How to read a portfolio.
You are hiring someone you have never met, in a country you do not live in, for a day that happens once. It is a strange thing to buy, and most of the advice written about it is written by people selling the service.
So is this, obviously. Read it anyway, then go and use it on somebody else.
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[ 01 ]
Ask to see one whole wedding
This is the only question that really matters, and almost nobody asks it. Anyone who has worked for five years can assemble thirty excellent photographs. Thirty out of forty thousand says nothing.
Ask for a full set from one day, start to finish. What you are looking for is the boring middle: the hour between the ceremony and dinner, the speeches, the relatives sitting down. If those frames hold up, the rest will.
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[ 02 ]
Check the work matches the day you are having
A photographer whose portfolio is entirely golden hour in an olive grove will produce exactly that, and your wedding is in a dark church at four in the afternoon in November.
Look for a set shot in bad light, in a difficult room, in weather nobody wanted. That is the real test of whether somebody can photograph, or only arrange.
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[ 03 ]
Questions worth asking
- Who is actually turning up on the day? Not the studio. The person.
- What happens if you are ill? Get the answer in writing.
- How long until we see the photographs, and what happens if that slips?
- Do we get everything, or a selection you choose?
- Can we print where we like, or do we have to come through you?
- Have you worked in this region, and if not, what do you do about that?
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[ 04 ]
Questions not worth asking
What camera do you use. It has not mattered since about 2008, and the answer tells you nothing about whether the person can see.
How many weddings have you shot. Somebody who has photographed four hundred weddings badly has done it four hundred times.
Do you edit in a warm tone or a cool tone. This is a preset, not a point of view, and it will look dated in four years.
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[ 05 ]
On local versus travelling
A photographer who lives an hour from your venue costs less to bring and probably knows the room. A photographer you fly in costs more and brings the work you actually chose.
Neither is automatically right. What is wrong is paying international rates for somebody who is producing local work, or hiring the cheapest person available for a day that costs as much as a car.
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[ 06 ]
Talk to them before you book
Not to test them. To find out whether you can stand having them near you for fourteen hours on a day when you will be tired, hot and slightly out of your mind.
The photographs are made by a person who is in the room all day. If that person irritates you on a video call, they will irritate you more at eleven at night.
- How far ahead should we book?
- For May to October in the busy regions, a year. Photographers and venues tend to go in the same fortnight. Outside those months there is far more room than people think.
- Should we book a photographer who lives in Italy?
- Not necessarily. Book the work. Somebody who travels well and plans properly will out photograph a local whose portfolio you only half like.
- Are reviews useful?
- A little. They tell you whether somebody turned up, answered emails and delivered on time, which is genuinely worth knowing. They tell you nothing about whether the pictures are good. You will not find screenshots of private messages on this site either. When somebody writes to me after their wedding they are writing to me, not to an audience, and putting that on a website turns a kind thought into an advertisement. It is showing off with someone else’s words. I would rather keep the message and let the photographs argue on their own.
- What is a fair price?
- Whatever gets you work you would hang on a wall, from somebody who will still be answering emails in three years. Cheap is expensive on a day that does not repeat.
Worth reading first