Expensive expenses of a wedding photographer(team)

Though we strongly believe that we are one of the most affordable wedding photographers in Chennai, we often get asked why are wedding photographers expensive, now if you are comparing a wedding photographer to complete armature, who has not even dedicated time to do a simple research or someone who does not know the immensity of offering a service like wedding photography in India then its a waste of time in explaining the difference, lets talk some basic matches before getting into the invisible and every soaring filed of arts!

SO the question is how much does a wedding photographer earn no!! that for another blog, here the question is why are wedding photographs expensive. Here we are listing a few things in our experience on why wedding photography, in general, is an expensive art. First of all, like any field which requires skill and expertise to execute a job, photography, not just weddings, requires a training period just like how one owns a degree and here we are not including the time a wedding photographer works as junior or as an apprentice which is the most effective way to learn the skill.

Equipments: When a person who is looking to hire you wants to know whether you are using a 5D MARK III or 5D MARK IV you know that you clients are already loaded with their requirements, even know they would have not idea if the camera they are talking about is made by Canon or Nikon, they still feel safe when telling them that we are going to use a 5D Mark III or IV for their wedding.

These are some of the few areas where you have very little control, when a client approaches you to shoot their wedding and even when he/she is satisfied with your gallery, they would still like to know whether you are using the camera of their choose, as a wedding photographer though you can educate them on the importance of photographer or a camera in many cases they might think that you are just trying to convince them with your camera which is not as good as a 5D Mark III and Mark IV and this will have an impact on photographers who are just beginning their carriers even if you are a big brand in wedding photography, you will be asked these questions so when it comes to a body you must be upgraded with the best in the market, luckily that has not been the same in cases of the lense a photographer uses they the lens plays a vital role in composing an image. So to sum it up, how much does a wedding photographer need to spend on their equipment, the answer is anywhere between 3 to 6 lakhs

Today’s photography is linked with your computer system, whether you are editing or making a blogspot you cannot do it without a computer. The most important of all this equipment is the desktops. To have a decent desktop, you need an investment of Rupees 50,000/- to 90,000/-  for each desktop,  let’s assume there is one for photo editing and one for video editing and if you are an Apple person, you do the maths.

Backups and System Cost: Ultimately whatever you shoot is data! You mess with data then you are messing with your carrier, be it buying high-end multiple memory cards or hard disks which can resist shakes and dust, memory backups is a really expensive thing and if things don’t go your way and if you mess up with the data then recovering these files might cost a huge vacuum in a photographers pocket.  

A studio like ours, which does weddings and kids related events requires around 2 TB of storage space once every 3 to 4 months (just for photography) which is in the approximate expenditure of Rupees 4900/- and will be increased based on the number of events we do. Then there are charges for cloud backup storage, which is how we will be sharing our files to our clients that is approximate of 20$ a month, so on average, we spend 3300 a month just for memory backups.

Upgrading Skillset: Attending workshops, installing new software updates and keeping your skill set horned is all part of the package, you can never sit and back and say you have the holy grail when it comes to wedding photography. We at incognito frames always look forward to learning something interesting, we are not talking about some fancy photo techniques here but learning more about the workflow, lighting workshops and of course checking out other interesting and unheard avenues in photography in general. and we have attended plenty of workshops and seminars by stalwarts from India and abroad.

Marketing: The best photographer today has been to be the best in terms of marketing themselves as a brand. to one should own a website and must be active in the social media to perform well in the industry and almost 6 out 10 photographers who are in the social media spend money to gain more followers and visibility to their post. Even young photographers who are yet to invest in a studio will be promoting their post on Instagram and facebook - we rarely spend money on social media marketing but we are super active in the most popular ones.

Office Space: A Physical space be it sharing your workspace in a startup setup or owning your own place in the heart of the city is easily an additional 10K to 25K.

These are based on an approximate expense we do, for example there are studios which take up 4 to 8 wedding on a single day in that case the numbers will be completely different.

These are the major expenses a photographer has to make in today's scenario. Though there are plenty of other miscellaneous expenses. So the next you ask what makes photography expensive let these points sparkle in your mind.