We recently did a Trousseau session with a client who told me her story of her late December wedding last year and her experience with that photographer that I think sums up the current status of the wedding photography business.

This client, Ashley, went to an established company and chose a package that would allow her to have a printable disc with all her day’s images.  When she viewed her disc, Ashley was heartbroken.  There are three or four images that she feels are quality images, a few more that are “decent”, and several that “could have been good if….”  Some of Ashley’s observations were:  there are many duplicate images; many blurry images; several images that could be great if they had moved her dress to cover the outlet in the stairs, moved one step to the right so that you couldn’t see her naked breast as they put her into her gown, had done something about the glare on her husband’s glasses in the formal pictures.  Little things that her photographer didn’t think of while capturing the image.

Often with these types of packages and photographers, there is no “post production” work.  They do not find the best of the multiples and remove the rest, nor do they remove blurry pictures.  Imagine ordering a 16×20 of an image you find to be absolutely beautiful only to find that the quality of the image is too poor to enlarge to that size.  That is a costly realization even at cut-rate prices.

When Ashley returned to the photographer, she noticed that there were three large images on the wall from her wedding.  These, she says, are the best images on the disc.  As she is discussing whether or not a book comes with her package and looking at the sample books lying around, she notices that the sample books contain several images from her wedding as well.  Although Ashley was told they could “throw in a book” with her package, there is no memory of that conversation.  She now has multiple jobs so the time to sift through the images and put together a wedding album just isn’t there.  She asks about prices to have the photographer build her a wedding album.  The woman who once was so eager the “throw in” a book with her package now advises her that she should just go to an online service and build something there – it would save her money.

Ashley is now dealing with the fact that these people who were so happy and willing to work to get her business are now done with her and on to something else.  She is left without the software skills to make her images better and without the time to build her own album. Her wedding memories digitally stored on a disk in a drawer.  Now what?

This is a growing problem with the photography industry today.  Brides buy into the notion that it will be wonderful to own their own images.  They can buy as many prints as they want anywhere they want, they can design their own album at a much lower price than those “expensive” photographers will charge you.  It’s a great deal!  But is it really?

Think about Ashley’s experience.  Her photographer certainly didn’t waste any time getting her shots in a book for their own benefit, but wanted to help her “save money” by essentially refusing to sell her an album.  Was she in a sample book so quickly because her wedding was one of the few they have captured? Maybe their best work? It wasn’t even an entire wedding in the album.

I think the biggest heartbreak here is that this new breed of “photographer” does essentially no post production work on the images.  Sure, they may change some images to black and white or sepia, but they didn’t even do her the courtesy of sifting through the images to remove duplicates and images of poor quality.  I understand that in the digital age, capturing around 2000 images at rapid succession at a wedding is commonplace, and it sounds really great to tell a bride that you’ve done that.  However, if you don’t truly understand lighting, composition and the other basic rules of photography, and out of those images, you have very few quality images, what are they really giving you for your money?  Again, it is costly even at cut-rate prices.

At Ekeler Photography, our service does not end with the wedding day.  What we do is REAL wedding photography.  We aren’t selling you a disc, we’re creating art.

Once your wedding images are captured, they are pared down.  We capture duplicate images so that we can give you the best….often by using a couple of formal images to make one perfect one.  Perhaps everyone is smiling beautifully in one image except dad……..since we have more than one image, we will use dad’s best smile to create one perfect image.  We remove additional duplicate images and images that may not be of good quality, why should you have to look over duplicates and images that are not up to our standards to get to a good image?  We may capture 1000 images, but we will sift through those for you so that you see only the images that are good enough to make it onto your proofing disc. All images are then backed up and archived, ready to begin to tell the story of your day. We work with you to design just the right album for you.

And what of the endless number of cheap prints you can purchase anywhere you like?  What is the quality of those images?  Will you have the skills to retouch the image or to make sure that the coloring of your skin and the brightness of multiple images used together is consistent?  Will the paper that image is printed on stand up to the test of time, or will it fade and turn blue?  Will you have the time and skills to design a one of a kind wedding album that you can cherish for years to come?

Ekeler Photography doesn’t want to be the cheapest photographer.  We want to provide you with quality images that will stand the test of time.  We’ve said it time and again – once the food and liquor have been consumed, the flowers have been pressed, the dress and other memorabilia are put in storage, all you have left to show the generations that follow are the images of your special day.  What will your images look like?