As I mentioned in my first post about our wedding planning, who would do our photography was the million dollar question when we got engaged. Everyone asked the question, and we would just shake our heads looking slightly baffled at the task we had head of us. We knew it would be a tough job for us, but actually choosing a photographer has easily been the toughest job so far in our wedding planning.
We know it is a saturated market out there. Wedding photographers are ten a penny, really good ones who actually care about your wedding, not just fulfilling a job, are definitely rarer. Yet the day we decided to create our shortlist was really stressful. You see, we are our perfect wedding photographers. Yes that may sound egotistical, but it’s true, we offer the level of passion and service we think a couple getting married deserve, as well as a style of photography that we feel doesn’t just tick a trend box, but rather will last a lifetime and more. Happy to admit we did not look at anyone in our region, we owe it to our clients past and present to uphold the fact that we think they made the best choice!
Start with the best
We started our quest to choose a photographer by listing the photographers we knew of and admired. We also looked extensively at the Fearless Photographers directory, of which we are honoured to be members. Something we regularly came across was a great portfolio and then we would delve deeper into the photographer’s whole weddings and see that they were either lacking consistency or worse, just very very average across a whole wedding. There was a lot of tea involved. Tom in particular struggled in choosing a photographer. He has been honing his craft for over fifteen years and is a very technical photographer – it was impossible for him to step back and not be critical when he saw basic technical errors or missed opportunities. It also seems a lot of photographers out there struggle with basic white balance…
In the end, we went with our gut feeling, contacting a photographer who we have seen in magazines and enjoyed his work. He has his own style, but the images will hopefully continue to look great in years to come. He captures wonderful little moments in a documentary style, much like us. We arranged a Skype meeting and he was instantly likeable, in fact, very similar to Tom. We’re not going to ‘out’ him though, as we don’t think it is fair to add any extra pressure, but we are sure we will be giving him a lot of love after the wedding. So we are all booked and are really looking forward to having him and his assistant be part of our day, because the important thing for us is that we know we can just enjoy being the bride and groom on the day, not worrying about what shots are being taken and thinking ‘oh I wouldn’t do that there.’ As much as we love what we do, we don’t want to feel like we are at work, we just want to enjoy our wedding day!
Lina x
