Choosing a Wedding Photographer

When choosing a photographer it's a good idea to go beyond the images on his/her website to make sure you find the right match. Here are some of the key factors you should consider.

* Personality
* Price
* Products

Especially when it comes to a wedding, you will be spending a lot of time with your photographer. So you need to make sure you get along with him/her. From the initial consultation, to the engagement shoot, to the wedding and the album creation process, you will have more contact with your photographer than with any other wedding vendor. On the day of the wedding, you will spend more time with your photographer than even your soon-to-be-husband! Use the initial consultation to get to know each other, and make sure you're a right fit attitude-wise.



Price is always a major consideration. But don't be tempted to simply go with the lowest quote. Photographers offer all types of packages, and all are not created equal. For example, some may offer to shoot your wedding and give you all the files on a disc. That may seem like a great way to save some money, until you realize that putting together a professional quality album is not so easy for the average person. Album companies only work with pro photographers, and even the best photo books can't match up with a high-quality, professional album. You don't want to spend all that money to simply look at your photos on a computer! I highly recommend choosing a photographer who is going to help you create an album that will last for generations to come.



New and exciting products are arriving on the scene every day. You're not just confined to getting an album and a nice 16x20 print for the wall anymore. Brides and grooms are choosing canvas prints, metal prints, wall clusters and other innovative ways to display their photographs. My lab, bay photo is always coming up with cool ways to display photos. One of my favorites is the wall cluster http://bayphoto.com/mounting-finishing/wall-clusters-splits.htm It's just a really cool way to display one or multiple photos! Make sure whatever photographer you choose is offering the latest products available.



All of these factors should combine to help you make a decision on the best photographer for you.

Angela & Matt's Wedding

Angela and Matt got married on November 20th at St. Henry Roman Catholic Church in Bayonne, New Jersey.

This wedding presented a number of challenges for me - with the biggest being the cold and the daylight - but more on that later.




Angela got ready at the hotel - and it was a bit of a tight squeeze for portraits. There wasn't enough time to get everyone outside, so all the bridal portraits were done with a combination of window light, and a flashpoint daylight florescent softbox kit.






For Matt's portraits - we were able to use the stately exterior of St. Henry's Church.



The interior of the church is magnificent. So many beautiful details. The lighting was actually pretty good for a big old church like this. The Nikon 70-200 VRII was a big help here though.



Unfortunately due to time constraints, our last hour of daylight was spent traveling to the venue, the Park Avenue Club in Florham Park, NJ.





We shot some bride and groom portraits in their outdoor area - stretching the low light capabilities of my Nikon D300 to the max. I lit the couple with a pair of Doug Gordon torch lights to keep as much of the ambient light as possible.




We headed back inside - and used the softbox setup for a few shots using a curtain in the reception room.

All in all - I'm happy with the photos, considering the challenges I faced.

Jenny & Jim's Wedding

Jenny & Jim got married on a picture perfect day on August 14th at St. Frances Cabrini Church in Coram, New York.



Jenny got ready at her parent's house, so I used their front porch for some poses.



The guys were a fun bunch - and they were dying to do this photo.



I love the look of this old church, it's in the middle of a typical suburban town, but it has the look of an old country church.



This was a great group - I love when I can get a group shot like this after the ceremony!



There was about ten feet of space in the shade for formals - and I was under strict orders from the bride's father to be finished with photos before cocktail hour. So there was no waiting for better lighting conditions.

The Importance of Photography

With the proliferation of digital cameras, and the fact that today’s cell phones often include decent to quite good cameras themselves, it seems that people are taking photos more than ever before.

Add to that websites like facebook and flickr, and those photos are being shown to family, friends, and strangers halfway around the world – sometimes moments after they are shot.

This is quite an amazing leap forward in the world of photography. Never before has it been so easy to capture and share family memories.

Last month, my grandmother passed away at the age of 95. After the funeral, I asked my aunt to let me borrow a stack of about 200 photos of my grandmother’s life. Some of these photos dated back to the early 1930s (unfortunately there were none of her very early life – I suppose my great grandparents held on to those).



I put together a slideshow covering her life from her teenage years through her final months. It was an emotional experience to say the least. It was surreal just to be holding photos from 80 years ago. And to think here I was, scanning them onto my computer, cleaning up creases and smudges from decades ago, uploading them to my slideshow software, Animoto, and outputting a slideshow to high resolution DVD. I’m sure whoever shot those original photos (probably on a brownie box or something) could never have come close to imagining that 80 years later, I would be doing what I just did.



It’s impossible to know what kinds of technologies will exist 80 years from now. But there will be someone, like me, looking for memories of this time in your life. And it makes me glad that these days it’s so easy to take photos to capture history. I do worry just a bit that many of our photos never actually get printed. Again, I don’t know what the future will be like, but I’m pretty sure my MacBook Pro won’t be around in 2090. So I want to make sure that you all are doing something to get hard copies of your photos. Not all of them, but at least the important ones. Print them out at home. Get them printed at Costco. For the really great ones – use a good lab. Or even make books of photos from holidays, vacations, or special events.

As time goes by, memories fade and stories may cease to be told, but our photographs will live on. So keep shooting and keep printing. And keep preserving those memories for generations to come.



See the slideshow here:

Angela & Matt's Engagement

For Angela & Matt's engagement session, we headed to Central Park.



It was a crowded Sunday in the park, which presented some shooting challenges.



But Angela and Matt were willing to trek around the park to find some secluded spots.




This was my first time shooting with my new Just-Rite bracket - and what a difference it made!


Almost everything was shot on a tripod.


It may seem counter-intuitive, but it's much easier to pose your subjects while the camera is on a tripod and then return to the camera and have it ready to go.

Rachel & Jason's Engagement

I really enjoyed shooting engagement photos for Rachel & Jason. The engagement session is so much more relaxed than shooting on the day of the wedding. There are no time constraints and we're really free to experiment and have fun. For their shoot, I was able to put Rachel and Jason in front of a great graffiti wall near their apartment to get some great "urban" images. Then we headed to Union Square Park to capture some posed shots. Finally we took the subway (where we shot some more) to the West Side and shot a few on the High Line. Great day of shooting. I was also glad to have my new 2nd shooter Noi along with me for the shoot to give her an introduction into my workflow and style.

Pat Kiernan Shoot

I just finished a two-session photo shoot with NY1 News Morning Anchor, Pat Kiernan. Pat is going to be featured in his alumni magazine, and they needed some photos for the piece. I'm happy with the work, but I'm even more excited to see how the magazine will turn out. I suppose this will be the first time my work has made it into print, even if it is for a college alumni magazine. As someone who spends all day in front of the camera, Pat is an easy subject to photograph, and he needed little direction. Our biggest challenge was doing the outdoor shots on one of the windiest days of the past couple months. We shot inside and outside the NY1 Studios at the Chelsea Market, as well as on the High Line. For those wondering about the shots with extra head room, that was done to save space for the title of the magazine. See the full set of images submitted to the editors at www.timhillphoto.com/

Doug Gordon's Spring Blast

I spent the past week attending the annual Spring Blast held by the great Doug Gordon, owner of Patken Photographer. This was my second straight year attending the workshop, and once again, it was an amazing experience. Doug is an amazing photographer and an inspiring teacher. His motto is change the way you think and change your world forever. Doug teaches us how to make the ordinary extraordinary. For any photographers out there, I highly recommend attending one of Doug's classes. We spent time shooting at night in Manhattan, and at the Planting Fields Arboretum. Here are some of the photos I took this week, let me know what you think.

WonderGround

My latest assignment was a photo shoot for my friend Pam and her organization, WonderGround. It's a music program for children run by professional musicians. The task was threefold, shoot some photos of the children, headshots of the members and a group shot. For more information on WonderGround, check out their website, wondergroundnyc.com

Shadowing Steve

I got the chance to shadow Steve from Patken Photographer at a wedding at the Woodbury Country Club last night. Steve is a great photographer who I am lucky to have photographing my wedding in July. This is the second time I've been able to shadow Steve on a wedding. It's such a great learning experience to see how Steve handles different situations. Steve shoots about 150 weddings a year - so there's really nothing he hasn't seen or can't handle. I consider myself very lucky to be able to have a mentor like him teaching me the trade.

Jennifer & Aaron, February 27th, 2010

I'm just now getting to blog about Jennifer & Aaron's wedding. The wedding took place one day after a huge blizzard in the NY/NJ area - and there were some questions of whether it would even be possible to have the wedding. But Jennifer & Aaron decided to go ahead as scheduled - and they ended up with a beautiful day.
The wedding took place at the Stone House at Stirling Ridge in Warren, New Jersey. This was a new experience for me, since I was working with another photographer for the first time. My friend Brit asked me to shoot with her on this wedding. I agreed, figuring it was going to be a good experience. It was a little unusual for me to work with someone else, and essentially splitting the work. But all in all it was a good experience.
See the rest of the photos here.