What’s the usual first thought of a bride or groom when they start thinking about who is going to take the pictures for their big day? Cost. Wedding photography prices are notoriously enormous, with standard albums (let alone the extras one might be tempted with) often running to the thousands. That’s a huge amount of money to spend on someone who is basically running around with a box and making people smile when they don’t want to.
Getting a good deal on wedding photography prices can be well nigh impossible. Wedding photography is one of those captive markets where a person either pays up or goes without – which means that wedding photography prices, as long as they fall in line with all the other exorbitant wedding photography rates, can be as extortionate as the photographer feels he or she can get away with.
Until now. There’s a new wave of wedding photography options sweeping, of all places, the Internet – and its associated wedding photography prices are so small that they make the going rates of the pros look frankly hilarious. Welcome to the world of the communal online wedding album.
Getting a good deal on wedding photography prices in the real world is as hard as ever. Online, the fall in rates of wedding photography prices is just the start of the revolution. These wedding photography prices apply to a whole new way of preserving the wedding in images – digital “photo boxes”, in which multiple participants store their own images of the day as a kind of living album. In the same way that social networking sites and online photo hosting servers allow users to share and comment on images, these new wedding photography sites, for a fee, allow users to share and comment on a constantly-evolving community memorialising the special day.
It’s a beautifully simple idea – and the wedding photography prices associated with it are commensurately uncomplicated. For a basic fee, users can purchase a specific length of time for their wedding photo hosting – typically anything from three months to one year. The hosting, while active, allows owners (the owners are usually the bride and groom, who have what amount to admin privileges for the account) to oversee content and comment. It also offers the opportunity to have prints and physical albums made up from any or all selected photos – which mean the day, can still be saved as “flesh and blood” pictures: just that those pictures are chosen by the married couple, rather than a pro. There’s a price for these physical prints, of course – but it’s far more reasonable and the couple only pay for what they want.
These are wedding photography prices that really make sense – actual value for money in a world where value for money is increasingly important. Perhaps the pros will catch on, perhaps not – but in the meantime, the Internet photo box is open for business, and ready to put the power of choice back in the hands of the people who deserve it. The happy couple.
