Quick update

It's a while since my last blog as we've been very busy with weddings, editing and upgrading our video cameras. We are now using HD cameras which give a far superior image to the standard definition cameras we had previously. 

Our new workhorse is the Panasonic HMC-151E which films in full HD 1080p and can record for 3 hours continuously onto SD cards. This is a true Professional grade HD camera and has only recently been released by Panasonic. It is very similar to the famous HVX-200 camera which has been used to make many full scale Hollywood movies due to its 'film look'. The camera has a great ability to capture images in low light conditions, making it ideal for use in churches or for filming the first dance (without needing the lights turned up)!

We have got a lot of great ideas about how we intend to use our new HD cameras and provide exciting new products and services to our clients in 2009. Possibilities include having your wedding video on high definition Blu Ray disk, or online in HD for friends and family to view. We are also considering offering an option for a same day edit where we present a highlights video of the wedding ceremony at the evening reception using a projector.

We will be trailing some of these options over the next couple of months before rolling them out on the main website. In the mean time, feel free to ask if you are interested in any of these.

This is our latest wedding video highlights from Brian & Joanne's wedding in June at St. Mary's Church in West Derby, Liverpool. The music is by Desiree and is called Kissing You.


Joanne & Brian - Wedding Highlights from Stuart Mottershead on Vimeo.

Wedding Photography Options - 3 - The Professional Photographer

A professional bridal preparations shot (courtesy of easyweddingphoto.com, a wirral based wedding photography company covering Liverpool, Manchester, Cheshire & North Wales)

A professional shot of the couple leaving the church

This is the final post on this subject, and predictably, it is covering the last (and most popular) option, which is to pay a professional to take your wedding photographs. Wedding photographers come in a wide variety of styles, types and prices, but for this post I will concentrate on the factors which all professional wedding photographers should have in common.

The first and most important thing that a professional wedding photographer has is experience. It is this experience which enables them to consistently get great photographs time after time.

For example, a professional photographer will know where to stand for the best shot, when to take a photo (and more importantly when not to), how to set up group shots etc. and where best to do them and how to do all this in a friendly and efficient manner.

Most importantly, a professional will know which shots you are most likely to want, and which ones you would be really upset about if they didn't get taken (or if they turned out wrong).

A professional photographer will also carry all the kit that they need to do the job. This should include a good quality professional DSLR, flash and lens (possibly several lenses) plus a spare camera & lens just incase there is a problem. Professional lenses start at around £700 and can cost up to £1300 each. These lenses are much better than the 'kit' lenses that you get bundled with cheap consumer DSLRs and they enable the photographer to get a clearer picture and often to avoid the need for flash (in a church for example). 

A professional flash is much more powerful than a built in flash, producing a smoother, more consistent light, and avoiding red eye. There are very few amateurs who could justify the type of kit which a professional would consider the bare minimum.

Another thing to consider is that a professional photographer will usually be able to offer you a range of albums and print products which are not available to the amateur.

Of course, there are some limitations. It doesn't matter how good the photographer is, are limited to photographing what is there on the day. A 3* hotel in Bognor is never going to look like the Ritz, for example, whichever direction it is photographed from. 

Pros:

1. You will get the photographs you asked for
2. The quality of the photographs should be good (well exposed and with good composition)
3. They should be able to enhance the photographs in post production before they are printed for you
4. Range of albums and prints available

Cons:

1. Cost more than the other options (of course)!
2. Prints are likely to cost more than if you were able to print the photographs yourself
3. Copyright issues (make sure you know what you are agreeing to before booking your photographer)

In summary, this is without doubt the best way to ensure you get the photographs you want and that they are of high quality. Communicating exactly what you want and choosing the right pro for the job are essential, but that's another topic in its own right.

Wedding Photography Options - 2 - Keen Amateur

An attempted reportage shot!

This option is where you have a friend or family member who is either a keen amateur photographer, or even a professional photographer in another field (e.g. photo-journalism, nature photography etc.) and you ask them to photograph your wedding for you as a favour.
As a vidiographer I have seen a few examples of this.

Some Examples

On one occasion the bride's brother was photographing a wedding in New Brighton on the Wirral. He was a keen amateur and had good equipment (better than some pros), although he only had one camera so it might have been a problem if it had failed.

He told me this was the seventh wedding he had photographed, and you could see that he knew what he was doing. In summary, although I didn't see the pictures he produced, my guess is that they were pretty good. The only negatives I can think of from the bride and groom's point of view were that he probably took a little longer than a pro would have done. From his point of view, however, I think it is fair to say that his day was a much more stressful one than for the rest of the wedding guests.

On another occasion, at a wedding in the Hillbark Hotel in Frankby (also on the Wirral), the photographer was a friend of the bride & groom, and was a professional photo journalist. She had great equipment (probably about £10k in camera bodies & lenses) and obviously knew how to use it.

Through the day however, I noticed a few strange things. Firstly, she took hundreds of photographs through the ceremony (and kept walking in front of my video camera). This was very intrusive, and I have never seen another photographer do the same before or since.
Later on, during the first dance, it was a terrible struggle to keep her out of the frame of my video camera. Whenever I moved around to get her out of shot, she would move back into the frame.

A few weeks later, when I delivered the DVDs to the bride's mother she told me how the photographs had been a big dissapointment. Apparently she had used a fish eye lens for most of the shots. This gives a distorted looking picture, which can be quite pleasing in limited doses, but not on every photograph. There were also a number of important family members (including bridesmaids) who were missing from all the photographs. I am not sure how this had happened, maybe she had accidentally wiped a compact flash card?

I think this is a case where a skilled and experienced photographer had underestimated the challanges involved with the specific task of photographing a wedding.

In many ways the most important skills of a wedding photographer are not directly connected with taking pictures. Things like understanding what the customer wants, dealing with them in a friendly way, and understanding what to do, and not to do are all essential skills.

Pros:

1. Low/zero cost
2. You should get some good photographs if they know what they're doing
3. They should be using good quality equipment

Cons:

1. They might be out of their depth, for example, they may have difficulty arranging the group shots
2. If you don't like the photographs it could make your relationship with them more awkward
3. They may not have access the the range of professional albums and prints that a professional wedding photographer has
4.  They will miss out on experiencing the wedding as a guest
5. They may have their own ideas about how they want the photographs should look, these might clash with your own

Summary

This is a decent option if budget is a priority and you know someone who would be keen to do it. You are taking a bit of a risk if they have never done wedding photography before, and in this case the resulting photographs will certainly be significantly poorer. It is certainly a much better option than option 1 if you care at all about having decent wedding photographs.

Wedding Photography Options - 1 -No Photographer

A typical snap (Oops!)

For this series of posts I want to go into the options that you can choose from for your wedding photography. Specifically, whether you want to go without having a main photographer, whether to use a friend who is a keen amateur, or to pay out for a pro wedding photographer.

To start, I will go into the pros and cons of having no main photographer:

Lets Define This Option First:

This is where you choose to have no photographer, but instead to rely on the snaps that people take through the day on their small cameras and mobile phones etc.

Pros:

1. Its free! (although you will have to pay for prints etc.)
2. No photo session saves time out of the day for other things
3. You will still have some photos

Cons:

1. You wont be able to get formal group shots, these require a level of organisation by the photographer
2. You wont get the artistic reportage style shots which many photographers provide
3. Your photographs are likely to be limited to small group shots
4. There will be no consistent look to your photographs as they will be taken by different people on different cameras
5. The quality of the photographs will be poor due to the inexperience of the users, and the quality of the cameras
6. It might be a hassle trying to gather the photographs from numerous guests who have taken them
7. Your photographs will be in JPEG format, this limits the amount of adjustments/improvements which can be made to the photographs on a computer
8. You will be limited in the choice of albums and print option

Do not be fooled into thinking that a 10 mega pixel compact camera is going to give you similar quality pictures to a professional DSLR camera. There are so many advantages to the professional camera, such as sensor size, lens quality and aperture size, flash quality & strength and the fact that a professional camera can take a picture instantly and continue at a rate of 6-7 pictures per second. When you add in the difference between an experienced professional and a 'happy snapper' the difference grows even greater.

Summary:

In summary, this is a good choice if you are on a very limited budget and you don't really care that much about the quality of the photographs. 

Welcome to my Blog

Hi,

My name is Stuart Mottershead. I run a wedding video business covering Liverpool, Cheshire, Manchester and Wirral. My partner, Sarah, runs a wedding photography business covering the same area.

The purpose of the blog is to provide information for couples who are looking to hire a wedding photographer or videographer. Hopefully over time I can explain give you some useful tips about how to find a photographer or videographer, and what you should be looking for in their products.

I also hope to find out more about you, the client, and to better my understanding of what you are looking for.