It’s always been part of shop talk when the videoguys get together - why do videographers charge so low vis a vis our photographer bretheren?

The equipment costs are as much if not much more than still camera equipment. The skill level to produce a great video is tremendous. But my main beef is that it takes so much more TIME to conceptualize, shoot and edit a wedding video than to create a wedding album. As professionals who render services, don’t we all charge based on the amount of time we spend on a project? Since we charge significantly less than photographers does that mean we value our time less than them? I’d like to think otherwise but the current state of affairs proves so.

One thing going against wedding videographers is history. Photography has been around for so long that people have come to respect it as an artform and the accepted standard for preserving memories of the wedding day. Compare that to the very young medium of digital video which was spawned a mere decade ago.

And thanks to our early analog forefathers, the perception of a wedding video as cheesy, amateurish and ultimately unnecessary still lingers. Admit it - how many times has a bride told you she doesn’t want a video resembling that of her parents? How’s that for a stigma passed on to the next generation?

Of no help too are the “studios” who consistently package wedding videos at a ridiculously low price point so that clients will take their pitch for their photo packages hook line and sinker.

That said, what does the hapless wedding videographer do? Stay tuned.