5 Reasons Why Wedding Photographers are So Expensive
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Many people think that wedding photography is overpriced and that wedding photographers charge a lot for their services. While this is partially true and the amounts people pay are high, we need to consider how much work goes into photographing a wedding.
Of course, when planning a wedding you spend a lot of time and effort to arrange everything perfectly. While the Wedding venue is usually the biggest expense, photography is not the latest on the list.
A wedding day is a one-of-a-kind occasion that happens once in a lifetime, which is why it’s important to choose the right photographer for your special day. Once you start searching, you realise that prices for wedding photographers start at over €1200, and for most people, that’s a lot.
Many times we’ve heard stories from people about wedding photographers earning €1500 or more in a day, and how cool it would be to buy a camera and start photographing weddings.
We wrote this article to explain in simple terms why photographers charge so much for wedding photography services. Working in the industry we share experience that we have so far to help you lean why are wedding photographers so expensive.
There are several main reasons that contribute to Wedding photography pricing and one of them is responsibility. Since there is a lot of responsibility, you can’t lack skills, good equipment and must have all process worked through. To learn about what work is involved into photographing a wedding why does it cost so much continue reading till the end.
1 Prices for the equipment
The simplest topic to discuss is how much the equipment costs, from the camera to the memory cards. It’s one of the things that contribute a lot but we can’t say that it’s the only reason for the high wedding photography prices.
Cameras
Prices for cameras can vary greatly. For professional cameras, you can expect to pay between €1400 and €5000. However, keep in mind that anything above €4000 is usually not necessary for wedding photography.
The reason we say “cameras” in plural is because it’s rare for a wedding photographer to use just one. Two cameras allow for a quicker switch between different lenses and provide a backup in case one of the cameras fails to work.
If a photographer uses flash and natural light at the same time, the best way to manage this is by connecting one camera to the lights and keeping the other set for natural lighting. Meaning for more complex light at a fast paced wedding environment photographer also needs 2 cameras.
Cameras also break. In our case, both of our main cameras needed repairs within the last couple of years. The repairs costed €650 for two cameras. When you use them heavily, it’s not uncommon to drop them occasionally.
And the best practice is to get check ups, cleaning and service for cameras once a year that costs about €100. That’s to ensure that they work reliably on your wedding day.
Total Expense: ~ €800 per year.
Lenses
Good lenses cost about the same as cameras but wear out less. Overall, expenses for lenses are lower but still significant. If a photographer takes care of them, they can last for years.
Total Expense: ~ €400 per year
Laptop
High-quality images range from 40-80MB. Weak office laptops can barely handle processing such files, which is why, in our case, we’ve had to recently upgrade our working PC for the second time.
Total Expense: ~ €200 per year
2 Other Expenses
Editing Software
Since everything is a subscription nowadays, photographers pay around €20 per month for editing software.
Total Expense: ~ €220 per year
Accounting
In most countries, financial bureaucratic systems can be tricky to navigate. Most photographers use the services of tax consultants to manage their accounting and avoid fines. In Austria, this costs between €500 and €1500 per year, depending on how much accounting you handle yourself and how many forms you’re willing to fill out.
Total Expense: ~ €1000 per year
Website
Website hosting, builders, plug ins and other online services might cost from €100-300 per year
Total Expense: ~ €250 per year
This list could go on for a while. To keep it shorter, we’ll say that the main expenses for wedding photography have already been outlined. At the same time, almost all wedding photographers have lighting equipment that costs about €500 per light, light diffusers ranging from €100 to €200, tripods, memory cards (usually 3-6 of them) costing €50-100 for good ones, and other small items that can add up significantly.
Total expenses per year
These numbers above are very approximate and taken from our personal experience of working as wedding photographers in Vienna, Austria
This number varies a lot from one photographer to another, but it takes at least a couple of weddings to cover these expenses. Then you deduct about 35% of taxes and insurances from every photoshoot revenue in Austria and the price for a wedding photoshoot doesn’t seem to be too big anymore.
Hidden Work Behind The Scenes
3 Skills and Training
Now that we’ve discussed the aspects that are easy to quantify (services and equipment), we shouldn’t overlook the amount of training required to perfect one’s skills as a wedding photographer. Another aspect of why are wedding photographers so expensive is because of efforts put into refining one’s skills
Of course, some photographers are newbies who jump right into the industry. However, since wedding photography involves a lot at stake and requires delivering exceptional quality, many spend years practising before they start. Some people invest thousands in courses to learn how to create masterful images.
In our case, we are both self-learners, having started photography 12 and 14 years ago, practising each year more than the last. As Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said, “Your first 10,000 photos are your worst.”
Even after countless photos—well beyond 10,000—we notice that we still improve over time. These years of learning represent thousands of hours of training to be able to photograph well enough.
4 Location Scouting
When you aim at creating the best images possible you have to spend time and work on learning about different locations in you area and if the wedding is planned in a location where you have not been yet then the best is to visit it beforehand and to take some pictures. We can often spend a couple of hours before a wedding to see the weddings locations and learn about ways the light falls in there as well as actual spaciousness and possible frames we can capture there on the wedding day.
5 Post-Production
Even though a wedding coverage is only 12 hours, the editing process takes a lot longer. In our case we edit photos from one wedding within about 3 sessions about 6 hours each, since there should be done several steps to create a beautiful gallery of photos. It starts with preselection, then we do another stricter selection, which is about 30% of work in post-production, after we apply basic edits, and then we finalise everything by going from one picture to another and editing it one by one to get the best works that will be memorable and will evoke emotions.
After all that work is done, we often need to revisit the pictures to make sure everything is well edited and no more adjustments are needed, usually making minor fixes in the process.
In result from the time photographer takes the images till the moment you receive the pictures there is about 20 more hours of work.
Conclusion
A photographer has a big responsibility when photographing a wedding as you can’t replay a wedding if the pictures didn’t turn out good. Consequently, everyone tries to prepare the best for everything to go smoothly.
Why are wedding photographers so expensive – is because they spend years to learn and arrange everything for work and multiple full working days to photograph a wedding.
One wedding takes no less than a week of work for a photographer if they actually try to achieve the best results and we at Comet Photography sometimes spend about 50=60 hours of work per wedding.
There is a lot of hidden work that is done behind the scenes before and after the day of the photoshoot, and most people who commit for that are passionate about it.
We, Anna and Fedor, always work together at weddings as that not only allows us to be risk free, but gives even more room for creativity. More time to capture intimate moments and emotions, and create a more varied gallery of cinematic imagery.
If you are planning a wedding in Austria or anywhere in Europe, you can learn more about our wedding photography services or feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like us to be your photographers.
