Wedding how to judge a photographer?!

[newbie124]

Hi AllieLuv,

I don''t live in the Boston area so unfortunately can''t help you w/ specific reqs, but scanning through the photos of both photographers, I don''t know if I''m really wowed by either. I do think the first one who you had the e-session with is better than the 2nd person. The Catch Life photographer had some nice colors to his photos when he left them in their naturally lit stage...but his Photoshop skills seem to be a bit off to me. Like the colors and highlighting in some of the modified images are just odd.

I don''t think you have to love the majority of photos that the photographer takes...like others said, you will probably only be printing out a few anyway and 50% isn''t too bad, if you really like those 50. Have you by any chance seen at least one or two full portfolios from this photographer? All photos from a single session?

I think anyone can go out w/ a camera and come back w/ enough decent to very good pictures to post as samples in an online gallery. It''s much more telling when you take a look at a complete set (that being said, I will warn you that looking at complete sets can also make you a little less confident b/c you''re seeing all the mediocre pics that are usually edited out...that''s why I think blogs are also very useful b/c you get to see some wider and less formal samples of their work.)

Anyway, if it''s of any help, here are e-photos from my photographer''s portfolio: http://www.hystudio.com/engagement1/. One reason why this photographer initially caught my eye was b/c of how natural all of the couples look in most of their e-photos, which made me think he must have some talent for making people feel at ease and/or the ability to capture good moments. The photographers I ruled out were ones that, to me, had a lot of cheesy or more "forced" e-pics. It''s funny but in a way, I often found it to be more telling than looking through their wedding portfolios...

 

[AllieLuv83]

Thank you! I actually voiced my concern to my photographer and I think I made her feel worse than I meant to. She emailed me back and felt very bad that I did not love the majority of the pictures. She told me she would send me a rebate for the session but what I would really want is a re-do, because I really do like her and her work. She is fairly new to wedding photograpy and what I love most is the spontanety of her wedding shots. I just think that the first time around we really did not know what to expect, and we were in such a public place there was a tooon of people around us. I don''t know what she will say. When I receive the CD of the images I will post soon. Those look so grainy because I pulled them from the proof site.

 

[marchswallowbird]

Allie, keep in mind that photographers are artists, and they can be very sensitive about their work, so no matter how gentle you were, any negativity about her work was bound to make her feel bad. It was important that you were able to talk to her about this, and it''s awesome that she offered you a rebate...this shows that she really cares about making her clients happy, and about the quality of her work. Many photographers would have the attitude of "my work is great, if you don''t like it that''s only because you have no taste and no sense of how to judge good photography, the problem is not my work it is you." Have you talked to her about a re-do? I bet she''d be willing to do that, because it is not actual dollars out of her pocket. Perhaps in a less public place where you and FI will feel more relaxed and less like you''re in a fishbowl? It sounds like she really wants to work with you to make you happy, that''s priceless.