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Is the person you are thinking of commissioning a full time professional photographer (i.e. do they have another job and work as a wedding photographer at the weekend)? If they are not a full time professional photographer can they dedicate the time required to provide you with the service and quality that you need? |
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Is he or she qualified? If so what level of qualification do they hold? Are they registered with an institute or governing body? The best two are The British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP) and The Master Photographers Association (MPA). |
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Do they work from their studio or do they work from home? |
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How many photographers will be there on the day? Two is the norm. This will give you the advantages of formal and informal images giving you a wider range of shots. |
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Most photographers use digital cameras these days. If they do, the most important question to ask them is, do they shoot their images in RAW format? This will give you a good indication as to the experience and the quality of the photographer. If they only capture their images in JPEG format be aware they do not have the same quality control. |
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Meet your photographer in person. Don't take a chance on a stranger that you might not get on with. |
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See examples of their work. Look at an actual album with all the photographs from one wedding. It is relatively easy to shoot 300 photographs at a wedding and get 2 or 3 good images. It is far harder to shoot 300 photographs at a wedding and get 80 good images. |
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The problem with picking a package is; say for example a photographer is booked to take 60 photographs, what happens if you want 65 pictures? so look for a studio that covers the day, maybe 600 images, which you choose from for your final wedding album. |
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Ask what type of cameras they use. If they use digital cameras a minimum requirement wants to be 12 Million Pixels (12MP) capturing in RAW format (see point 5). This is to ensure that the photographs have the detail and quality that you would expect from a professional photographer. As a general rule the more pixels a camera has the more detail it will record. If they still use film cameras ask if they use 35mm or Medium format. Medium format is by far the preferred choice of the two having a larger film area to record the image and therefore recording more detail. Some photographers scan their negatives and call themselves digital photographers. |
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How long have they been in business? This will indicate experience if nothing else. |
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