There are many good reasons to employ a Wedding Photographer NJ to capture your wedding, event or special occasion rather than relying on a friend or relative to do so, even if they have a sophisticated camera.
Here are just seven of them:
1. Time
Time is a key ingredient in producing good images and when you pay a professional photographer, one thing you can almost be certain of is that you will get more of their time than you would from a friend or relative. The photographer will, before the photo shoot, spend time at a pre-shoot, meeting or client interview, visit the location if he or she does not already know it, and then in final preparation take time to select, clean and check the equipment needed. After the shoot the professional photographer will take the time to check, help you choose, process and then present your images. At the end of this process, the discerning photographer will take the time to ensure the client is happy with the finished result.
Like good do-it-yourself, consistently good photography relies on good preparation. Hence the professional photographer will have taken considerable time of many years to perfect their:-
2. Craftsmanship
It is often tempting to think of photography as a simple skill. After all, anyone can take a photograph, right? This maybe true and sure enough, with automatic cameras that handle the focusing of the lens and exposure settings for you, even the most inexperienced person will be able to take good photographs.
A professional photographer will not rely on a camera’s automatic settings to take the photographs unless they know the conditions are favourable to using them, and even then they are most likely to use one of the camera’s automatic semi-automatic modes. Why is this important? Simply because automatic cameras can easily assess the amount of light being reflected by a scene and set their own exposure, but the camera doesn’t really know how much how bright the scene should be, hence a camera can produce a lighter image when photographing a dark scene and a darker image when photographing a light scene. The averaging that the camera uses can easily lead to subjects being underexposed or overexposed.
The cameras metering will be adequate for most situations, but consider a bride in a white dress set against a dark church setting. The camera on automatic settings will average the scene and generate an exposure that does not allow for the fact the church setting is darker than normal. This results in the detail on the brides dress being over exposed and therefore not visible in the final pictures.
This is why I say, choosing a friend or relative to take pictures of a special occasion or an important event is a gamble. And that’s without mentioning image composition or lighting technique! An area where the difference between inexperienced and professional photographers is even more significant.
3. Equipment
A consumer dSLR camera – good enough in it’s own right for a hobbyist, not built for a demanding professional. It is often said, when taking good photographs, that the most important thing is the person taking the pictures. After all, a good understanding of photography and a good level of creativity are the main assets when consistently creating good photographs. That is not to say, however, that the equipment a photographer uses is unimportant. In fact, when hiring a professional photographer, some peace of mind should surely come with the fact that they have the right kit to get the job done, even in the most adverse conditions.
Professional cameras and professional lenses are manufactured to higher standards than their consumer counterparts. This not only means they deliver better results, especially in low light conditions, but it also means they are more resilient to an every day work load. Professional photographers will carry a wider range of equipment in order to create a wider range of images in a wider range of conditions. They will also know how to better maintain their equipment in order that it should remain in optimum condition such that image quality is never compromised.
4. Reliability
Discussing professional photography equipment leads nicely onto reliability. This on one hand means having dependable equipment and on the other contingency plans for transport to a venue and illness.
When discussing reliability, we are skirting around a small minefield when it comes to asking a friend or relative to photograph your wedding, celebration, event or special occasion. The professional photographer would not entertain the idea of turning up at a wedding without at least one spare camera. In fact he or she will shoot continually throughout the day with two cameras and still have a third one with them in their luggage. Professional photographers will have a range of spare lenses so that they can continue to take the pictures you would expect in the case of their standard zoom developing a fault. This is one of the reasons I carry a set of prime lenses in varying focal lengths, although I rarely use them. Professional photographers will carry a significant number of spare batteries, spare flash guns, even a large number of spare memory cards.
There’s not use filling one large memory card over the course of a day’s shooting only to find it has been corrupted by the end of the day. Professional photographers will regularly switch to a freshly formatted memory card at each key point during an event in order avoid this scenario. Professional photographers will ensure that they backup the pictures they have taken at the earliest opportunity so that they can always be recovered in the event of a failure or corruption. Many photographers will also keep those images archived resiliently for many years after an event, allowing the replacement of photo products supplied to clients if it becomes necessary.
In planning their arrival for an event or shooting engagement, conscientious professional photographers will go the extra mile to ensure they arrive on time, setting off the day before if the engagement is a considerable distance away from their base. If a photographer experiences a sudden illness or bereavement when due to attend a special event such as a wedding, they will often have a network of photography contacts they can call upon in order to provide contingency. These contacts will often be with which your photographer has an arrangement making sure, as far as possible, that your special event is still covered and neither quality nor service level are compromised.