“Get Uncle Dave to take the photos, he’s a really good photographer and he’s got a really nice camera. He’ll take your wedding photos and you’ll save yourself loads of money”
I have a DVD sitting on my desk with 1000 photographs taken by a real uncle Dave at a wedding on December 12th last year. The couple whose wedding uncle Dave attended came to see me last July to talk about their wedding photography. They were on a tight budget which all couples have to grapple with and they were looking to make savings wherever they could.
They came to see me again last Friday with their set of photographs that uncle Dave had taken and they said that would would ‘pay whatever it cost’ to rescue their wedding photos. Having thought they would make a saving they will, in the end, pay about the same price as they would have for a professional photographer. They’ll be reminded of this everytime they look at their set of retouched rescued uncle Dave’s pics.
And on Saturday a client brought me some black and white prints that he had printed by ‘a well known high street photo shop’ from an image that I had taken and supplied to him on disc. They were badly cropped, printed on colour paper so it had a green colourcast, there were also some watermarks on the paper which indicate sloppy printing. I have offered to reprint them myself free of charge despite the fact he offered to pay me to print them properly. I have to prove to my client that the product I have provided him was as high as he had expected. My high standards have been debased by another supplier in my industry. Uncle Dave is also employed by well known high street shops because professional image makers are expensive to employ.
My point in this blog is that in the last couple of years there seems to have been a significant shift towards cost playing a much larger part in the decision making process even if the risk is poor quality, poor service, and bland, dull, lacklustre work. The recession has a lot to with this and I suspect many industries other than photographers have found cost basis decision making a problem too.
I have never been busier and I know other photographers who are busy too, but there are now many in our industry, particularly in weddings, who have positioned themselves in order to take advantage of the unwary who are looking for photography done cheaply. For uncle Dave this is excellent news. He can join the mass of ‘weekend warriors’ shooting weddings without having to give up the day job. With his new gear, and little experience he can make some easy money taking advantage of couples on a tight budget.
And then yesterday I read an article in ‘The Professional photographer’ written by a fellow photographer, Allister Freeman. Allister is an established wedding photographer with a good reputation. The article talks about his opinons on the current state of wedding photography. He quotes ” ……An age where Joe Public beleives he can do a better job than you, poor perceptions, fuelled by a mass of similar styles and monotonous imagery already saturating the market have a deleterious effect on an already beleagured industry”. A lot of the mystery of photography has been taken away by digital and it’s understandable that Joe Public thinks that he could do a better job with his new gear, but a camera has always been a box with a hole in the front of it and it takes just as much skill and experience to make a good photograph as it always did.
Several years ago it was quite clear who knew what they were doing and who didn’t just by looking at their website, now it is possible to make a slick presentation online for little cost and pitch yourself against those who are good at what they do. At least established photographers can rely on their reputation and on word of mouth, but this is becoming a real problem for photographers who are just starting out and want to offer their customers good quality. And for the client it’s almost impossible to make an informed decision particulary in these days where price is very important.
When the recession has been and gone we’ll look back on ‘the uncle Dave days’ and perhaps simply put it all down to cost driven behaviour. There are uncle Daves in all industries but in this perfect storm where the importance of price meets rapid technology change a new breed of operator has emerged who is satisfying a new demand for cheap at all costs.
Simon and Karon have been buying my photographs for years and they have a large collection of my London and New York photographs in their house in Clapham, South West London. I was very pleased when they asked me to photograph their wedding. For More information on wedding photography go to my dedicated wedding photography site.
