Questions To Actually Ask Your Wedding Photographer

We’ve all seen the lists of questions to ask your potential wedding photographer. Half of the questions are irrelevant and the other half end up having answers that people without a photography background won’t even understand. We’re told by the people putting out bad planning advice that if your photographer can’t answer these 100 questions, then they must not be seasoned. We’re told that these are MUSTS and HAVE TO’S. When in reality these are just predatory ways the wedding industry wants to make a profit and scare planning couples with bad advice. There are very few of these articles that are either written by working vendors or that even consult the relevant vendors. Lucky for you all, I am a working wedding photographer that has been in this industry for over a decade.

Instead of Asking, “Have you worked at my wedding venue before?” ask “Have you worked in a similar lighting situation?”

For experienced photographers it doesn’t really matter if we’ve worked at your venue before. If you’re hiring a destination photographer the odds are that they haven’t and won’t work at your venue again. A lot of us prefer seeing a venue fresh on the wedding day because it allows the creativity to flow out of us. I know if I have worked at a venue before then I’m in my head the entire day trying to decide if we’re just going to copy my previous wedding or venture out into the unknown.

What matters more is finding out if your photographer has worked in a similar lighting situation. If you’re getting married in a dark venue it’s important to be able to look through a few darker weddings your photographer has photographed to see if you like the way they handle low light. The same goes for bright situations and any other lighting situation. Do you like the way they edit in those situations? Do you like the way they use the ambient lighting or flash / light stands? If the answer is no, then they are not the photographer for you.

Instead of, “Can you describe your photography style?” ask “What is your working style? How will you interact with us the day of the wedding?”

If you’re looking for a wedding photographer then you can visually see what their photography style is. There’s enough interpretations out there that the wording the photographer uses might not completely match their work, so it’s important that you see several full weddings from them to make sure it’s what you’re envisioning.

A more important question is, “What is your working style?”. This can give you way more insight into how your photographer actually works on a wedding day. You want to make sure that the working style of the photographer doesn’t clash with how you and your fiancé move through the world. For example, I was once the second photographer at a wedding for someone I knew online. My working style is more calm, stay out of the way, but theirs was ENERGY. At one point during the ceremony they sprinted down the aisle and back again, something a calmer photographer would never do. So, if you have a lot of energy and are always on the move someone with more energy might fit into your wedding a little more than a calmer, slower photographer.

The second part of this is, “How will you interact with us the day of the wedding?”. This goes hand in hand with photographers working styles and should be part of the same conversation. The point of this question is to find out how much stepping in your photographer will do throughout the day to adjust. If you want someone to make sure everything is perfect you should not be looking at purely documentary photographers. If you want the full chaos of the wedding day without anything posed then a documentary photographer would be best for you.

Instead of, “How many weddings have you photographed?” ask “What difficulties have you run into at a wedding, and how did you handle that?”

I’ve seen and worked with photographers with very few weddings under their belt, but the true test is how they handle difficulties that pop up. For example at my 3rd or 4th wedding, EVER, the mirror of my main dslr popped off. Meaning it was completely unusable the rest of the day. This happened DURING the recessional. Had it not been for my second camera body I would have been in a very very hard spot.

I’ve also had shutters completely fail at weddings several times over my career. There have been fights. There have been other vendor issues. There have been a multitude of bad things that have happened at weddings over the years, and my clients never knew a difference. It’s not their responsibility to handle those situations the day of,, and they definitely shouldn’t be aware of any camera failures if I have my full backups available to me. That’s why this is an important question to switch out. If you are looking for experience, you are undoubtedly looking for someone that can handle everything a wedding day can throw their way.

Instead of, “Have you worked with xx vendor before?” ask “How do you handle working with a vendor you might not get along with?”

Vendors are people. People don’t always get along with or like one another. I’ve worked with plenty of vendors I didn’t necessarily like and I’m sure plenty of vendors that also didn’t like me. That’s fine. We are all professionals in our field and should be able to work with someone we might not mesh well with. A true professional will be able to work with other vendors, even if they don’t like one another.

The exception to the rule here is if we’re asked to work with other vendors that we know for a fact have harmed people, clients, or other vendors in any way. In that case we 100% should be speaking up for ourselves, our clients, and other vendors.

Other Questions to Ask

1. Do you have backup gear?
2. How are the photos protected the day of and after the wedding?
3. Are you the photographer that will be photographing my wedding?
4. If you can’t make it because of an emergency, what happens?
5. If you are unable to come to our wedding and need to send an associate, how do you source them?
6. If I don’t want my photos to be online is there an extra fee for privacy?
7. My venue/planner/florist has a clause in their contract stating they get access to the photos, are you ok with that?
8. If your work is mostly candid, will you still pose us for portraits and formal family photos?
9. How are the photos delivered? How long will we have access?
10. Do you retain copyright? Do we have permission to share on social media and print on our own?
11. Do you have updated reviews?
12. How do you source your second photographers?
13. If you’re traveling, what does that look like? How early will you be arriving to the area?
14. Are you LGBTQIA+ friendly?