Edited 10-28-2009 to add: Because I don’t know if I’ll ever get to reviewing all my vendors, I’m just going to add a few final and important comments to this post. Please check the end of this review for those.
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Even though I probably looked at dozens of photographers’ homepages, in the end I only contacted two of them for interview. One of them, kiphotography, is listed as a recommended vendor of Hakone, so I checked out his webpage, liked his work, and asked for rates way back in the early October. When I started getting serious again about wedding planning a couple weeks ago, I went searching for more photographers. The only other photographer whose work I liked enough contact was FC Wong Weddings. FC Wong was recommended by a knottie in the theknot forums, and based on the thread topic, I assumed his prices weren’t astronomical. Both have a photojournalistic style, and I thought both had portfolios that match my taste. Kelvin also liked what he saw on their websites and hated every other photographer link I sent him, so I guess our tastes aren’t dissimilar. I arranged to meet with both of them last weekend.
I saw Kristian at kiphotography on Saturday. He was definitely the pricier of the two. Despite meeting up with him in February and him raising rates for 2008, he let me keep the 2007 rates he had sent me in October. However, his most basic package was still $3500, which was outside my price range. (The price includes two photographers, and in terms of wedding photographer prices, that’s not bad… we’re just poor/cheap!) I let myself have the bad bride attitude that, maybe if I like him enough, I’ll go outside my budget. When we got to his place, Kristian showed us to a room with several framed photos on the wall and a large HDTV bookended by shelves of albums. He presented us with two large sample albums and had us watch a DVD slideshow. He gave us a folder with the pricelist and a contract. Kristian is a chill and friendly guy, and I’m sure he’s easy to work with, but I don’t think I clicked with him. It’s probably because I was a little uncomfortable sitting there, knowing his price and how we probably couldn’t afford it. I couldn’t negotiate since we were already getting a discounted price, and I didn’t have much to say to him. I still liked the stuff he showed us in person, but Kelvin had a change of heart, which he made clear to me when we left. I don’t really get his reasoning, but I’m glad he didn’t like him, since he was probably outside of our price range.
The next morning, we met with FC Wong at some random Panera Bread in Hayward. (For some reason, I thought our 11AM appointment was at 11:30AM despite FC confirming it with me a couple times. Lucky for me, we left super early and arrived a few minutes past 11AM. Phew!) He was waiting for us with his Macbook Pro, business cards, and papers describing his services. He went through his list of services, explaining each point clearly and always open to questions. His package and the price was incredibly, incredibly reasonable (more like not reasonable for him); it included all-day coverage with a second photographer, engagement shoot, and bridal portrait shoot. We asked about switching out a provided shoot for a rehearsal dinner shoot (since we have a Halloween rehearsal dinner with costumes), and he said that, as long he’s not booked for a wedding that day, he usually asks to go to the dress rehearsal anyway in order to meet important people of the wedding. It’s not an official point he lists in contracts since he may be booked for a wedding the day of the rehearsal. He insists on doing engagement shoots and such to get to know people and build a connection. Freely offering extra services at no extra charge? What’s wrong with this guy?
He provided us with two sets of headphones to watch slideshows of his works on his laptop. I was particularly impressed with his shoot for an Indian wedding, since those are so full of color and details. He said he was really into portraits, and I think it’s evident in his photography (which I like a lot). He said he wouldn’t have a physical sample album in until a couple weeks from now, but he said we’d definitely be able to see it before our wedding and there was no commitment to get an album (aside from using the credit included in the package). The entire time, I was really comfortable asking questions (Kelvin even asked some!), and he was just super cool and super professional at the same time. When we left, Kelvin said he passed 4 out of 5 points he was looking for (I don’t know what those points are, but I know the 5th point was final product), and he said we should book him as soon as we see a final album. (It’s SO rare for Kelvin to have any sort of positive opinion of people he’s just met. Usually it’s hate, “meh”, or if they’re lucky, “okay”.) I was like, “Screw that, let’s just book him before someone else does.” So we did! So far, he’s been really great with answering my questions (ask him what “FC” stands for) and fast at responding to emails. I’m trying figure out what the catch is, really. I know he’s fairly new to the business and wants to build his portfolio, but I contacted him because I liked his work, having no clue he was such a great deal. We haven’t taken any pictures with him yet, so yeah, they may turn out bad. And his album options are limited (and prices through the roof!) at the moment, but there’s no commitment to buy. I’m willing to take my chances.
To get a feel for his pricing (at the time we talked to him), I know he’s got a Craigslist ad up right now offering the package similar to what he gave us for ~$??00*. Ours was a tad less than that. The knottie who recommended him said he was doing a name-your-own-price thing for a while, so he was probably a super DUPER bargain to couples before us. (Perhaps we could have negotiated more, but I’m terrible at negotiating and I really wanted to book him… he said he’s already got over 30 weddings booked for this year!) I think he’s really trying hard to become established. He said he was going full-time this summer, so I’m sure his rates are just going to increase as I don’t really see how he can sustain himself with his current rates. Anyway, I’m psyched to have met this guy and book him at the price we got (within my original photography budget!), and I hope I maintain this same gleeful feeling throughout the process. Based on my meeting with him, I’d recommend couples on a budget to have talk with him, fer sure.
Oh yeah, and he also earns extra bonus points for being Taiwanese! rofl. (And he has a blog!)
*Edited 8/24 to add: I recently checked FC’s page, and his packages and pricing has changed quite a bit. I removed the old Craigslist price from this post since it’s pretty out of date.
New thing I learned today: Serious professional photographers will always have backup equipment. To weed out the average Asian guys doing photography for kicks (I make this generalization cuz a TON of photographers around here seem to be young Asian guys, including the two I interviewed), you should ask about their backup equipment as well as whatever they use regularly.
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So, my wedding ended over a year ago, and I have my album and my negatives. Well, most of them. I think F.C. is not the most technically savvy of folks, which is why I did not receive all my negatives. Technically, he gave me all the pictures he took, and all the important wedding pictures were given in large, high-resolution formats. (Though, I think he resized my wedding negatives as well, because the touched-up photos I got were 4368×2912 and the untouched negatives were 2496×1664. Not a big deal to me, quality was still good.)
My engagement and rehearsal pictures, however, were only 1800×1200. I was surprised at the resolution of the images, but F.C. told me he takes engagement and such pics at this resolution. So if you’re planning on printing large prints for your engagement pics, you should check with him on what resolution he’s taking them in.
I don’t care that much about the size, but my issue was the quality of the pics. The compression was AWFUL. Lots of blockiness everywhere, and totally unprintable. I mean, you can tell by the file size of the photos (~120kb for a 1800×1200 image??), there’s a lot of compression and missing information. This is a link to one of my rehearsal pics, completely unaltered from what he gave me outside of renaming the file. To see other examples, any other pic starting with “fc_” in this rehearsal gallery is something he gave me. All rehearsal and engagement pics were this quality. I asked him more than once for the original negatives, and the last response I heard from him was that he’d look into it. Never heard from him again, never got my negatives for rehearsal and engagement. At this point, I was sick of dealing with wedding crap, so I gave up on it.
I would still recommended F.C. for your wedding. I love his style, and he was very unobtrustive on the day of (one my guests said he was “like a ninja”) and easy to work with for most of the process. Just make sure when you speak with him to get the specifics down for your negatives, such as resolution size and quality of pics.
