What are some good photographers in the area that don't cost an arm and a leg? Some of the people I've been finding start at $5000

[Edited on July 6, 2009 at 9:01 AM. Reason : crap I thought this was Lounge ]

7/6/2009 9:00:48 AM

is this for a wedding or what kind of need do you have

7/6/2009 9:01:57 AM

she wants some glamour shots

7/6/2009 9:02:31 AM

Yeah for a wedding.

7/6/2009 9:02:38 AM

I'll send you a PM. My wedding photographer was great, and several of my friends have utilized her services in various ways over the last year or two. She does everything, not just weddings.

7/6/2009 9:02:45 AM

Thanks

7/6/2009 9:05:57 AM

If you really wanted to help your wedding photographer out, why would you hide her light under a bushel by sending a PM rather than posting her info in this very thread?

7/6/2009 9:08:35 AM

Well, I guess I could do that.

http://www.annieharrisonphotography.com/

The picture of the little boy sleeping in the chair is my wedding.

She's extremely affordable and super awesome. Lots of fun to work with! She lives in Durham but goes all over the place.

7/6/2009 9:10:58 AM

Wow, those are some great prices. I just sent that link to a friend that's getting married in November. She still hasn't booked a photographer yet!

7/6/2009 9:28:47 AM

I know a guy I work with that does photography. He's got the right equipment, does a very thorough job, and pretty affordable. Check your pm.

[Edited on July 6, 2009 at 9:42 AM. Reason : \/ You got me ]

7/6/2009 9:30:11 AM

Quote :

"CHECK YOU ARE PM"

7/6/2009 9:31:36 AM

Bianca and Seth Palmer
http://www.amomentlikethis.net

they did 3 of my friends' weddings, then did ours... really really good and professional!

7/6/2009 9:36:49 AM

Greg Myers, a personal friend and awesome photographer.
http://gregmyersphotography.com/

7/6/2009 9:38:38 AM

http://www.tomsapp.com

7/6/2009 9:45:08 AM

yay I love TWW

7/6/2009 9:54:04 AM

The people in the Digital SLR thread.

7/6/2009 9:57:51 AM

T-dub, where people beat each other up and look out for one another all on the same web forum.

[Edited on July 6, 2009 at 9:59 AM. Reason : .]

7/6/2009 9:58:44 AM

professional photography always makes me lol

[Edited on July 6, 2009 at 10:04 AM. Reason : I'MA LAY IN THIS FIELD OF GRASS, YOU KNOW, LIKE I DO EVERY AFTERNOON]

7/6/2009 10:03:19 AM

Oh, and in case you're interested - Annie also does Trash the Dress photoshoots which are pretty great if you've got no attachment to your wedding dress and want to trash it while getting some awesome pics. I toyed with the idea of picking strawberries at this strawberry patch in Durham because they have farm animals there you can play with too!

7/6/2009 10:07:10 AM

Is it the one on Highway 98?

7/6/2009 10:09:44 AM

I have no idea where it was to be honest. It was Annie's idea. She said they had baby goats!

7/6/2009 10:10:11 AM

Ahh, well regardless I'm sure it would be fun.

7/6/2009 10:10:44 AM

my mama sold her wedding dress for $1 at a yard sale

7/6/2009 10:11:58 AM

The train on my dress survived the whole night, which is a damned miracle. Then we got back to the hotel, waiting for the elevator up to the room, and my husband stepped on it...RRRRIIIIPPPPPPPP!



So, without some stitching, the bustle won't hold the train up anymore. May as well trash it and get some good pictures ya know?

7/6/2009 10:13:18 AM

Quote :

"Oh, and in case you're interested - Annie also does Trash the Dress photoshoots which are pretty great if you've got no attachment to your wedding dress and want to trash it while getting some awesome pics. I toyed with the idea of picking strawberries at this strawberry patch in Durham because they have farm animals there you can play with too!"

hahaha that's an awesome idea.

7/6/2009 10:14:46 AM

Yeah, you might as well honestly. Those photos on her site are great, so she seems like a good person to have photographing your dress' destruction!

7/6/2009 10:15:17 AM

Annie Harrison's photos are about average for someone who decides to get into photography b/c they just bought a DSLR. I haven't seen anything that screams quality, either in composition or style.

Amomentlikethis are a little better, but they have a tendency to use the wrong lens for the scene and it ends up being distracting. It seems as though they are trying to get too creative. Nothing special in the pictures.

Greg Myers has bad lighting in quite a few of his wedding photos (particularly) in the anticipation section. Diffusing the flash would really help with that. Some close shots have the subjects forehead lit while the other parts of the body are darker. If that's what he was going for, then my bad.

Quite a few of the pictures from each of their galleries seem quite amateurish. I'm sure they used Adobe Lightroom to touch up a few, if not all, but bad composition, lens use and lighting ruins a few and makes them no better than high resolution point and shoots.

At the prices that some of these people are asking, I expected A LOT more (except for annie harrison, her prices are in line with her experience). In terms of both quality and style. I will say that Greg Myers outside and studio shots are a bit better than his wedding photos, but that should be assumed since they are in controlled conditions.

I was disappointed in amomentlikethis.net's pictures b/c I assumed incorrectly that since they were a team of photographers, one would help with lighting and the other one would shoot. The pictures would have turned out much better that way. Utilizing natural light and reflecting it back upon the subject really makes a photo look that much better.

Try martha manning. http://www.marthamanning.com
I have no affiliation. Never used her, but her composition and framing are A LOT better than the people listed. For her, you get the kind of quality you pay for. That means a lot to me.

7/6/2009 11:08:01 AM

http://www.cheyenneschultz.com/


heh...you didn't call out tom by name--good or bad thing?? whatever--we loved him and his work.

for us, as well as liking the photos, it was a matter of "do we like this photographer enough, personality wise, that we can get along hanging out with him for 8-10 hours on the day of our wedding and any other pre-wedding photo sessions?" the answer for us with Tom was a resounding YES. he meshed with our personalities well, and he wasn't too pushy in getting us to do things for a good shot. you should be in mind of that too when looking for a photographer.

[Edited on July 6, 2009 at 11:33 AM. Reason : ]

7/6/2009 11:19:33 AM

I'm a photographer

7/6/2009 1:02:11 PM

http://www.azulphotography.com/

7/6/2009 1:08:25 PM

we are using KC Ramsay http://www.cvrphotography.com

he is really easy to work with and i had a lot of fun at our engagement photo shoot

one of our engagement pictures:



[Edited on July 6, 2009 at 1:10 PM. Reason : .]

7/6/2009 1:09:46 PM

I'm photograph. I do you at your wedding.

7/6/2009 1:10:50 PM

^^i have done some tf** work with KC before...he's really nice and definitely knows what he's doing

7/6/2009 2:30:58 PM

Quote :

"Greg Myers, a personal friend and awesome photographer. http://gregmyersphotography.com/"

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

7/6/2009 2:38:12 PM

Friend of the family that did our wedding
http://www.evokenc.com/

7/6/2009 2:44:56 PM

One of the most annoying things about wedding photographers is that 95% of them have the most annoying websites ever... And it confuses the piss out of me that someone would actually sit down and view every single picture of their entire gallery with a slow ass flash website, specially ones that reload every time you go to a new gallery and have to wait 5 seconds. If it takes more than 3 clicks to see the first image, you can say goodbye to your viewer and auto-run music is also another annoying feature.

Wedding photography is grueling work because if you don't know what to look for, you will miss the shots. If you don't have technical skills, you will miss the shots. I've done quite a few in the past years as side gigs, but no way in hell would I make it my cash cow. Give me a studio setting and commercial or editorial work plz. I agree with Seotaji about some of his comments and think Annie Harrison is a decent photographer, but nothing special.

Greg Myers? woah... He needs to stop using the Clarify tool in the raw editor. He just over uses that shot and makes everyone overly defined, look like zombies, and adds way WAY too much contrast to the scene, basically giving everyone and everything in the scene a +5 pt stroke. His portfolio shots shows that he really isn't doing anything except standing from a far and taking paparazzi photos. He needs to get down low, high and produce some different angles of view, specially with the kid shots that he has. Some of his engagement photos aren't the most flattery poses, but he does have one or two good shots. His fashion work is much better than his wedding work, but again, he suffers from a lot of technical skills, but at least he shows more knowledge about controlling the light better in a studio environment. I actually think his flash website does a disservice to his work, since it auto re-sizes to the size of the web browser and interpolating his pics.

Cheyennes Schultz is a bit better than Myers, but also suffers from a lot of technical lighting skills. At least this photographer frames a bit better and uses design elements better.

Azul photography... needs to know buddy Fill Light. A bit too contrasty photos for my taste.

And sorry pinkpanther, your husband has no neck in that photo, an error by the photographer... At least that photographer has some decent portfolio shots on his website, but again it perplexes me that he has some top notch photos, portraits that would win photo competitions, next to some pictures that lack any design elements. I'd probably recommend KC Ramsay over most others here though.

evokenc photographer is a perfect example of a decent photographer with one of the most annoying POS websites ever made that makes his stuff look like shit. Sorry, but a professional wedding photographer's website shouldn't look like a flash based game you'd see on addicting games website that some high school programed during his lunch period... Scotieb24, if he's a friend of the family, tell him that he needs to rethink his website. Flash maybe cool, but 4 out of 5 times, it's overly done and actually annoys your prospective customers that's trying to see your portfolio fast.

Honestly, if a wedding photographer makes the customer happy with what they got, then it really doesn't matter if they are the best of the best or just one of those average photographers that picked up a 20D and decided to make some extra cash over the weekends. If you like their work, call them up and hire them. With these days of someone easily picking up a camera and spend $50 to have some Indian guy setup your "cool" flash website, it's hard to figure out whose good and been in the business for a long time. Don't get me wrong, there are some really good photographers that picked up the camera one day, but more often than not do they dilute the photography industry, lower the standard of quality and whore themselves out for cheap. Pricing in general is probably the #1 thing that most photographers these days can't understand or do properly, even I haven't figured that out yet.

A good source to look for professional wedding photographers is to look at a few different associations such as Professional Photographer Association (http://www.ppa.com), Wedding Photojournalist Association (http://www.WPJA.com) and I think the other large one was the Wedding & Portrait Photographers International (http://www.wppionline.com). PDN is another good source to look for photographers, but that's just a tradeshow, part of the magazine.


/rant... waiting for back lash...

7/7/2009 12:52:36 AM

cddweller

7/7/2009 12:55:45 AM

those greg myers photos look really flat because of lighting and adjusting.


bwahaha the photographers guild

[Edited on July 7, 2009 at 1:02 AM. Reason : .]

7/7/2009 12:59:43 AM

JBaz

7/7/2009 1:48:51 AM

no one's said anything about tom sapp specifically...why is that? i read all you guys' opinions and critiques in the SLR thread, so i'd like to read what you think

he does commercial and editorial too, so check that out on his site. he's a member of the PPA and WPPI that you mention.

7/7/2009 8:35:09 AM

those pictures need more lens flares

7/7/2009 8:46:10 AM

LOL at this thread now that photo knowledge got DROPPED!

honestly it's all personal opinion. JBaz seems to think all these photogs suck, and that's cool. I've met KC, whom he would pick from those photogs listed, and have seen many, many of his photos. he's a nice guy. but I find his photos boring in some cases. dude needs to ease up on the softening. that's just me. Seotaji seems to think wedding photogs don't have $20 stofens and should have time to set up lights for every shot, based on all his lighting critiques, and that's cool. i think it all comes down to picking someone whose photos you like that fits your budget, and you can get along with as a person, that's all.

and i stand by my recommendation. greg myers is a great guy and photographer and will be shooting my wedding, whenever that may be.

7/7/2009 8:53:37 AM

Quote :

"i think it all comes down to picking someone whose photos you like that fits your budget, and you can get along with as a person, that's all."

i couldn't agree more...esp that last part. it's soooo important if you're gonna be spending 8-12 hours with him/her not including other sessions you may have with them.

i just wondered why all the in depth, paragraph long critiques on most of the photogs mentioned on the page, but our guy was skipped twice

7/7/2009 9:01:27 AM

i think the photographer's skill is obviously important, but so is their personality. i know for a fact that if i'd had an uptight and proper wedding, my photographer would not have fit in. she's way too laid back and chill. but that's what we wanted, because that's how we are, that's how our friends are...and our families are just insane. i'm super happy with what Annie did for us, and i'd recommend her to anyone who is laid back and wants to have a good time. it's like i said in my PM, Annie is a great choice for a "party that turns into a wedding".

7/7/2009 9:04:03 AM

Man, where's that shitty website with the wedding photographer who staged all those downright awful pictures for various weddings.

One made it look like one of the bride's maids pushed the bridge over in some shitty back hall in the church. She had the bridge lay boobs-down-on-the-ground in her wedding dress on some dirty ass floor for what had to be one of the worst pictures I've ever seen. That should be posted here if only as an example of what to look out for and stay away from.

7/7/2009 9:39:04 AM

courtesy of /message_topic.aspx?topic=558672

7/7/2009 9:43:31 AM

http://www.andersonstudionc.net/gallery6.htm

^ beat me to it.

7/7/2009 9:43:55 AM

http://www.nicolefabyphotography.com

One of my friends - very talented and affordable. Plus she's not one of those creepy weirdo photographers you see at most weddings.

7/7/2009 10:08:13 AM

Yeah, that.

Fuck that guy.

[Edited on July 7, 2009 at 10:08 AM. Reason : What's the girl next to her doing, anyway? Picking & eating lice?]

7/7/2009 10:08:28 AM

Ugh. I'm seriously going to dread finding a photographer. I haven't found anything i liked yet.

7/7/2009 10:27:01 AM