Best New York Wedding Photographers
Best New York Wedding Photographers - What Gives a Wedding Photo Value
best new york wedding photographers
Best New York Wedding Photographers
What Gives a Wedding Photo Value BY STEVEN PLANCK
I’m asking a serious question, “What gives a wedding photo it’s value?” Take a look at the photo to the left and decide right now, if you were the bride, what would this photo of you and your father dancing be worth to you? Please write that number down and we’ll come back to it later, because I’m sure there are a lot of brides who would love to know why some of the best New York wedding photographers charge so much money to do what they do. From her point of view, it looks as simple as just pushing a button, but there are a plethora of reasons as to why this is so “not” the case.
To start with, it’s not just one day of work and all the best New York wedding photographers in the industry will agree with that. When you observe your wedding photographer at work, you’re seeing him/her during the actual process of shooting, but behind the scenes they’re also acting as a studio manager, an editor and a retoucher for which they need to get paid. Truth is, there’s usually more going on after the fact that you don’t see, which requires four times as much work than the time it took for your wedding photographer to actually photograph your event. On average, I’m personally spending upwards of sixty plus hours and over six months with each of my clients.
Another misconception about professional wedding photographers is that they keep everything that they charge, which is completely false. In fact, according to a national survey conducted by the Professional Photographers of America, photography studios are only keeping about thirty percent of every dollar they take in. The rest is being spent of cost of sale items, studio rent, travel, equipment, utilities, studio and office supplies, etc. I personally own two photography studios and I can tell you that I’m paying nearly twenty-six percent in taxes alone on every dollar I take in. At the end of the year, most studios are lucky to be turning a profit.
Lastly, and although many brides won’t want to admit this, is that the best New York wedding photographers are really good at what they do and their worth what they’re charging. Take for example the photo above of the bride dancing with her father. Notice her mother crying in the background, slightly out of focus so as not to distract the viewers attention from the couple dancing. The look on her fathers face. He’s proud. He’s helped raise a good woman who’ll make an excellent mother some day. It’s an excellent story for that photo, but now for what you don’t see. He’s proud, but he’s dying. He’s dressed like a king, but he barely had the strength to walk to the dance floor. He’s hear in that photo, but in my phone conversations with the bride in the months leading up to her wedding day, she didn’t know if he was going to make it. Then shortly after her wedding had passed, so did he. As if this dance were one last parting gift that he gave to his daughter and this photograph is all that she has left to remember it by.
So I ask again, what’s the photo worth? Would you have been OK with trusting that moment to just anyone, because you wanted to save a couple of dollars? That’s a serious question.
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