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Why you should bring your photographer with you to your destination wedding

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Why you should bring your photographer

As some of you may know, I’ve just got back from Greece to cover a destination wedding on the lovely island of Santorini, complete with iconic blue domed churches and blindingly white architecture on the top of cliffs surrounding a caldera of an anciently erupted volcano.

It’s obvious why the bridal couple selected such a spot for their wedding ceremony, despite the fact they had to travel halfway around the globe to hold it! Hosting a destination wedding like this simply allows you to hold your wedding in your perfect location, and not having to settle for something mediocre by comparison.

It’s usually not a cheap exercise however and should only be contemplated by those super keen on hosting the most perfect wedding ever! Which is why I’m writing this article about why you should bring your photographer with you to your destination wedding.

Santorini destination wedding

Think about it, you’re hoping to host the wedding of the century in such a stunning location, and you’re willing to trust your photos and/or video to someone your wedding venue sorted for you? One of the drawbacks of hosting a destination wedding is that many venues or local wedding planners would bundle people like your wedding photographer or videographer in with the package deals they present you, meaning they are looking to make as much profit as possible.

It’s sometimes the case that they will find local ‘friends with a camera’ or cheap photographers to save themselves as much money as possible when sorting out your wedding.

If you can’t control other aspects of your wedding, at the very least try to control the one thing that will remain after the day is over – your photography and/or video, which is why you should bring your photographer with you to your destination wedding!

No wedding ever goes off without some small hitch or problem. There’s just so many things being organised and planned, it’s only natural for some small issue to arise. This is magnified when you’re hosting a destination wedding where you’ll be placing your faith in the venue or wedding planner to handle all of your vendors and set up for the most part.

Some things are definitely minor and able to get over them quickly – like the flowers being the wrong shade, or the chairs being a few short, but your photography? That’s not getting done again and is why you should use someone you trust, despite having to fly them around the world to your destination wedding!

Santorini destination wedding

Why you should bring your photographer with you to your destination wedding

Bringing your own photographer to your destination wedding offers you assurance of being able to research and select the exact photographer you want! You can perfectly link their style, personality, experience and packages to what you like, rather than relying on what your venue or planner say you want 🙂 Then the photos you that they capture from your day will be as memorable as you hope them to be.

As you probably know, your photographer and videographer (if you choose to have one) will be spending more time with you on your big day than anyone else; it’s important to select someone you know will do a good job on your day. This is true for any wedding, but especially true for a destination wedding – any wedding photographer that travels for destination weddings are super passionate in what they do and will go above and beyond to capture the day in a way they are sure you’ll enjoy while also being a huge opportunity for them to travel and see the world – which as being a photographer that’s pretty much our thing!

Photographers that you bring with you will most likely offer an uninterrupted full days coverage (not so with most resort photo packages) – although I do this anyway.

You may be reading this and agreeing with my points, but also in the back of your mind you’d be thinking the cost of bringing someone with you would include airfares, accomodation and then the usual rate your photographer charges so wouldn’t be overly cost effective – which to be honest would be mostly true, but hopefully the understanding and trust you have with the photographer you’ve brought would stretch beyond the cost.

Selecting a photographer for your dream wedding shouldn’t be able cost, and cutting costs on a photographer is one of the most common regrets from couples after their day.

That said however, if you love a photographer you have found and what them, and only them to travel with you to cover your wedding, much of the time they will cut a deal just for the opportunity.

For example in my case, the recent wedding I covered in Santorini, I covered in exchange for a lovely holiday – and yet another wedding I’m covering in Fiji next year I wanted to have in my portfolio, so I made my rates similar to what a local photographer would charge. Chances are bringing your own photographer could be more cost effective than you think! Another reason why you should bring your photographer with you to your destination wedding.

Santorini destination wedding

When it comes right down to it, planning and pulling off a destination wedding takes a lot of time, effort, money and stress – much like any wedding really, but when you hold it overseas or someplace your guests usually can’t access easily, it makes it even more so! It makes sense to surround yourself with vendors you trust, however the cake, flowers, DJ etc. will be gone… great photographs will always be there offering you a return to that special time in that amazing setting!

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How to keep your wedding photography safe

  • How to keep your wedding photography safe 1

How to keep your wedding photography safe

As a wedding photographer, I’m acutely aware that the wedding photographs I take and provide to you on your final USB may well be the only way you can reminisce about your wedding day, a year, decade or 50 years down the line. As such I’m keep to present this short guide on how to keep your wedding images safe from your special day for years to come. Losing or otherwise damaging your wedding photos is often a huge concern of wedded couples and can cause much grief if they truly are lost, but with some easy steps you’ll be able to avoid this heartbreak.

USB ribbon

Keeping data safe starts with your photographer

Before you consider booking in your wedding photographer or videographer, make sure they have a clear process for backing up and keeping their data safe. Any wedding photographers worth their salt will have their digital photos backed up and secured in multiple ways as they know that their livelihood and business depends on it. It should be the worst thing in the world for a wedding photographer to lose a wedding!

They should use multiple cameras on the day with possibly a third redundancy – preferably with dual memory card slots so they are backing up on the fly, they should also be able to describe exactly what they do with your data after your wedding to keep it safe.

What should you do once you receive your photos?

Copy everything on the USB you receive to your computer immediately. That way you’ll have a duplicate copy of all your memories straight off the bat. However, the expected life for an average computer’s hard drive is only 3-5 years, while a USB flash drive is expected to be anywhere between 5-10 years, which means that that USB drive is more likely to outlast you computer’s hard drive – which is one reason why it’s the current method of choice for photographers to provide your files.

Personally as a professional wedding photographer I keep an archival backup of all my work on two different physical hard drives both on site and offsite (in case of local disaster) Which means I have over 200 weddings backed up in duplicate at all times, While my most recent year’s work is further backed up on 3 further separate hard drives connected to my computer for editing.

But that’s just me, you only need to worry about your own wedding photos, so you can also keep multiple backups of your digital files like I do. But you can also take advantage of cloud based services such as Google drive, which is free to a point – you just need to take the time to upload the (rather substantial) size of your wedding USB. This is probably the most robust way to secure your digital files, but still isnt 100% perfect.

Framed Print

Print your photos

The absolute best way to keep your memories and wedding photography safe is simply to print your photos and display then on the wall, or in a wedding album. Just imagine 20-30 years in the future and you’re showing your children or grandkids your photos from your wedding and you whip out the USB drive you were given. They’re likely to laugh at the antiquated technology you have in your hand, and computer may not even have a USB drive that suits anymore. This would be like putting out a roll of film, or slides and firing up the slide projector.

It’s already happening with the recent shift to USB-C based technology rather than the more traditional rectangular USB2 or 3.  But with a wedding album, you will not have that issue with your precious memories. Books haven’t changed in hundreds of years and will last the test of time. Your grandkids will be flicking through the pages and laughing at your outdated haircuts and zany clothes choices – or your otherwiuse most precious moments in no time!

Premium Album

What can you do if you have lost your digital files?

Hopefully this never happens to you, but it’s just the unfortunate fact that technology does fail, and it’s no secret that hard drives in computers are often the most common thing to fail. So what can you do to keep your images safe?

First, contact your wedding photographer – if they are anything like me they’d have every photo they’ve ever taken backed up to wazoo like I do on multiple external hard drives in a fireproof safe and be able to send out a replacement copy ASAP. That said however many photographers only back up to a certain point – be it 1 to 5 years – so that may not be possible.

Damaged or lost files on a hard drive or SD cards can be recovered using certain backup softwares, or if that doesn’t work you can send the hard drive to professional data recovery centers that may cost quite a bit. Just make sure that once you have discovered that your photos have been lost you immediately remove the hard drive from your computer to prevent any data still on the drive being overwritten accidentally.

If your device has had water damage, immediately unplug the device and let it dry completely and you may be lucky with it coming back to life, otherwise a professional data recovery service may be your only option.