You’ve probably never had to book a wedding photographer. We bet you have lots of questions. We get it! Carol and I found it very strange when we had to look for a photographer for our own wedding. Even though we had a head start, as we know a lot of other wedding photographers. It still wasn’t an easy choice to make.
So, please don’t be afraid to ask questions. We’re happy to help and guide you through the process as best we can. We have captured over 500 other couples weddings. So we have a little bit more experience than most people do.
What Makes Us Different?
A future client recently asked us this exact question. I appreciated his directness. My first answer was talent. Both Carol and I are fortunate to have been born with a unique talent of seeing the world around us slightly different from how most people see it. Because of the way we view things, our images are just that bit different to most other photographers. They are a unique view on the world. One of the reasons we win so many photography awards is because other photographers appreciate just how good our images are. We are not your average wedding photographers!
But second to talent comes our dedication to creating the best images we can at each and every wedding we attend. We both put so much work into making our images the quality that we deliver. Every wedding we shoot will often take Paul four to five days in the digital darkroom to produce the quality that we’re happy to deliver. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is delivered without every bit of care and attention we feel your wedding images deserve.
Affordable Pricing
We keep our prices very competitive and affordable for all types of weddings. Whether you’re getting married in a stately home or the local pub doesn’t matter, we’d love to capture your wedding day. If you care about your wedding photos being as good as they can be, then we will easily fit into your budget plans.
How much does the average couple spend on their wedding photography? Take a look at this report from Your Perfect Wedding Photographer website. They conduct a survey every year to find out what their photographers are charging and produce this annual report, which includes the average price for a wedding photographer in the UK.
If you are on a tight budget, talk to us! All weddings are different, that’s what makes them fun! There are solutions for every scenario. In short, tell us about your day, we’d love to arrive at the perfect coverage plan for you.
What We Offer
We believe that your wedding coverage should be as unique as your wedding. Tell us more about your plans and we can help suggest the perfect solution for your day. A standard day includes:
- Consultations before your wedding
- Coverage from preps to start of evening party (extra time on request)
- Highlights Slideshow to share with family and friends
- An average of 500+ final images
- Final images carefully selected & hand processed
- Private password protected online wedding gallery
- Full personal printing and download rights
- No watermarks or hidden charges
How to Book Us
We ask for a £400 booking fee, which reserves your wedding date with us. We also ask for some basic details so that we can draw up a contact between us. The balance payment is due anytime up to two months before the wedding.
Of course before doing any of that, you are welcome to come and meet us, either in person or over via a video chat and to ask as many questions as you have. We are also happy to share some full weddings with you to give you a better idea of what you might receive form your own wedding day.
Highlights Slideshow
For all full day weddings, the first thing we send to our couples is a Highlights Slideshow, to give them something to share easily and it’s a great way to view a small selection of the images from the day without boring everyone with 500+ images. Here’s an example from a recent wedding.
Wedding Albums
Wedding albums, like our wedding photography coverage, are a bespoke item. We do not believe in ‘one size fits all’. Instead, we prefer to design and supply albums after the wedding, with full input from our couples, so that they receive a totally personal album, that is right for them and will last a lifetime.
View some of our beautiful sample albums
“I would recommend Tansley Photography to anybody, not just for the great photographs but for the pride that Paul had in what he produced for us. His unobtrusive presence around us and our guests and his timing for catching those memorable moments was impeccable”
Nicky & Andrew
Hopefully some of the information below will answer some of the questions you have. However, if you cannot find an answer here, please do Contact Us. We’re very happy to help in any way we can. We can even recommend other suppliers that we’ve worked with in the past if that’s helpful to you.
The first question you should ask any wedding photographer is “are you free on our wedding date?”
FAQ
Simply put, we don’t pose you, or orchestrate situations on your wedding day. We capture what happens, naturally, without intruding on the day. We do shoot couple portraits and family group photos, but the majority of the day is all unposed.
Read more here: What is Reportage Wedding Photography ?
On average 500+ with both of us shooting.
Quantity is not quality. We only want to deliver quality images, not photos where people have their eyes shut. So we edit our wedding photos very carefully, to only deliver the best of the best.
Last year some weddings had over 800 images delivered. Others were more in the 500-600 range. The amount is unimportant. What matters is the quality of what we deliver far exceeds our couples expectations. Read More – Quality Versus Quantity
Yes, if you ask us to, of course we’ll shoot them. We normally shoot the groups during the drinks reception.
We may be reportage wedding photographers, but at nearly every wedding, we always shoot some family group shots. We simply ask that couples consider how much time these will take and allow for that time in their schedule for the day. We suggest allowing 3 minutes per group shot. It takes around 20 seconds to shoot a group shot, however, it normally takes at least 3 minutes for the guests/family members to move into position.
Yes, we shoot couple portraits at most weddings, unless our couples don’t want to shoot them. We try and keep the time away from your guests to a minimum, but do allow 15-20 minutes for some couple photos during your drinks reception. We would never drag you off for hours – unless that was something you asked us to do.
Plus, if there’s a nice sunset or evening light, we may suggest a quick second session of portraits as the light at that time of day can produce some amazing images.
Yes, Our favourite wedding albums are made for us by Folio Albums. We’ve been supplying them for over six years. Their quality is unrivalled.
See here for more info: Wedding Albums
Yes and no. The vast majority of the couples who book us don’t like having their photo taken. It’s probably the number one reason couples book us. They love the unobtrusive, natural images we capture.
A pre-wedding shoot isn’t natural images. They are posed portraits. Lots of wedding magazines and wedding blogs suggest that a pre-wedding shoot might be a great way to get to know your wedding photographer. Personally I cannot think of a worse way to show you what we do. If you’d really like to get to know what it will be like on your wedding day. Why not come round for a cup of tea or a glass of wine. Sit and chat with us. That’s far more like a wedding day. Where we are just socialising with you and there is no pressure to have your picture taken. When your wedding day comes, you will barely know we are there.
Yes, of course.
We welcome couples to visit us at our lovely home in North East Hampshire or alternatively, we often meet our couples via FaceTime or Skype. Getting to know each other is an important part of the process of booking us. We will be spending a long time with you on your wedding day, so it helps us if you’re relaxed with us and happy to have us around.
Best times for meetings are normally free weekends or some weekday evenings. Use the Contact Form to get in touch
All of your final wedding images are uploaded to a private online gallery. The gallery is password protected, so you can choose who to share it with.
Wedding couples are also given a special passcode to download the images: all high resolution JPG files, no watermarks, with full personal usage rights. You are free to print, share, enjoy your wedding images.
If you’d like advice on how to store your wedding photos, so you never lose them. Just ask. Putting them on one USB stick in a drawer, isn’t the best way.
This always seems an odd question to me. I’ve been asked it so many times in the last 11 years and in those last 11 years I’ve never had to miss a wedding due to illness. But of course, it could happen. Interestingly, I’ve not missed a shoot in over 28 years as a professional photographer.
Would we simply phone you and tell you we’re not coming because we’ve got a headache? Of course not, that would be ridiculous!
When a couple books us to shoot their wedding day, they are putting their total trust in us to complete the contract between us. The couples pays us money, we turn up for the wedding, take beautiful photos and deliver a carefully crafted and processed set of images. Our couples need to trust us to be there on the day, we are right next to our couples during some very personal moments, they might cry, laugh wildly, hug their nearest and dearest. We need to be there, right at those moments, otherwise we cannot capture them and sometimes those are the most special moments of a wedding day. That requires trust, a lot of trust. So considering that you are putting your trust in us, why would you not trust us to do our utmost to deal with any situation that occurs before, during or after the wedding day?
If one of us catches a cold before your wedding day. Would you want us to turn up coughing on the day or should we try and find a replacement photographer for you (we know about 200 other wedding photographers, that we hang out with). What if another photographer wasn’t available, they might all be shooting other weddings that day, what then? Pre-2020 and Covid, I’d probably have just shot the wedding and not worried about the cough and a fever. But shooting a wedding, while you don’t feel well and might spread something to your wedding guests, isn’t the best idea really, especially since Covid came along. Plus some illnesses can floor you, so it might be, that the choices are limited. Carol once broke her ankle, so for 6 months, I had to use friends to 2nd shoot with me, I bore the cost of those 2nd shooters.
I’ve often said to couples, that if I were to have a car crash on the way to their wedding and be in an ambulance, unconscious, what would you want me to do? There is literally only so much a person can do. An honest decent person – as I hope you think Carol and I are, would do their utmost to find you another photographer, but there are limits to what we can do, we can only promise to do our best.
As with anything in life. I’d always recommend a level of insurance being taken out against things going wrong. In the last 11 years, we’ve experienced wedding venues burning down, the week before a wedding, other photographers catching covid and calling out to friends to help out. Photographers needing to give birth, so needing cover from other photographers. You can only be prepared and do your best to cover all eventualities.
The world changed in March 2020 and all wedding businesses had to wake up to what to do about a Pandemic. Covid could affect anyyone involved in your wedding. We could catch Covid before your wedding, but by the same token, you or one of your close family could catch Covid. We’ve had weddings cancelled only a few days before the big day.
What do we do if this happens or if the country is locked down due to government restrictions? Well, the answer is very similar to the illness question above. Carol and I are nice, decent people, our clients are important to us. We will therefore always try and do our best for our couples. If it’s in our power, we will help couples change their wedding date to a new date. It’s essential at this point to have good communication. There is no point a couple booking a new date, then telling us about it, only to find out we’re already booked for another wedding that day. Whereas a sensible couple will let us know ASAP as soon as any change might be happening and we can then discuss options with them. For instance for all our 2020/21 wedding couples, we simply let them know all of our booked dates and allowed them to move to any free date that we had available. We can’t be any more fair than that. And consequently we managed to move all but 2 of our weddings successfully to new dates, during the Pandemic. The two weddings we lost were couples who booked a new date without even speaking to us first. There was nothing we could do for them.
Paul is available to shoot solo for some weddings. However, there are huge advantages to having us both there on the day. Have a read of this article we wrote on the subject:
One Wedding Photographer or Two Wedding Photographers
