Wedding photography · Ithaca, NY · Twelve weddings a year. 2027 dates opening.
Three thousand frames. Six hundred pictures.
Two photographers in the Finger Lakes. A wedding makes about three thousand frames and you receive six hundred; the sheet below is one roll of twelve, with the three that were delivered ringed. That is what you are actually buying.
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01 9.12am Trainers, dress hem
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02 9.48am SELECT
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03 10.31am Bouquet, held
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04 10.44am Rings, linen
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05 12.02pm Aisle, seated
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06 12.19pm Arrangement, row 1
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07 1.06pm Processional — phones
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08 1.22pm Mehndi, hands
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09 1.40pm SELECT
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10 2.55pm Party, from behind
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11 6.31pm SELECT
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12 7.58pm Flutes, close
3 of 12 delivered — about one frame in 4.
Printed up
The three that were ringed.
What you are paying for
40 hours. The wedding is 25% of them.
The wedding day is the part everyone pictures, and it is a quarter of it. When a quote seems high for "one day of work", this is the answer — it is not one day of work.
- Timeline planning and venue walk 4 h Before the day. Where the light is at 6pm, and where the family photographs happen if it rains.
- The wedding day 10 h Two of us, from preparation to first dance.
- Ingest, backup, verify 1 h Three copies before anyone sleeps. One leaves the building.
- Culling, 3,000 to 600 6 h The invisible half. This is where a photographer earns or loses the gallery.
- Colour and finish, 600 frames 16 h Every delivered frame individually. Batch presets are why galleries look inconsistent.
- Gallery build and album proofing 3 h Delivery, sequencing, and the first album layout.
Coverage
Two of us, and when you do not need two.
Two of us on every wedding, which is a coverage decision rather than an upsell. One camera cannot be at the aisle and at the back of the room at the same moment, and preparation usually happens in two places at once.
- Do we need a second photographer?
- Over about a hundred guests, or with preparation split across two locations, yes. Under fifty in one venue, honestly no — and we will say so and reduce the quote.
- How long should coverage run?
- Preparation to about an hour into dancing. Coverage past that produces frames of a dark room, which nobody has ever printed.
- What about an unplugged ceremony?
- Worth asking for, not worth demanding. Frame 7 on the sheet is the processional seen past a guest’s phone, held up right where the aisle was. We still made a picture; it is just not the one that existed before the phone went up.
- Do you take a shot list?
- For family groups, always — names and combinations, agreed beforehand. For everything else, a list turns a photographer into an order-taker and the day into a queue.
The word nobody says
You are granted a licence, not copyright.
Every wedding contract in this trade grants a licence, and almost none of them say the word. Here is what ours actually does, in the order that matters.
| Term | What it actually means |
|---|---|
| Copyright | Stays with us. That is the default under US law and every photographer you speak to will have the same term, whether or not they mention it. |
| Your licence | Perpetual, worldwide, for personal use: print anything at any size, share anywhere, hand files to family. No expiry, no per-print fee. |
| Commercial use | Not included, because it almost never comes up at a wedding. If your venue or florist wants to advertise with your pictures, that is a separate conversation and usually a free one. |
| “Full rights” | A phrase that usually means the licence above. If someone offers you copyright, ask them to put the word copyright in the contract and watch what happens. |
| Our use of yours | We ask before anything goes public and a no costs you nothing. Some couples say no. That is the end of it. |
Investment
One collection, $6,400.
One collection. Splitting coverage into tiers means selling someone a version of their wedding with a photographer who leaves early, and we would rather not.
- Two photographers, ten hours
- Planning call, timeline, and a venue walk
- About 600 finished frames, individually colour-graded
- Online gallery, downloadable at full size, live for five years
- Perpetual personal-use licence
| Additions | Cost |
|---|---|
| Additional hour | $450 |
| Second day (welcome / mehndi / brunch) | $2,200 |
| Fine-art album, 12×12, 40 sides | $1,150 |
| Travel beyond 90 minutes of Ithaca | At cost, agreed first |
Under fifty guests in a single venue, we shoot alone for $3,900 — and we will tell you if your wedding is that wedding.
Common questions
Before you write.
Why only six hundred pictures?
Because the other two thousand four hundred are worse versions of the six hundred. A gallery of three thousand frames is a photographer refusing to make decisions and passing the work to you.
Do we get the raw files?
No, and no photographer worth booking will say yes. A raw file is an unfinished negative; the colour is half the picture and it is the half you are hiring us for. You get full-resolution finished files with no watermark.
How long until we see them?
A set of about thirty within a week. The full gallery in six weeks, and in eight during September and October, which is when everyone in the Finger Lakes gets married.
What if it rains?
It rains. We walk the venue beforehand precisely so there is a plan that is not "the lobby". Some of the best frames we have made happened under a porch.
Do you shoot film?
We shoot digital and finish it like film. The sheet at the top is laid out as a roll of 120 because that is the honest way to show selection, not because we are claiming the frames came off film.
What happens if one of you is ill?
The other shoots and we bring in a photographer we have worked with, at our cost. If both of us are somehow out, you get every penny back the same day and we help you find someone. It has not happened in nine years.
Enquire
Tell us about the day.
Date and venue first — those are the two things that decide whether we are free. Fields marked with an asterisk are required.