Please help!
My husband and I are driving ourselves up the wall trying to find a photographer in Las Vegas for our vow renewal. We originally got married in a courthouse and so for years we've been saying that we need a 'real' wedding, so we've decided to splurge a little.
The problem is that we're wedding photographers in Santa Barbara and can't help but be EXTREMELY picky. The pictures are the only important thing to us and so I'm going all out to make everything as picture friendly as we can.
What we want is to have HUGE panoramic photos of ourselves hanging in the family room, but out of all of the photographers we've contacted so far, none of them use professional equipment, let alone the level of equipment needed to make a rreally large print look nice.
Just from Google searching, I've seen some cool web galleries, but web galleries are such low resolution images that even a bottom of the line SLR looks good.
I contacted a few photographers to find out what kind of cameras and lenses they used and was shocked.
I was hung up on three times, I had another one say "we don't give that information out" (what??) and all of the rest reluctantly told me what they shot with and all of the cameras were lower end Canon 40D, 20D, Nikon D40, D90, etc.
Out of all the people that I called, the highest end cameras were a Nikon D300 and a Canon 5D. The D300 is alright.......for a backup camera, but isn't the greatest. The Canon 5D is better, but I didn't get a great vibe from the person I spoke with.
NONE of them owned studio lighting.
Please help - I don't mean to offend any Vegas photographers or burn bridges, but I'm kinda frustrated that none of them have studios, almost none of them have pro level equipment and even fewer have backup equipment and most of them do not include retouching. While we could do the retouching ourselves, it's something I'd rather see included in the price.
I'm also looking to add on a bridal portrait session and MAYBE a bridal boudoir session to surprise hubby, so the studio is important. It also kinda shows that they won't suddenly go out of business either.
I'm not looking for a 'cheap' photographer and I'm not looking for a strip tour. If they're lower priced, but still great, I'm good with that, but I know that pro level gear means higher prices and I'm completely prepared to pay what we charge in Cali.
We decided on Las Vegas as our destination, as it's WAY cheaper than trying to pay for a wedding venue in California, but I'm strongly against using any of the Vegas chapels; All the ones we called wanted us to use their horrible in house photographers and then overcharge for each print and don't give the rights to print them ourselves. It felt like a borderline scam and a complete monopoly and I refuse to give them dime one.
After browsing the forums a bit, I only see two mentioned a lot here. Their style is okay, but the lack of retouching and lower end equipment isn't for me. I also don't want to sift through over a thousand identical pictures to find one I like. I looked through a few of their full wedding galleries and saw out of focus images and there'd be dozens of identical shots, which I don't understand.
I think for what they charge their service is good though, but they just don't have the kind of polish I'm looking for.
Also, and this really ticks me off, most of the photographer reviews on this board read like advertisements. If vendors want to make fake reviews, at least make them look real and avoid using identical wording and cheesy pitch lines...
I'm not going to point out specific posts, but it was the clincher when I was deciding which photographers NOT to use. Fake reviews are an awful business practice and hurts legitimate vendors (again, speaking as a photographer myself).
If there's any already married brides that can tell me anything about their photographers' equipment, or upcoming brides that maybe know what kind of cameras their photographers use, I would be eternally grateful to you all for lending us a hand!
I've searched day and night for two weeks, calling and reading blogs and I just don't see what I'm looking for
Seriously Stressed in Santa Barbara,
Karen and Ben