Q: What is your service area?
A: Mostly Southeastern Wisconsin. We work in Madison frequently. We are regularly in the Lake Geneva area. We do a lot in Fond du Lac. Milwaukee we work regularly. Occasionally we get into the Rockford area of Illinois. Occasionally we get to Oshkosh, Appleton, Green Bay.
For a list of where we have worked in 2006 and the years prior to, see our "About" section.
Q: Where are you based out of?
A: Milwaukee.
Q: Will the photographers who took the pictures in your galleries be the actual photographers who would be at my wedding?
A: Yes!
Q: There are a lot of pictures on your website. How do I know which pictures were taken by the actual photographers who would be at my wedding?
A: Every single picture here on our main website (and on our “What Is New” website HERE) was taken by the photographers who would be at your wedding.
Q: I like your video samples. Do you send those out for editing by someone else or how does that work? Will the videographers who filmed your samples be the same videographers who would be at my wedding?
A: We do all our own editing. Every video sample here on our main website (and every video on our “What Is New” website HERE), as well as every video on our mail-out demo, was shot and edited by the videographer(s) who would be at your wedding.
Q: How many hours of coverage are included?
A: It is a flat fee for our service rather than hourly. Normally, we like to be at the ceremony location before the bride gets there. Coverage usually goes till around 9:30.
Q: How long have you been in this business?
A: Six years full time.
Q: How much of your work is weddings?
A: Ninety-five percent plus.
Q: Do your photo packages include unlimited locations?
A: There is no limit on the number of different locations between the on-site "getting ready" at the ceremony location till we leave the reception. It is not unusual for coverage to include: the ceremony location, then the party bus ride, then one or two stops on the way to the reception such as at a park and tavern, and then the reception location itself. Often with a photography-only package, the second photographer will go on ahead to the reception location and take pictures there of the reception setup before the guests arrive and then will take pictures of the cocktail hour before the wedding party arrive from doing their park pictures. These cocktail hour pictures taken by the second photographer will allow the bride and groom to see things they would have otherwise missed.
Q: What is required to secure my date?
A: A signed contract and $500 retainer fee.
Q: When is the remaining balance due?
A: At the start of the wedding day, before we begin shooting. Most clients feel that paying bills is the last thing they want to be thinking of on their wedding day so they opt to pay the remaining balance prior to the wedding.
Q: How do you accept payment?
A: Checks, money order, VISA, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. (But if making final payment on the wedding day, we do not accept credit cards there so check or money order would be the method for payment on the day of the wedding.)
Q: I know I want to book you. What do I do?
A: E-mail us your date and wedding location so we can see if we are already booked. You can call if you prefer. If we are available, we can e-mail you the paperwork (it is just two pages) for you to print out yourself. Alternatively, you give us your mailing address and we mail you out the paperwork. The paperwork is not complicated to fill out. Basically, you just fill in your ceremony and reception locations and times and sign your name. Include a check or money order for $500 and mail it back to us. If paying by credit card instead, we will contact you to take care of that once we receive your paperwork in the mail. Some clients who are very eager to secure their date have paid the $500 by credit card even before mailing back the paperwork to us.
Q: I want to secure my date today, so no one else gets it. Can I lock it in right now?
A: You can lock it in today by e-mailing or calling and we can take the retainer by credit card. Or if you will wait a day, mail us a check and tell us to watch for it.
Q: What happens after I send in the contract and $500 fee?
A: We sign the contract and mail the original back to you. Also included will be what could be called a "tip sheet". The tip sheet is basically some things for the engaged couple to consider that they might find helpful in planning for the wedding day. (The "tips" are based upon observations we have made over the years of documenting weddings.)
About 6 to 8 weeks before the wedding we mail out an extensive questionnaire. Among the items will be a list of formals poses, from which the couple select which formals groupings they want and do not want. There are also blank spaces to write in any other formals groupings they would like but which were not already listed.
Q: I like your style. Do you travel outside your usual service area?
A: We sometimes do. For the specifics on having us cover a wedding outside our usual service area, just e-mail us the wedding date and location and we will let you know if anything additional would be required beyond our usual package price. Generally, the fee would be our usual package price plus client covers the lodging. Often the lodging is at the same place as where the out-of-town guests are staying. We normally like to arrive the day before the wedding and attend the rehearsal.
Q: Do you normally attend the rehearsal?
A: If the rehearsal is not too far off and we are not busy with another wedding, we often do attend the rehearsal and meet everyone. If the rehearsal is for a photography package then we usually take some pictures while there and include them on the DVD with the rest of the images. If you are located farther off and would like us to attend the rehearsal, what clients usually do is get us in at the hotel where they have rooms blocked off for out-of-town guests. So, the room would be for the night before the wedding.
As an aside, we have found that, about 50% of the time, clients will include rehearsal pictures in their album. To see samples of our rehearsal pictures, click HERE. To watch a rehearsal photo montage, click the top picture at the rehearsal link.
Q: Would there be a travel charge to my area?
A: E-mail us and we will let you know.
Q: Are you photography cameras digital SLRs?
A: Yes.
Q: We do not think we want an album. Are you cool with that?
A: Sure. We are just as happy to work for clients who only want the full-resolution pictures on DVD.
Q: Are the DVD pictures edited?
A: They are gone over for brightness and proper colors.
Q: What kind of albums do you have?
A: We offer types of albums:
1. A proof book with 200 4x6 prints.
2. A coffee table book which has flexible pages. The cover of the album is rigid but the pages are "magazine style" which means that instead of individual prints being attached to the pages, the pictures are actually *printed directly onto the pages*, like what is done with a magazine. This is a post-bound album, which means it has a front cover, a back cover, and then two binding posts which hold the pages between the covers.
Q: How do you dress for a wedding?
A: Professionally. No jeans. No loud colors. Similar to a nicely-dressed guest.
Q: We have been at weddings where the photographer seemed bothersome and was basically hovering all around and being annoying. Are your photographers obnoxious?
A: No. More toward the other end of the spectrum, actually. We, too, have been at weddings where the photographer seemed to involve themselves a bit too much into the wedding for our tastes. When our photographers are not handling the posed "formals" pictures, they prefer to be more low-key and try to blend into the background. The style of pictures taken in this manner, where the photographers are more inconspicuous rather than doing a lot of posing, is called photojournalistic style and the resultant pictures are often referred to as candids.
Q: I see your photography package has two photographers. How does that work? Is one the main photographer? Is one the assistant?
A: Each photographer is a regular photographer so no one is the main photographer and no one is the assistant. Both photographers take about the same number of pictures over the course of the day.
What adds a greater dimension to the coverage is that the photographers mostly shoot from separate physical locations throughout the day, so that they are photographing differing scenes and subjects. If the couple want some coverage of each of them before the ceremony, one photographer can go with the bride and the other photographer can hang with the groom a bit. This way each one can see what the other was up to prior to the ceremony.
Q: If we want pictures of the bride getting ready before the ceremony, does a guy or a girl shoot that?
A: A girl.
Q: If I choose the video package and want video of the bride getting ready before the ceremony, does a guy or a girl shoot that?
A: A girl.
Q: My fiancée really does not like having his picture taken and so he would not be keen on having much in the way of pre-ceremony “getting ready” coverage.
A: Honestly, guys are usually (but not always) not too big on having this coverage so we normally do not get a whole lot of that anyway. It is usually more concentrated on the girls. If your fiancée does not want any pre-ceremony pictures, just let us know and we will not bother him with it. On the other hand, it you do want more candids of the guys before the ceremony, let us know that, too.
Q: Can we hire you to just do the photography and hire a different company to do our videography?
A: Sure. No problem.
Q: I saw some poses in a magazine and also on a different website that I thought were cool. Can I show you these pictures so we could try to do the same poses?
A: Sure. Just mail in the pictures and we can make plans to give it a go. Sometimes clients mail us brochures that they pick up at wedding fairs with their favorite pictures circled.
Q: Do we get every picture you take?
A: No, not every single picture. We remove test shots, pictures with eyes closed, pictures with unattractive facial expression. If we have 2 or 3 almost identical pictures then we often pick the best one. But, generally, our philosophy is that if we are unsure about a picture, we pass it along to you.
Q: How many pictures do we get on the DVDs?
A: Looking at what past clients have received, the average is 1200 images give or take 300.
You do have input into how many pictures you get. One of the questions on the questionnaire we give you is:
"How many pictures would you like the photographers to take?
JUST MINIMAL [enough to show what went on but keep it low key]
MEDIUM [this is the average/typical coverage]
TAKE LOTS OF PICTURES"
In the end, more important than the number of pictures is the quality of the pictures and choosing a photographer whose style you find appealing. Another factor to consider is whether the photographer shows a consistent level of performance throughout the wedding day (i.e. good "getting ready" pictures, good ceremony coverage, good formals, etc.). Or is the photographer only showing a few good shots from throughout the whole day.
Q: Do you offer online viewing of the pictures?
A: Yes. After your wedding we put up the proofs into a password-protected online gallery. Each picture can be viewed in color, black and white, and sepia so you can see which way you prefer it.
Q: Could you tell me a little more about the online gallery?
A: Sure. Generally, the pictures in the online gallery are not in their “finished condition” as they will be on the DVD you get. Depending on how busy we are at the time, the online gallery pictures will be somewhere between having almost nothing being done to them to being almost completely finished and in the state they will be on your DVD. (Ideally, we would like to have the pictures more finished before they go up but on the other hand we are aware that couples are eager to just see the images in any state of completion.)
Once your online gallery is completely built, we will send an e-mail to the bride and groom informing them that their gallery is up. In this e-mail will also be a direct link to the gallery along with the required password for admittance. What usually happens then is the couple look over the pictures and then pass along the gallery link and password to family and friends. If the couple so chooses, there is a built-in option to link the gallery to Facebook and MySpace.
There is also the option for the couple to remove any individual pictures (or series of pictures) from being able to be viewed in the online gallery. To our knowledge, no couples have ever made use of this option to disable image viewing but we do want you to know that the option is there for you. Basically the way it works is you can either make it so a particular image is only available to viewing by the couple, themselves, or the image can be removed from the gallery altogether in which case you would still receive the particular image on your DVD but it would just not be on display in the gallery.
Q: How are the pictures organized, if at all?
A: On the DVDs, the images are in chronological order. Additionally, the images are in separate folders as: full-size pictures for making big enlargements, medium-size pictures for making 4x6 prints, and small-size pictures for e-mailing and uploading to websites.
Q: Is one of your photographers better than the other one?
A: There really has been no client preference for pictures from one photographer over the other. When choosing pictures for an album, the pictures selected have been about half and half divided between the two photographers.
Q: I want to book you now but I do not have my church/reception venue picked out yet. Can I still book you?
A: Sure. It is not unusual for clients to book us before all the details have been ironed out. If you do not have the exact church or reception venue decided upon at the time you fill out the paperwork, just write in the city or town where you think it will be.
Q: Do you offer an in-person consultation?
A: Yes! We would love to meet with you to discuss your wedding day and what we have to offer. Meetings usually run between a half hour and one and a half hours. It is nice if you are able to set aside 1.5 hours in case we are "on a roll" so that we do not have to cut the meeting short.
One reason we suggest you try and set aside at least 1.5 hours is that, if you do end up booking us for your wedding, this meeting will most likely be the last time we speak in person until the wedding day. Not that we are against a second meeting but, historically, this is how it goes. What with the detailed questionnaire we provide plus busy day-to-day schedules, most couples feel that a second in-person meeting is not necessary.
Q: Is an in-person consultation necessary?
A: While it is nice to have a bit of familiarity so that we all recognize each other on the big day, there are ways to get it all done without meeting. There are usually many e-mails exchanged and some phone conversations. We have an extensive questionnaire we send out about 6 weeks before the wedding day. It is not unusual for couples to be planning a wedding from out of town or even from a different state. In these circumstances, it is not uncommon for couples to secure their date without meeting first.
Q: Do you have more samples of your work other than what is shown here on your website?
A: We do also have more samples of our photos and videos on our "What Is New" website HERE.
Additionally, for photography, we have prints that we show at in-person consultations. For video, we have a mail-out DVD demo, which is about 2 hours in length and which has portions of about 20 or so different weddings. Let us know if you would like a video demo mailed out to you.
Q: Do you offer Friday discounts? Do you offer off-season discounts?
A: No. It takes us just as much work to make the finished product whether we do the shooting on a Friday or on a Saturday.
Q: Do you have payment plans?
A: Some clients opt for what might be termed a payment plan. What happens is they sign up with us 6 months to 18 months out from their wedding date and then every couple months or so they send in $100 or $200 or $300 (or however much they want) and we keep track of it. This way they do not have a large bill to pay off right at the time of the wedding. By the time their wedding comes around they are all paid up.
Q: Can you make a picture that is black and white with just the flowers in color?
A: Sure. This is our most popularly requested special effect. Just tell us which picture you want it done to. If you are not getting an album or purchasing a print through the online gallery, cost to have this done is $5 per image.
Q: I see you offer online print ordering.
A: It is actually a nice convenience feature for family members who just want to get a couple pictures for themselves for framing. This way the newlywed couple are not bothered with getting one 5x7 for one person, one 8x10 for another person. Prices for the Edited Prints are not too bad: a 5x7 is $7, an 8x10 is $9.
Q: What is the difference between the DVD photo images and the Edited Prints?
A: The Edited Prints can have color enhancement, special effects, skin retouching, fine tuning of colors and brightness, conversion to black and white, conversion to sepia, or all black and white with flowers in color.
Q: What if I do not want to buy a print but want additional editing done to an image?
A: If you just want the digital file without buying a print, and you want the image to receive treatment like what would be done for an Edited Print, the fee is $5 per image.
Q: What about black and white pictures?
A: In our online proofing gallery, you can view your pictures in three versions: color, sepia, and black and white. If you are curious how a particular picture would look in black and white, the online gallery will give you a good idea.
Q: With video, do you put in CD music as a background during the ceremony and reception?
A: No. Any music during the ceremony section of the video would be the actual music that was played at the ceremony. Any music during the reception section of the video would be whatever the DJ/band played at the time. We do use CD music for the DVD menu and this would be music that you choose. Sometimes CD music is also used as a background during the pre-ceremony section.
Q: We are not sure that we want an album. Do we have to decide on this at the time we secure you for the wedding-day coverage?
A: No. You could just look over the DVD images you receive and decide at that time whether or not you want us to make an album. We would give you a couple months after you see the DVD images to make your decision about an album.
Q: Do you make growing-up slide shows that can be projected at the reception?
A: Yes. We have made many of these. Usually the format is 3 songs, with 1 song being him growing up, 1 song being her growing up, and 1 song for the together pictures. About 50-75 pictures total. Extensive editing includes adjusting the colors of each picture to make them look their best, minor retouching, and setting the pictures to music. Overall presentation is much better than what most people could do themselves. Price is $350. Mail-out DVD demo available upon request.
Q: I have a relative who has passed on but I would like to put an image of them up in the corner of one of the wedding pictures. Can you do that?
A: Yes. This would be included in the purchase price of an Edited Print which is ordered online. If you do not want a print then the price would be $5 per image to have this done.
Q: Do you take pictures of people eating?
A: No.
Q: For the formals after the ceremony, do you have lights to use if the inside of the church is dark?
A: Yes, we have lights if needed. Most often, though, it is bright enough not to need additional lighting.
Q: My church does not allow flash photography during the ceremony. Will that be a problem?
A: No, not a problem. Actually, the majority of churches do not allow flash during the ceremony.
Q: I saw in one of your video demos that the bride and groom were speaking directly to the camera. talking about the day and about each other. Is this standard for all your videos?
A: No. In the case of the demo you saw, this is something that that couple specifically requested.
Q: Do you have any testimonials?
A: Sure. When a client writes us something nice we usually hold onto it. We have a folder of testimonials with us at meetings and you are welcome to flip through it if interested. Also, we could e-mail you out some testimonials if you would like. Just mention in the Contact Form that you would like to have testimonials sent.
Q: I want "bride getting ready" pictures but I am not getting ready at the ceremony location. Can you cover this?
A: If the bride would be getting ready not too far from the ceremony location then this we could do. If the bride would be getting ready farther away from the ceremony location, then there would be an off-site coverage fee of $125. If you want "bride getting ready" coverage that will not take place at the ceremony location, let us know what you have in mind and we will get back to you with whether or not there would be an off-site coverage charge.
Q: Do you do destination weddings?
Q: We would consider it. The fee would be our usual package price plus you cover transportation and lodging. For a farther-off distance such as the typical destination wedding, we would like to arrive two days before the wedding so that, if there should happen to be any unexpected travel delay, we have the extra day of padding as a "just in case". We would like to attend the rehearsal, if any. We would return the day after the wedding.
Q: Can you tell me a little more about the coffee table book you offer?
A: It is 11" tall by 14" wide. It has a rigid cover personalized with a picture in the center. Our standard offering for cover material is black leather but various colors of cloth covers are available as an alternative to the leather if you prefer. (If going with cloth, choose black or pick your favorite color or match your décor.) The pages are magazine style, meaning they are flexible, with the pictures being printed directly onto the pages. The pages are on the thicker side than a regular magazine page. You choose either matte or glossy page surface. Each page generally has 1 - 6 pictures. Black and white pictures and color pictures can be mixed on the same page. You choose the pictures. You approve the layout.
Q: Do you have a photo studio where you take portraits?
A: Our photographers specialize in event documentary photography. That is all they do. We take no studio portraits so, consequently, we have no need for a walk-in studio. Our “studio” is the location of the events we document. All a store-front studio would do for us is increase overhead significantly, which would result in much higher package pricing, with absolutely no benefit to the quality of the finished product.
Q: I am a close relative of the bride and groom. Can I get a discount on prints ordered through your online gallery?
A: The prices listed are for everyone. Honestly, about the only people interested in buying the wedding prints are close relatives of the newlyweds. People who are not related to the couple are not much interested in buying pictures from the wedding.
Q: Could you tell me more about the Proof Book for $200?
A: It is actually a very nice value when you consider the number of prints you get for the money combined with the attractive presentation. For each proof print in the book, you choose to have it in color, black and white, or sepia. (Our online gallery shows the pictures in all three versions which is very helpful for choosing your favorite look.) If you would like more proof prints beyond the standard 200, price would be $2 extra for each additional proof print plus $25 extra for a larger album.