Picking a Wedding Photographer

I’ll admit that I got a wee bit carried away when I started looking for a photographer.

This is a screen shot of my bookmarks for photographers. And yes, there’s more if you scrolled. Ummm, I have over 30 bookmarks. Excessive? Hardly!

After we picked the venue the next thing I went to work on was photography and videography.  It was a nice break from writing papers and studying for exams. There I was, late-night, bleary-eyed and on the prowl. Trolling the interweb for some sexy photography. 

Look at those Photoshop effects! 

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Love the lighting!

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That’s so romantic! 

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Swooning over the colors! 

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All I paid attention to was whether or not I liked the pretty pictures. No judgment just… “yes, me likey” or “no, me no likey.” I just kept bookmarking until I noticed I was making repeat visits to certain websites.

At some point you have to put the kibosh on looking. Now it was time to narrow the field. You may have noticed at the top of the screenshot, a folder labeled “Real Contenders”. I didn’t have the heart to delete any of the ones I nixed so I moved the ones I was really interested in to the “real contender” folder.

Painstakingly, I looked through each of the bookmarked websites and made some tough choices.

Tips for narrowing

-- Turn the music off. Some sites have a pretty wicked soundtrack. Don’t be fooled it’s only there to confuse your senses. Think about it…how scary is “Jaws” without the soundtrack? Same principle. Sort of. It's about the emotional reaction people have to music.

-- Presentation is everything! Do you really like the pictures or the graphical layout of the website?

-- If you have a strong fondness for a particular shade or color you’ll probably be drawn to pictures featuring it. I favor the color purple and noticed that I liked a lot of pictures with SURPRISE… purple in them. Once I figured this out I realized it wasn’t necessarily the quality of the picture but the content that I was drawn to.

-- If a picture can make you care about the total strangers in white dresses and formal wear then that's how you know it's a good picture. If you get even a twinge of emotion looking at a picture then that photographer is a keeper.

Next up... the biggest decision making factor. . .MONEY aka that costs How Much?