There are two formulas to find your one and only great and unbeatable wedding photographer . You can study each photographer's portfolio for a long time and carefully, analyzing the colors, lights and composition, evaluate, judge and try to put yourself in the place of the depicted couple, but if all this seems too complicated, you can simply rely on your intuition and, listening to the voice of your heart, honestly answer the most important question - do you like it or not.

STYLE

It takes years and dozens of photographed weddings before a photographer develops his own unique style, his own signature in every picture. When researching a photographer's portfolio, try to capture and describe what is common to all of that photographer's images. Remember that your wedding photos will become your wedding story through the eyes of the photographer,

tāpēc, aplūkojot bildes, padomā ne vien kategorijās skaisti/neskaisti, patīk/nepatīk , bet arī par to, vai jums ar fotogrāfu ir kopīgs skatījums uz pasauli,

is what he emphasizes important to you as well, have you imagined yourself in the place of the new couple and are they still you.

A photographer's unique style is his greatest treasure, his professional self, so don't try to choose a photographer you like, then demand that he shoot in another photographer's style. Also pay attention to how the photographer's style has changed over the years - a good photographer must be in constant motion, he must allow himself to be influenced by impulses outside the wedding world and wedding photo trends - in visual art, architecture, cinema, fashion, literature... If you notice that the photographer's pictures today do not differ much from those taken five (or even two) years ago, it may be a sign that the photographer has stopped in his professional development.

WHAT TO PAY ATTENTION TO IN A PHOTOGRAPHER'S PORTFOLIO?

For light

One of the determining factors in any photograph is light. The same picture will look completely different using different lights. Currently, one of the following methods is most commonly used in photo post-processing:

• high-contrast pictures with exaggerated pure , unnaturally bright colors, creating a cheerful, often somewhat dramatic mood,
• matte, low-contrast pictures with a vintage touch,
• lightly processed pictures with a tendency to preserve naturalness as much as possible.

It would not hurt to make sure that the photographer knows how to skillfully put lights where there are none (for example, if the celebration takes place in an atypical place with minimal lighting, say, an art gallery or a museum).

For composition

Pay attention to how diverse a photographer can be in creating a picture composition - are standard solutions chosen or do creative, unseen compositions dominate? Does the photographer manage to achieve the effect of the viewer's presence in the pictures? Have you tried looking at the subject through the eyes of others, for example, over the bride's shoulder at the groom, or watching the bride with the admiring eyes of a small child? Vai ir bildēts arī no augšas un apakšas?

For full wedding photo stories

In his portfolio, the photographer collects the best pictures of all the weddings he photographed, so the best of the best will be offered for your critical assessment. However, you should make sure that the other pictures are also at the appropriate level.

Ask the photographer to look at full wedding stories and rate what the photographer's average picture is!

PHOTOGRAPHER'S SHOES. WHY IS A GOOD PHOTOGRAPHER EXPENSIVE?

The myth that a wedding photographer works one day a week and the rest of the time lives green, enjoying the bohemian, is now outdated and more and more people are aware of what it really means to be a wedding photographer.

And first of all, it is a big responsibility that creates tension and stress. Every wedding photographer feels like never before how unique and irreversible each moment is on the wedding day.

The seconds in which the groom sees his bride for the first time will never happen again, the second double of the word yes will not be possible.

Besides, when the moment is here, it has already passed in the photograph, now it is too late. Over the years, as experience accumulates, the photographer develops the ability to intuitively feel when the right moment is approaching and to overtake it. This, in turn, requires constant concentration for 12 hours.  Only one shot is given, which must be 100% accurate. In addition, at the responsible moment, the photographer must be able to maintain creativity and fulfill a series of technical requirements.

Moral stress is also accompanied by physical stress - not always the most comfortable and healthy poses, constant dancing around the new couple in search of the perfect shot, stretching the technique (a good photographer will most likely have at least two cameras - each with its own lens for different tasks, the best of the best may also have a third - spare - camera).

A photographer must also be able to adapt to any conditions – weather, scenario, contingencies, lights – and achieve the best possible result in any situation. In addition, the photographer must also be a broad-profile specialist, which is more an exception than the norm outside the sphere of wedding photography, that is, the same professional must be able to skillfully depict both the overall picture, details, and portraits, as well as logically and comprehensibly present the course of events with the help of photography.

Photography on the wedding day is a big, important and responsible part of the final result, but by no means the only one. This is followed by the processing of the photographs, which in its pure form (not including other work that the photographer has at the time) usually takes no less than two weeks. In addition, most of the time, the photographer also performs a number of other duties - he deals with accounting and paper matters, accepts reservations and meets with potential clients, deals with the branding of his brand , marketing and advertising...

Finally, such a trivial thing as money. Professional photo equipment is very, very expensive (the cost of one good set is around 5 thousand euros, and most photographers have several sets).

FOR INFORMATION

In order to better navigate the wonderful and mysterious world of photography, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the three possible ways weddings are photographed today. Although most photographers, adapting to the client's request to receive everything, work in a mixed style, it would not hurt to understand which style is closer to the photographer.

1. In photojournalism the story is presented with the help of photographs. Although it may seem that it is very simple at first, it is not at all. The fact that a photographer mechanically captures moments with a professional camera is not enough. In order to create a complete story with content, the photographer, emphasizing the most important, must be able to catch the connection between the pictures, forming a logical chain of events, in other words, easily give the viewer a hint about what is happening, directing his attention in the necessary direction. The advantage of this type of photography is natural pictures that create a documentary narrative of the wedding day, capturing real, not perfect, but coordinated and somehow artificial moments.
2. Before photojournalism entered the world of weddings, weddings were covered, as they are now, in traditional, or posed , photographer-coordinated pictures.
3. By choosing artistic pictures , the young couple shows their trust in the photographer, because the result in this case is the least predictable. For the photographer, it is an opportunity to reveal all his creativity and vision of the world through the prism of art, however, what is disturbing and limiting creativity in this case is not knowing how much creativity and imagination the young couple will be ready to accept and how far the photographer can go, maintaining a balance between the nature of a real event and the deceptive veil of art around it.

See TOP photographers here: https://ligavam.lv/piedavajumi/kazu-fotografi/