Unrealstic expectations for services?

bike21

So I recently signed up for a wedding vendor service that matches up potential clients with your services. Of the two leads that have been generated thus far, both have been what I could consider low-ball expectations. The most recent one, quite so...



Has anyone else come across such seemingly low expectations? Is this a case of a yet educated bride on what things actually cost? Or is there a market for $400 wedding photographers?

I already have a wedding booked on this date, so I am not inclined to respond. I kind of wonder what response I would get if I responded with my minimum starting $1800 package. And I thought I was on the low side of pricing in my market!

VayCayMom

I am a noob and don't do weddings, but I have 2 married daughters and have paid wedding photographers, plus once I slept at a hotel for smart people, lol.

I have one question... where did the $400 price tag come from, is that want they want to pay for what they want? I can't believe they even want the images all printed on your nickel.

And do they really think that from bridal prep to say the beginning of the after party it will all happen in 4 hours or less?

bride prep 5:30 - 6
ceremony 6 - 7:30
bridal party shots 7:30 - 8
reception 8-10 ?


Nah, I don't think there is much call for a $400 wedding because once someone sees what they would get for that price that will not be what they want.But what do I know?
Someone needs to hook them up with that Craigs list joke .

Cuong

You should refer this request to the Craig's List guy. Since he only charges $200, he might give you a referral fee.

Cuong

mercphoto

bike21 wrote:

Has anyone else come across such seemingly low expectations? Is this a case of a yet educated bride on what things actually cost? Or is there a market for $400 wedding photographers?

I'll bet you they think you're getting $100 an hour, so how could that be so bad? They probably have no idea the post-processing involved (they probably take all their photos straight from the camera to Wal-Mart, after all). Probably have no idea the business costs involved.

Having said that, when Amy and I went to a bridal fair after we got engaged I did see at least one photo vendor whose "speciality" was photos on-the-spot. I really don't think they did any post processing whatsoever, probably not even batched enhancements.

Art Scott

I see tons of this on one of the sites I sign up for.....absolutely tons of photogs offering all day wedding shoots guaranteeing 1500 deliverable post processed large jpg files on disk for anything from $450 - 900.....some of these are multi shooter weddings.....It is freaking ridiculous ........

I know we are in a recession but is is absolutely stupid to just give it away.....or all of them are just rank beginners.....and have no clue what is going on.......

Agnieszka

Art Scott wrote:

all of them are just rank beginners.....and have no clue what is going on.......

I'd say, that's more the case. It wouldn't surprise me if she actually got quite a few responses.

tenoverthenose

Once upon a time I decided to do a little Craigslist market research. I posted that I was looking for a photographer for my wedding, that I needed all of the photos on a disc, and only could offer $400. Sure enough I got tons of people interested to shoot for me, some even _claimed_ to be pros. Even worse, some were pros. Kinda scary.

bike21

Agnieszka wrote:

I'd say, that's more the case. It wouldn't surprise me if she actually got quite a few responses.

So far, only one has responded. Hopefully they gave her a reality check.

My industry [airlines] has our own issues of undercutting and pilots working for cheaper wages. Seems a lot of industries suffer from this calamity as well. My parents own a construction company and in this economy have been having a terrible time getting solid work. Lots of contractors are bidding just to get the work and not making much profit.

The free market vs. a sustainable level of business is interesting. We went to a friend's wedding last summer and I was appalled at watching their 'photographers' using the built in camera flash. Can't imagine how their photos turned out.

Moogle Pepper

tenoverthenose wrote:

Once upon a time I decided to do a little Craigslist market research. I posted that I was looking for a photographer for my wedding, that I needed all of the photos on a disc, and only could offer $400. Sure enough I got tons of people interested to shoot for me, some even _claimed_ to be pros. Even worse, some were pros. Kinda scary.

Is that why you never responded to my response? :cry

For the question at hand, it is pretty low expectations. And I get the feeling of the B+G probably won't appreciate the art/work afterwards.

Secondly, I really do not like those "match making" things that some wedding sites have for their paying advertisers.

zoomer

My guess is most of these people are just out to make a little extra cash...at the expense of some poor bride with no cash...hoping for the best.
95% of these people will give it up after the first or second wedding...of course there is a new crop waiting to take their place.

ShepsMom

Stay away from sites like this, those are bargain shoppers looking to save a buck. Those sites attract amateur photographers who are willing to "shoot and burn" and take off. Just like CL, where brides look for quantity and not quality. Networking with your local wedding vendors is probably the best thing to do.

FedererPhoto

Supply and demand.

The supply of low-end wedding photographers has skyrocketed... the demand has stayed, roughly, the same.

Result - prices of low-end wedding photography has plunged. It's happening in every segment of the economy that technology can make easier.

Solution - don't fight it.

The_Fat_Zebra

Small story: I'm an amateur asked to do a friends wedding in May. After repeated utterances such as 'just because you like my landscape pics on the wall, and the camera is heavy and big doesn't mean I can do it!' and 'I'm happy to take pictures as guest, but hire a pro for the ceremony and official shots' ... eventually they decided to hire a 500 Euro brother of someone who is "pro-photographer" who will do the whole thing from start to finish for that price. I kindof warned them that that's not exactly what I meant... at least I tried to defend the honour of the pro's... lol

mercphoto

The_Fat_Zebra wrote:

Small story: I'm an amateur asked to do a friends wedding in May. After repeated utterances such as 'just because you like my landscape pics on the wall, and the camera is heavy and big doesn't mean I can do it!' and 'I'm happy to take pictures as guest, but hire a pro for the ceremony and official shots' ... eventually they decided to hire a 500 Euro brother of someone who is "pro-photographer" who will do the whole thing from start to finish for that price. I kindof warned them that that's not exactly what I meant... at least I tried to defend the honour of the pro's... lol

I've got a friend who is also a part-time Realtor. He said years ago a lot of people went to part-time real estate (just like he did) and there's a glut of agents out there. Fortunately for them there is an accreditation process to go through to be able to sell houses. That does tend to keep the number of agents from ballooning. And the industry does seem to stick reasonably hard to the 6% commission (5% is relatively easy to find, but few people under-cut, with the exception of 1% realty).

This doesn't happen in photography. There are no accreditations that I know of for wedding photography. Buy a camera, hang a shingle, and sign up clients. And it doesn't help either that the opinions of the general public are that selling a house is hard and taking a picture isn't.

bike21

ShepsMom wrote:

Stay away from sites like this, those are bargain shoppers looking to save a buck. Those sites attract amateur photographers who are willing to "shoot and burn" and take off. Just like CL, where brides look for quantity and not quality. Networking with your local wedding vendors is probably the best thing to do.

Yeah, I am thinking about not doing much with it unless it seems like a very promising lead. All of my work has come from referrals and word of mouth so far and I like that just fine

FlyNavy

Actually, there are many weddings where the budget for the photographer is $400 or less.

Mr_Beach_Bum

FlyNavy wrote:

Actually, there are many weddings where the budget for the photographer is $400 or less.

aaaaaahhhhhh hahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa
did you get this off awkwardfamilyphotos.com?

Tay

There's definitely a market for cheapo wedding photography. Pretty much every one of my friends that have gotten married in recent years paid around that, or just had a friend do it for free/less than $100.

Then again, I'm from Utah, where people get married young and fast, and on a hell of a budget more often than not. Maybe it's not like that everywhere else. I'd guess, though, that anywhere you find a 'mom's backyard' wedding with a young, broke couple, there's a market for $400 wedding photography.

Carden

My wife has said, over the last few years, that digital photography is one of the reasons pros are seeing a decline in jobs booked. That and online album services. Everyone's a photographer. Instant gratification world. I like the "uncle" reference. We have said "Uncle Bob or my best friend just bought a digital camera! He has offered to take our wedding pictures!"

My wife had a client recently (different profession) who said the photographer bugged out earlier than the couple "expected" them to. (Some do, we know, but what were the expectations?) So she took all of HER pictures, sent them to Flicker or one of those outfits, had a book made and the bride and groom never paid the photographer, saying HE breached the contract. The couple was happy as could be. No idea about deposits or anything. It was all my wife could do to keep her mouth shut, she said.

Sad really... will lowering prices solve this issue? I don't think so.

WillCAD

I see both sides to this argument.

Sure, there are plenty of people who want - or NEED - a low-budget photographer for their wedding. A $400 photo package may seem like peanuts to many pros, but $400 is an awful lot of money to working-class folks, particularly in the midst of the Great Recession, with unemployment soaring and the price of everything jumping on nearly a daily basis. So I don't begrudge those brides who go looking for a cheap photographer, particularly for second marriages, or those brides and grooms who have families to support.

But I also I understand why pro wedding photographers look at a $400 package as being completely unworthy of their attention; even if you shoot a wedding every single weekend of the year at $1000 each, you'd only gross $52K a year. And while $52K is not a bad living, it's not enough to support a photography business, which has a high overhead in the form of expensive equipment and advertising.

I think things will eventually stabilize. Right now, the industry is in a state of tremendous flux, because photographic technology has been completely reinvented over the last decade. Digital has relegated film to niche markets, personal computers allow anyone to easily share perfect copies of their photos, and all of these fancy new capabilities have blinded most people to the fact that there is more to photography than just having good equipment. Something similar happened when camcorders came about; every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a VHS camcorder got into the "wedding video" business and froze out the true pros. But it eventually evened out; sure, lots of TDHs still video weddings, but the real wedding video industry is still thriving. The TDHs will never go away completely, but the industry will eventually adapt to the new conditions and continue on.

ian408

VayCayMom wrote:

Umm this wedding should not have spent one cent on photos! arf.

No offense but as a wedding photographer, your job is to make your clients day the best it can be regardless of who the couple is.

Personally, I think it was in pretty poor taste to post that in the context it was.

As to the OP's question. I think that's a perfect opportunity to call back and let the bride know you're unavailable and to maybe explain your services and help educate.

digger2

Use the lead for what it is
A tool to sell to them. I would make the contact, show them your work and explain what it costs. If they stick at $400.00 try and sell them a show up and here's the Cd deal. You can always walk away.

WillCAD

Someone on another board I frequent posted this today - an excerpt from an episode of Judge Joe Brown wherein a bride sued her photogs for delivering a poor quality product.

Judge Joe has some photographic knowledge and shut down the photogs pretty hard. They were obviously rank amateurs, trying to shoot a wedding with a Rebel XTi, 18-55 kit lens, a 70-200, and no flash indoors (they claimed the minister prohibited flash photography, but my guess is that they simply didn't know enough to buy a decent off-camera flash, or even a Speedlight.) The XTi is a decent entry-level DSLR, and you could certainly shoot a wedding with one, IF you have good glass and lighting, but these women did not.

Not only that, but they printed the pics at WalMart, and told the bride so! Hey, even if you're just printing quicky proofs, you don't print them at WalMart, and you certainly don't tell your client that you, as a pro shooting a wedding, are printing their proofs at a cheap place.

And if their attitude on the show was any indication of their attitude toward their client, they were also lousy at client relations.

What gets me the most is that they charged this poor bride $1300 for the package, which sounds to have been total crap. A $1300 package should be a fairly nice mid-range package with two shooters (both with fully PRO equipment) and a nice set of lab-quality proofs and prints.

Idiotic amateurs like them give the entire photography industry a black eye.

WillCAD

Glort wrote:

I remember when Video became popular, affordable and of a decent standard that everyone had a Vid of their wedding done.
The talk was that Videos were so good, Photographers would soon be out of Business.

My argument always was that when Macca's opened just down the road from my friends fine Dining restaurant, it didn't put him out of business because they were two different things. These days I barely do a wedding where they have a Video.

I really don't care about the $400 Shooters because they are not my market and not the clients I am interested in. I think the low buck shooters will shoot themselves in the foot eventually and the horror stories of the jobs these people stuff up will get around and create a fear in the community that will restore the value of true pro's. I know I do all I can to help promote this by spreading all the tales of woe I ever hear about.

There are Cars like Daewoos and Hyundai's and there are Jags, Benz's and Rollers. They all have their place, they all have their customer demand. The trick is to target the market you want to play in and bury yourself in that deep enough so you can' t even see anyone outside of that market. When you do that you don't give a rats about these low ballers.

Totally off-topic, but I love noticing the differences between your Oz slang and the American slang used around here. Two stuck out to me in your post:

Macca's - I assume that's short for McDonald's, which most Americans either pronounce fully, or shorten to Mickey D's.

Rollers - In context, I'd guess that's short for a Rolls Royce, which most Americans shorten simply to Rolls. (Incidentally, we shorten BMW to Beemer).

Okay, back to the actual topic of the thread...

Enitsugua

FedererPhoto wrote:

Supply and demand.

The supply of low-end wedding photographers has skyrocketed... the demand has stayed, roughly, the same.

Result - prices of low-end wedding photography has plunged. It's happening in every segment of the economy that technology can make easier.

Solution - don't fight it.

So, you're way above that price, but you always give a disc with repro rights for every wedding. Doesn't that destroy your print sales? Is your model simply make all the money on the shooting fees?

Enitsugua

Glort wrote:

Personally I think the solution is easy.
Forget about these low end shooters that are playing in the shallow end of the market and just concentrate on attracting the clients with the higher expectations and willingness to pay for what they want.

Perhaps, but I see less and people wanting prints and more and more people wanting online stills and videos. That's probably the future too. That's the hard nut to crack. How do you infuse the demand for quality there and make money from it?

janicee

They would get what they pay for. I don't think they want a pro to the wedding. Its so low budgeted and time demanding. Four hours is not enough to capture and develop pictures, more so of a wedding!

VayCayMom

ian408 wrote:

No offense but as a wedding photographer, your job is to make your clients day the best it can be regardless of who the couple is.

Personally, I think it was in pretty poor taste to post that in the context it was.

As to the OP's question. I think that's a perfect opportunity to call back and let the bride know you're unavailable and to maybe explain your services and help educate.

Sorry. I'm not a wedding photographer, but that was rude of me to say. Guess I was speaking more as a bystander.

heatherfeather

I just ran into a friend from days gone by that is getting married in Texas this summer. She has a friend that is a photographer that she wants to do her wedding.
Her photographer friend told her she would shoot the wedding for $500.... and that she'd give them the disc.

My friend was asking me if $500 was too much money for the value!!! And she was especially concerned since that didn't include any prints..

I took a moment to educate her.... and caution her about the quality of the photographer's work.

mr peas

These people get what they pay for. Chances are, the expectations of clients asking for sub $1000 wedding photo services are not expecting the most out of their money, especially if they're willing to take on a photographer without looking at their portfolio, its basically roulette. With the new digital age, everything is cheaper therefore people are able to join the soiree others have built their experience and business on, so you'll have times where people will come to you and state, "..but I found another photographer that will do it for less than 1/2 your price". This is when you explain why you charge what you charge and where you show your portfolio, sample prints, etc. If they still think it's too much, DON'T lower your standard, just lower your workload, if they're asking for a $600 job, make it so that you spend less time in photo editing, less time in shooting. It's only fair to match your workload to their pay. And hey, 4 hours of shooting for $400 with 200 prints isn't that bad, so long as you match it with your workload, no editing, etc...just note that in your contract. There's plenty of cheap 4x6 prints at online print-sites I'd print those 200 shots from and for 100 photos on disc, I'd downsample the images so that they can only print up to an 8x10 on them. If they want larger prints, get it through your SmugMug site so you don't have to deal with them..ever. If they still want your full-day effort shooting + another full-day editing for $600, I say punch them in the face... haha jk, but you should really walk away .

FedererPhoto

Enitsugua wrote:

So, you're way above that price, but you always give a disc with repro rights for every wedding. Doesn't that destroy your print sales? Is your model simply make all the money on the shooting fees?

I make my money on the creative fee -- that's where I bring my unique talent and skills to the equation. I'm good at making prints, but my 'value' is in creating the image itself.

If people order prints, that is 'gravy', but not necessary for me to be profitable - in fact my print prices don't really have a lot of profit built into them.

That having been said, print sales have NOT dried up since including a disc.* The only thing that really went away was the orders of 50 different 4x6's... which were a time-sink anyway. I still include a print credit (which can be applied to the album) and push larger prints (20x30 galllery wraps and the like) because I want my clients to have something cool and unique to physically hanging on their walls, however.


*back when I was shooting at lower rates, those weddings had the print sales dry up. It seems once I got into the mid-to-upper price-range, the DIY printers kind of went away (I guess people made the connection that paying 8k for their photographer and then getting 19 cent prints didn't make sense) to a certain extent.