Couples spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on their wedding day: From the dress to the cake, the location to the food, the flowers to the DJ, it all adds up to a pretty penny to make for a beautiful and memorable occasion. Unfortunately the last thing some couples consider is how all of these things will be memorialized in a professional, beautiful manner. The folks in the story below spent upward of $22000 USD on their wedding, and paid $1200 for photography. The photographers did a terrible job, even at a $1200 price point, and now the couple will never have photographers to remember the wedding day by.

Not everyone can budget for high-end wedding photography. That’s ok. It’s important that the couple do extensive research when finding a photographer for their big day. You must demand to see several full wedding shoots, not just the best shots the photographer put on their gallery. Any person with a digital camera can string together 10-20 lucky shots throughout a wedding; It’s the other 400-800 photos that you should be concerned about.

The second part of the problem is the advent of digital SLR cameras. Everyone thinks they are a professional photographer now, and digital cameras are nearly 100% at fault. Walmart sells consumer-grade cameras with interchangeable lenses for $400. That is well within the reach of most anyone on any budget. Give a person a camera like that, and a little ambition, and you’ve got the perfect storm to ruin the wedding day of anyone unfortunate enough to cross paths with this “photographer.”

The people that are selling themselves as professional weddings photographers at a cut-rate price are doing a huge disservice to the industry, and craigslist has created the perfect place for unsuspecting brides and grooms on a budget to be duped into hiring these uninsured, uneducated, untalented photographers. And the price point these photographers have set have given upper-end photographers a stigma of “overcharging” for their services.

This is a plea to both parties. If you’re a photographer that is doing this shoddy work, please stop for the sake of these unfortunate couples that are hiring you. If you’re a couple, please do a ton of research and find someone that you can absolutely trust, has a pedigree and references, insurance, business license, a fantastic portfolio over a period of years and be sure you really connect with them so that your day isn’t ruined like this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132578/Are-Britains-worst-wedding-pictures-Newlyweds-devastated-photographer-failed-couple-frame-took-blurry-shots.html

Here are a few photos of the wedding.

We took them to an old ghost-town on the side of an abandoned highway and had a great couple of hours shooting their engagement photos. We traversed barbwire fences, dangerous desert plant-life, slippery slopes of granite and the ever-present cow-pie to get to the location. But it was all worth it in the end…We’ll let the sample photos do the talking. Ripley and Kyle, congratulations. We’ll see you guys at the wedding!

If your kid needs senior portraits please contact us at www.imaginephotoaz.com.