to capture something unique about her subjects. The "cutesy" cookie cutter poses were all she knew about creating something that stood out from the bland and flat.
This is a direct scan from the album to show not only the photography skill, but the clever cropping. Our best man didn't need the top of his head anyway.
Here is another direct scan. This was the photographer's favorite spot at the ceremony, right behind us. Nice photos, but redundant.
Despite the fact that the sun was too bright for her to shoot formals on the grass, the ceremony photos came out very sharp and well exposed. Though, after the fact, in studying the photos more closely, I realized how redundant her work was. The whole ceremony was shot from only four angles. And the last position she chose, straight behind us, is where she stayed for almost half of the ceremony photos. So I can say that they look nice. But it's a lot of photos that look the same. She didn’t move around to find interesting compositions, or to even occasionally turn her camera on the guests. It gave us little to work with when assembling the album. For lack of better choices, we ended up with several pages with the same angle.
I didn’t spend any time during the ceremony thinking of the photography. During the formal shoot, I knew all the formal photos were going to be a waste. But I still hoped that she would come through for us with the reception photos and provide the multitude of reception photos she promised. Well, we didn’t get unlimited photos. And I have to admit that I didn’t even look closely at the story the photos told until recently, after she wrote an email threatening me with libel if I didn’t take down my criticism of her work from my old wedding website. BTW, she offered us no apology. She showed no concern that we were unhappy with the work she did. Instead, she accused me of being a difficult bride (which I was not), claimed our wedding was disorganized (which it was not). And stated that it was a shame I didn't appreciate professional photography. (To this last point, I just hold my head down in shame, since it is a testament to my knowledge of photography that I trusted this person to be my wedding photographer.)
So you may wonder, what story did the reception photos tell? There was only one photo of the head table, taken before the wedding, which was meaningless to us. “Why didn’t you take any photos of the head table while we were sitting there?” I asked when we reviewed the photos at her office. “Your mom was being such a social butterfly and you were never sitting down all at one time,” she claimed with her usual confidence. I didn’t believe her at the time, and it didn't answer why there were no photos of the dinner at all. And it was four years later, after getting her threatening email, that we finally looked at the extended video that didn’t make it to the final movie. There was, in fact, extensive video of all of us sitting down before and during the dinner. And extensive video of the photographer sitting down before and during the dinner! She only took a handful of photos of guests, starting with the women seated at her own table, and then a few surrounding tables. 
Then she took clusters of photos of the toast –again while standing at only one spot. No interesting close ups, no interesting angles. She took a few photos of the cake cutting, the first dance, and the bouquet and garter toss. And then she left. There was just a smattering of photos of the guests taken in between these events. We had guests that were working harder to take photos than she was! And ironically, there was even a photo of her sitting down ---from her own stock of photos! (Obviously taken by her assistant.)Close up of cake cutting. I have no idea what that dark blotch on my forehead is.
I want to finally point an important point about photographers that I did not understand until the day of the wedding. Our photographer was not only drastically substandard, but she was kind of bossy. I didn't really think of the wedding as being all about me, like I've seen in other brides. But my feeling was that the photographer imposed herself on our wedding far too much. First by not being flexible about the formal photos. Again by repeatedly trying to push rediculous poses on us. And at the reception she kept tried to tell us how to cut the cake, how to throw the bouquet, where to throw the bouquet. And she was impatient to get things moving along, to get the main events over with so that she could leave as soon as possible. I realize now after talking to other brides, that this is a common problem, even with photographers that have better skill. There are some brides who may not mind being pushed around by their photographer. But I didn't like it. And I realize that it would not have been enough to make this clear in my initial interview with her. She wanted the job, and would have said anything to get it. You need to look for the red flags --arrogance, inflexibilty, rules about keeping other competing photographers away, etc.
Full train shot. And close up crop to show the detail. I believe I'm missing a section of my hairline in this photo.
Now, after loooking at the above photos, take a look at these photos, of my brother's wedding. Notice a difference? It's night and day. I also want to add that my brother's wedding photographer never sat down through the whole wedding. She was constantly moving through the ceremony and reception. And the photos show that.
