love the dog pic shady
and that bride looks so fab

good luck to you both

Well Stu down here its hard right now, problem is so many so called Photographers that maybe plumbers or factory workers in the week under cut the pro tog by offering weddings at £150 to £200

I dont think really most people know how hard weddings are and you have one chance, but people still think gosh why pay £1000 when joe blogs will do it for £200

what people dont general see is a whole day wedding with bridal prep is two photographers, the branded albums from Italy and New zealand start for me at £300 to £600 each

I get home from a days shooting and down load each card 4 times on to separate HD
I then go through each card and delete images where eyes maybe closed or page boy is digging in his nose etc

then the photoshop process starts this in its self is a weeks work

album lay out another weeks work

wear and tear on the camera, my travel cost etc

It amazes me the amount people will pay for a venue for one day the most expensive attire your wear for one day, the most expensive taxi service yet scimp on the photography the one lasting memory of the day they scimp on and will pay £150 for a CD which probably wont even print

It is pretty much the same here but I have tried beating them at their own game and am having some success with it.

I am offering a very very basic (and I do mean basic!!!) for those sort of figures, once I have had the initial enquiry I will arange a personal visit and this where I will sell up the service.

I also offer instalment plans to those that are booking way in advance as this tempts them into going for a better deal than the basic one. Its the old premise that you pay for what you get and many people don't realise that the day shooting is the easy bit its the work at the back end that they are really paying for.

Its the same with the albums, if they go for a cheap package they get a basic album but like you I offer the more expensive albums and coffee books/ magazine style albums too but they are far more expensive and this has to be factored in.

I agree totally with your last comment, I had a meeting with a couple the other day who have booked me for October this year, they have spent just under £20k on their wedding and hadn't even thought of a photographer. As it happens I have got a poster up in the florist they are getting their flowers from and due to the 'low price' the called me, once we sat down and went through everything they ended going for the top package with a few extra trimmings:-)

At the moment I am training up my son who wants to get involved ( I bought him a D70 with a good lens) and he is taking to it well and has produced some good basic photos, he will be joining me soon for a big wedding I have got coming up (200+ guests) so we shall see how he gets on



Gone but never forgotten .

Oh thats great Stu your doing so well, My son loves photography as well, but he is a bit young to take to weddings,

I,m running a voucher scheme in my town along with the baby shop for free baby session but as of yet nothing has come from it,

I did have a poster and some leaflets with my local florist BUT they got so many complaints about the flower arrangements not being right I withdrew from there

what about estate agents for commercial work to carry you through the winter, its worth a try, sell them the idea that pro photos look and work much better I dont get much a bout £75.00 a house but its easy work

I,m really chuffed your doing so well it feels so great when you have a dream and can make it real, well done 🙂

Thanks for your comments:-)

I already do some work for the local lettings agents that we have contracts for cleaning work with, but can't get away with charging much, but every little helps.

With reference to the posters, you do have to be careful who you partner up with but we have managed to get some going with a few other local businesses that have a good reputation.

I am also thinking about bringing in a payment scheme of some sort (just need to check out the legal stuff first) but it would involve a smaller initial deposit followed by 'X' number of payments before the wedding, again its just a way of letting the couple get what they really want for their big day.

If I get any other useful ideas I will let you know



Gone but never forgotten .

Stu I had thought about that but its very hard to find a contract to draw up, because the one thing that really worries me about a pre-payment plan is

ok lets just say couple choose middle range thinking yup i have x amount of months to pay it

gets near to wedding money is short uncle Bill offers to do the pictures could e want money back

so something needs to be drawn up to say no refund until x amount of weeks after the wedding and also a % charge so you keep a booking fee and a certain % of whats paid by the client

I have searched every where, I am aslo starting training days , like portrait workshops, DSLR workshops and wedding workshops, just got to market them now every thing is in place

SEO is hard as are links and keywords on websites

I am really chuffed your doing so well, Its so great to hear some good news for a change

That is also my concern tbh, a friend of mine helped me with the actual contract for the weddings refering to money and everything else, so he is looking into the wording for the payment plan. I have had a look at what he has done so far and it seems to be going in the right direction so hopefully we should be there soon.

If I get to a point where the contract looks watertight I would quite happily let you have a copy to make your own if you were interested??

The training days sound good and once you get past any nerves i am sure you would enjoy doing them and they will be very rewarding too. Do you have your own premises for the workshops or are you considering hiring/ renting space? I have been playing around with the idea of renting some floor space but at the moment we cannot afford the investment to make a good shop/ studio set up, maybe that will be something for the future



Gone but never forgotten .

At the moment I hire a studio in Saffron walden its about a 40 minute drive from me, we dont have any near here, I looked into renting a permeant place and building a studio but it would mean loans and other stuff so decided until business was flourishing I wouldnt do it

I will may be think about it in a couple of years time , I also use a really modern studio at Felixstowe about an hour from mine , I add the hire cost on to fees , studio fees are about £43.00 an hour and you get to use all the props and lighting

Oh thats quite cheap as an hourly rate 😄 will deffo have a proper look at suitable studios.

The nearest to us seem to be either liverpool or manchester and generally near the centre so they are a pain to get too



Gone but never forgotten .

My son was in India and a rabid dog chased him, he ran in to the sea to escape..unfortunately he was wearing his Canon EOS400D at the time ! I think its wrecked it bu there is a sample he took before he dunked it.





there are loads more and show us the true flavour of India.

Lovely pics dolly I hope his camera recovers



Gone but never forgotten .

One of my favourite gardens - belongs to a friend in Co. Wicklow. I don't know how to resize images with photobucket so could someone advise me please?

that size is ok

with PB you can choose how big to upload - litttle link gives sizes and you pick how big - just do trial and error

if you have already loaded a big size you can only make it smaller , not bigger in PB so be aware of your upload size if you are deleting from your hard drive

use the resize function to make them smaller

Thanks. 🙂

please view my account thanks

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250639253047&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

please view my account thanks

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250639253047&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

This is for Stu really but if anyone else can recommend a good site for me.

I'm thinking about taking up photography because where I live I often visit beautiful surroundings and only use the phone on my camera to take pictures and I am interested in taking better ones.

My son has a DSLR and has photoshop and lots of stuff on his laptop to do with photography but I'm looking for a website where I can access on my netbook to upload my pics. Obviously I have heard of photobucket and flickr but do not know if there are others that may be of any use to a beginner like me.

I will buy a DSLR for myself if I get the bug but for now have just bought an inexpensive Lumix DMC-TZ2 to start me off.

What can you recommend please? Thank you.

I use photobucket for all my personal stuff so that relatives can view them easily. I suppose its personal preference but I like photobucket and have been more than happy with it.

It is easy and fairly quick to load up a lot of images and you do have the functionality on the website to do some basic editing, its all very intuitive and easy to do.

This is a list of all the ones I know of (copied from a website)
flickr.com
Picasa Web Albums
Facebook
PhotoStockPlus
Fotopic.Net!
Pbase
Fotki
Photobucket
Netvue
MyPhotoAlbum
Imagesfly.com
Alkaspace.com
Photoshed.net
Tabblo.com
Dropshots.com
PhotoOnWeb
PhotoSwarm
Mejuba

Maybe choose a few and have a play around I am sure you will soon find your favourite



Gone but never forgotten .