With so many photographers available, how do you know who to choose?

The first and most important thing is to make sure you’ve taken a good look at their website and/or portfolio. If their images suit the style you’re looking for, that’s a good start.

But there are many other factors to consider and price should not be the most important. If you’re basing your decision solely on price, with photography – as with most things – you get what you pay for.

Why? Well, professional photographers charge professional rates for a reason. They have a business to run. They also have high-quality equipment to maintain, they have years of experience and they give the very best results.

When it comes to weddings and special events, you only have one chance for fantastic photos. If you hire someone because they have the lowest rates, you run a very likely risk of getting pictures you’re not happy with. If that happens, there’s no way to reproduce or replace those moments.

How can you tell what the difference is between amateur and professional photography rates? It’s fairly simple…

Do some research.  Look at professional photographer’s websites and see what they’ve got listed under ‘services’ or ‘investment’. Don’t just look for photographers in your city or town; expand your search to professional photographers in North America.

Not all of us list our rates online, particularly if we customize our services for each individual client. But if you do take the time to look into it, you’ll find the following:

Standard rates for professional portraiture and headshots start at $200 to $250 an hour and can range much higher.

In most North American cities, standard rates for professional wedding and event photographers - with good reputations, good portfolios, good equipment and a wealth of experience - start at $1500 dollars for eight hours and can be as high as $5000 or $6000.

If you’re looking to hire a professional photographer to shoot your event or wedding for two or three hours, you can expect to pay a range of at least $250 to $300 per hour.

Wedding and event photography is more expensive because there’s a lot more work involved and – although it’s fun and wonderfully rewarding – being a wedding and event photographer is a very difficult job with no margin for error.

So let’s say you’ve come across a few photographers whose rates are much lower. You think to yourself ‘It’s just photography, why should I pay more for the same kind of service these people are offering so much more cheaply?’

The most basic, simple reason not to hire someone really inexpensive is this: Someone charging unprofessional rates is not a professional! Most likely they’re someone just starting out in the business, or else they're using their photography hobby as a way to make some extra cash. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but you do run the risk that they may not know how to behave at your event or how to properly shoot it.

You wanted to hire a photographer because you’d like your pictures to look extra fantastic and professional, right? Well, if that’s true, hiring an amateur or hobbyist photographer because they're cheaper really isn't your best bet. It's kind of like the difference between spending your wedding night at a Fairmont Hotel instead of at a Motel 6.

If you’re still wondering what else you’ll get for the money you pay to a professional, bear in mind that a photographer’s work is not done once they’ve finished taking your pictures for you.

In this age of digital photography, that means a photographer will spend another several days working on your pictures in a computer image editing program such as Photoshop. Someone charging extremely low rates will not be devoting much time –if any – working on the finishing touches to your pictures.

You’re not just paying for a photographer's time during your event or photo-session; you’ve also got to consider the time they’ll spend on editing and finishing your images. When you’re hiring someone to take photos, you’re also paying for the many hours of work they will do afterwards to make your pictures just perfect for you.

Don’t you want the finest quality photographs you can possibly have? The best wedding photos? The best family portraits? The best headshots? The best images of your product?

If you do, then that’s worth paying a professional to do right and well. Quality service costs more because it's worth more.