Photobooths can range from renting out actual old-school photo booths (the kind that you posed in with your girlfriend in high school at a metro in Montreal) which nowadays can be quite expensive, to a camera on tripod with a simple backdrop and one flash unit that can be set up almost anywhere no matter how small your event space. While you can do it yourself (using the self timer function on the camera or a remote control for your camera) it is much easier to ask the professional photographer you’re hiring to include the photo booth option as part of the quote.

As a professional event photographer, I am increasingly incorporating a photo booth into my work with great results. At weddings you can be guaranteed to get a portrait of all your guests for your wedding books and if you are hosting a theme oriented party (see onsite print posts from a James Bond themed event here) you can really add to the guests enjoyment and engagement throughout the event.

The advantages of including a photo booth for your event:

• More fun!
• Highly engaging for guests
• Images can be seen and shared with all guests instantly
• Moderately more expensive than simply asking for event photos – but hugely more entertaining and instant value generated for event organizer and guests

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It happens with everything from the flower arrangements to the venue rental fee, and photography is no exception. Call a photographer and ask for an event fee and you will be quoted a price, either by the hour or an all-in fixed price. These rates can vary but they can also be negotiated to ensure they meet your needs as a client, fit within your real budget and leave enough profit for the photographer to make it worth his or her while. Call the same photographer a day later and ask for a quote for the same event, only this time, say it is a wedding and see what happens. 99% of the time, you’ll be quoted a higher price – for the exact same service. Why?

I understand the thinking – a wedding is a big day, very important, requires special attention, etc. etc. But isn’t that what you pay a professional for on any job you hire them for? Does a professional give a lower grade service to a corporate client running an event? That shouldn’t happen. Your wedding is important and does deserve top quality service – just like any other event a professional photographer is working and you shouldn’t have to pay through the nose to get it.

Here are a few tricks to use when looking for a wedding photographer:

• Be realistic about your intentions for the photos: Most couples want a small collection of edited, top photos (25-30 images), a key shot they will use for the thank you card, and a few real winners to frame and put up in the new home. When shopping for a wedding photographer, if you know in the end you will only want a reasonably sized set of images, than say so. It cuts down on the amount of work the photographer has to do and should therefore reduce the price you are asked to pay.
• Be fair: no one can afford to do work that pays no profit. Maintaining professional equipment, software, computers, and skills training as well as managing a small business takes time and effort. These are all factors that go into a photographer’s price. You can always find a budget-friendly photographer. Everyone has a camera these days that can take very good photos. If you want to save as much money as possible on your wedding, don’t hire a photographer at all – just ask your guests to send you their picks. It will of course be hit and miss, but it won’t cost you anything. If, however, you want a dedicated, professional photographer with experience and  who will deliver on the shots you want to get – then hire a pro and expect to pay a fair price.
• Think of your wedding as a special event: while it really is a big day for you, for most professionals working events, a wedding is really just another event that requires all the same level of organization and professionalism as say, an association banquet dinner or a gala fundraiser. This does not mean you get lower service, on the contrary, you should be getting the same high level of service a real professional provides regardless of the job.
• Be honest about your budget: if your budget really is $500, say so. But if you are comfortable spending upwards of that ($1500 – $2500) than don’t be afraid to say so as well. It can save a lot of time and hassle simply stating up front what you have to pay then turn your focus on what you want to get for the money you will be spending. For $500 you can expect someone to cover your ceremony, the immediate before and after and deliver a dvd of the images. For higher value service, longer coverage, more elaborate shooting setups including things like photo booths, multiple locations and additional shooters, you can expect to pay upwards of $1200.
• Be timely: booking your photographer well in advance of the date is always going to get you a better price. Professional photographers live and die by contract work which comes and goes. Everyone likes to know that there is a predictable amount of money to be earned at a fixed date in the future – and if you can offer this and are willing to commit with a down payment, you can ask for a better price. It may not always work but it is worth a try.

In the end, you can spend $20,000 or $200 on wedding photography. It is up to you. In my opinion, the whole wedding industry is structured to suck as much money as possible out of two (usually young) people who would be better off keeping more of their dollars in their pockets so they can make a downpayment on a house or add an extra layer of luxury to their honeymoon.

Be realistic, be fair, think of your wedding as an event, be honest about your budget and be timely in your booking and you will save hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars on your wedding photography.

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Pros:

• Makes event more memorable for your guests
• Branding opportunity – the photo can have your logo as well as the date and place of the event helping keep your organization in mind long after the event is done.
• Happier guests – most people get dressed up for events (especially gala functions or fundraisers) and enjoy seeing themselves in a photo looking their best
• Adds excitement – posing for the photos and have a real (albeit improvised) studio set up as part of your event adds a little pizazz and excitement. After a drink or two, almost everyone loves to get in front of the camera for a shot.

Cons:

• Raises cost of event to cover additional cost of prints
• Requires a little extra space in venue
• Best achieved with two photographers on site rather than just one which is often otherwise sufficient

In short, if you are running an event on a tight budget and only want the minimal coverage to have a few photos to distribute after the event in newsletters or on a website, then you probably don’t need to add onsite prints to your event. If, however, you are looking to make an impression (no pun intended) with your event and want an additional way to keep your organization top-of-mind for your guests, giving them a small print of themselves to take home with them is a value-adding activity that has a big impact for a marginal increase in costs.

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Special Valentine’s Day Promo: Call or email today with the subject line “Valentines” and book a $99 portrait session for two, including a champagne toast and 1, gorgeously edited 8×10 print.

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I’d love to hear back from people who hire event photographers on how you handle the post-event photo delivery and what you expect to see. Please feel free to email me or respond in the comment form below.

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Happy Holidays from Julian Haber Photography

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Given that most people reading this blog have lived through the massive transition from film to digital cameras, I suspect that there are countless photo collections sitting unseen in boxes, unsorted in albums or, as is the case with most digital files, sitting on hard drives in computers, rarely, if ever being looked at, felt and appreciated. There is something incredibly sad in that thought. All those memories, all those moments that mattered so much you wanted to capture it in a photograph – buried in data folders, lost in piles, neglected, forgotten.

Well, I’d like to help you change that.

As of this week my partners and I are launching a brand new service for people interested in doing something fun and real with their personal and family photos, both digital and older printed photographs. Whether you’ve got a boxful of old Polaroids, a shelf of aging photo albums barely ever touched, or just a messy hard drive full of images, we can help you create a beautiful, photo legacy that tells the story of your life or the collective stories of your family and loved ones. And by help you, I mean, do it for you so you don’t have to spend the time.

Let’s be honest, we all have the best of intentions when it comes to one day sorting our photos and producing lovely photo books with them, but how many of us ever find the time to actually do it? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Life is busy and if yours is so full that you’ve built up a collection of photographic memories, it is no surprise you don’t have time to organize it. You’re too busy living your life -  but wouldn’t it be great to have a complete, full, well-organized, beautiful collection of your photographic life to share with your friends, family and children?

If you’re interested and want to know more, please contact me today to learn more about how you can get your entire life collection of photographs organized into something you will enjoy, appreciate and cherish now and have something to leave behind for your children to enjoy and pass along as well.

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You want me to sit still? Seriously?

Photographers will often be invited to take portraits of families with young children, as this tends to be the time when most people are interested in having a portrait done of their family.  Most of the time, I prefer to shoot family portraits in Montreal in the family’s home, backyard or a nearby park because the natural settings are both more interesting than studio backdrops and allow for more natural interaction with the subjects. However, from time to tome, I am asked to take studio portraits of families with young children and here’s a few shots and tips I can share on the experience.

1. Keep it quick: while the time you spend setting up your lighting and gear can be unhurried, when your subject(s) have arrived, as quickly as possible you want to start shooting. The younger the child, the shorter the attention span will be and the more difficult it will be to get good shots with the child looking into the camera’s lens.
   

   Ta da!

2. Keep parents on cue: that means, while the temptation is incredibly strong and very natural for one or both parents to be looking at the child (who will be invariably not looking where you want he or she to look) you need to be ready for that split second when the child’s flitting gaze crosses your lens so you can get the shot. If the parents are at that instant looking sternly at their misbehaving child, the opportunity is lost. Tell the parents to look at you and keep smiling, and let you worry about the child. Eventually no matter how hyperactive the child, curiosity will get the best of him or her and he or she will want to look at the camera. If the parents are ready, you’ll get the shot.
3. Take breaks: young children (1.5 yrs to 3 yrs old) will want to move around. A lot. It’s important to give them a little break between poses so they can burn off a little energy. Use a break to shoot just the parents, together (if you have someone else in studio to take care of the child) and then add the child back in. Sometimes seeing the parents get photographed will interest the child in doing the same and he or she will want to be back in the shot. You can also use a break to get some unposed impromptu shots of the child who just may cooperate by playing around right where you want them too (as happened this weekend for my recent photo shoot).
   

   Happy to be here!

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• Several high-society events at some of Montreal’s finest venues all over downtown and Old Montreal for clients like HSBC, KPMG-MSLP, the Invest in Kids foundation (where I got to meet Dolly Parton – YAY!) and others.
• I covered five large weddings ranging in style from the truly luxurious in a gorgeous Mont Tremblant condo, to an elegant affair in Montreal restaurant Aix, at the Hotel Place d’Armes; I worked with a promising new photographer, Celia Lavinskas at a sunny outdoor wedding on St. Helen’s Island, as well as travelled to Ontario to cover weddings in both Guelph and Ottawa, at the National Arts Center.
• I carried on my commitment putting my photography skills to good use with as much pro-bono work I could fit in, providing photography services to Exceptional Family, maintaining an annual tradition covering the Cancer Institute of Montreal‘s annual Concert contre le cancer (I’ll be there again this coming February 4, 2011), and donating family portrait sessions as a prize in the Haiti Tweet up fundraiser organized by Flow Ventures (we raised over $10K); and a major fundraiser portrait session at my child’s daycare (25 young family portraits in a single day!)
• My portrait practice grew this year as well as I zipped across town to provide onsite, in-office portraits for executives at Rio Tinto Alcan, Purves Redmond, Global Prime Office Network, Financial Research Solutions, professional artists, and real clowns(!) with my brother and fellow photographer, Daniel Francis Haber, from the upcoming production of MöcSplot put on by Geordie Productions in Montreal (show runs from February 4 – 13th)
• Industrial photography and portraits for one of my favourite Montreal companies, Enerkem (a company that turns garbage into fuel)
• Several beautiful properties for real estate agents including many for Stacy Bouchard-Burns, whose wide-ranging business had me shooting condos, duplexes, and single-family homes throughout Old Montreal, downtown, Point St Charles, Westmount and NDG.
• (I even had the good fortune of selling two of my fine art pieces to the CSA Group headquarters in Toronto where my work is now part of their permanent art collection.)

I’m grateful to all my clients and want to thank you for trusting me with your photo work in 2010. I look forward to working with you again this coming year (note to my wedding clients: I love doing baby portraits!). Thank you and I wish you all success in 2011

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