Hire a professional or friend to photograph your wedding

Hi, I'm Brian Kellogg of Kellogg Photography. I am a Columbus, Ohio wedding photographer and I want to talk to you about hiring a professional or your friend to photograph your wedding.

So, there's pros and cons to both. So, you will definitely save money by hiring a friend, but then again they might not know how to light up a dark reception. They might be, like take great photos, their Instagram looks wonderful, but the thing is that they've never been put in a place where the lights are dimmed down really low and they have to take a photo of the first dance. And you just don't want be in that situation, and you can probably just comment below if you've ever had or heard of a situation of someone having bad wedding photos because they hired a friend.

So, just ask around, ask people, and see what their opinions are. You don't have to go off of my opinion because I'm a professional photographer. But, you will save money, but the reception photos, you can just kind of, think of them just shooting in the dark or maybe with an iPhone photo of how bad they can be.

So, hiring a professional, what they're going to do and bring to the table is they're going to suggest maybe a timeline, keeping you on time throughout the entire day. Because when you have a professional photographer, they're gonna start from like when you're getting ready, cover everything, not miss a moment, not miss a beat whatsoever, and if you, they're gonna have their batteries charged, they will have everything put together, a list of actual photos that they're going to take for the wedding itself, family members and such.

Pretty much everything will go a lot more smoothly if you have a professional rather than your friend as a wedding photographer. And then, also yeah, lighting for the reception. I take a lot of pride in my lighting, so I actually do a backlit situation for the first dance, and I light them from the front as well so they look great on both sides. And then I turn off the backlight remotely so I'll get just photos that have just nice light unto them as well. So, I'll get a little mixture of both. But, you'll see the difference for, oh, even doing post kind of wedding processing. If you have your friend do it, then you can probably expect them to actually have a day job. So it might take 6 months to a year or even more, and I've heard of people not even getting their photos back when they've had their friend take the photos, too. So, with a professional photographer you have a contract in place. It'll say either 2 weeks or a few months for getting your wedding photos back, and you'll have them by the holidays, for sure.

So, that would be the main differences between a friend photographer and a professional photographer. Getting the photos back in a timely manner, having the reception photos lit very well with a professional, timeline, everything's going to go a lot more smoothly, it will just seem like everything's a lot more put together, basically.

So, hopefully that kind of helps you out if you're thinking about either hiring a friend or a professional. Comment below if you have any questions. Thanks again.