Jenna Cole Photography-Chicago, IL » Lifestyle and Wedding Photographer

A few months ago, this clip circled pretty quickly among photographers on Twitter. The couple featured learned from experience that owning a nice camera doesn’t guarantee beautiful photos.

I feel for the bride! It sounds like she attempted to do her research, attending a bridal show in hopes of picking the perfect photographer for her from among a pool that she assumed would only be made up of top-notch photographers. Unfortunately all it takes to call yourself a photographer is the purchase of a camera and 10 minutes setting up a free blog or website. (In all fairness I am one of these people as I have had no formal training in photography )

One way to avoid experiencing the same fate is to ask to see a full wedding that your photographer has delivered to clients. Looking through all of the photos from the day, from start to finish, will help you see if the artist you are considered can handle the many different lighting situations that can be encountered throughout the wedding day. It is my opinion that every photographer willing to shoot weddings should be willing and able to show you a full wedding from their past.

An interview with a potential bride made me realize that there is another vein of questions that an astute brides and grooms can ask when searching for the perfect photographer for their wedding day. This particular bride surprised me by asking, “Can you tell me a little bit more about the equipment you would be using to shoot my wedding?”

Wow, I wasn’t expecting that! I gladly spent some time talking to her about what I have.

My main body is a Canon 5D Mark II:

My backup body is a Canon 50D:

Hiring a photographer with backup equipment is important because accidents and malfunctions happen, and you want to be sure that the person capturing your wedding day can keep on shooting without a run to the nearest electronics store for an emergency purchase. It’s also important to have more than one lens (once I tripped and fell at a wedding, landing directly on one of my lenses and rendering it useless for the rest of the wedding day), and if your ceremony/reception will be in low-light areas you might want to ask what your photographer would do in the event that one of their flashes stopped working for the day.

These questions can be intimidating to ask because you are likely talking to someone who can talk for hours about megapixels, aperture, and ISO, things you might not know anything about. Here is one simple question that you can ask which should guide your photographer to send back uncomplicated replies.

Do you have backup equipment for your main camera body, lens, and flash? What would you do in the event of an accident or technical malfunction resulting in the loss of one of these?

You can also ask what kind of camera body they are using, but assuming that a more expensive camera body will give you even more beautiful photos than the next guy is a mistake. Anyone can purchase a $7000 camera body and have no idea how to harness its power. If you do ask about the camera body I would be wary of anyone charging several thousand dollars and using entry level cameras from either the Nikon or Canon lines. Camera bodies that cost more are more versatile, handle low light situations better, and generally a person using professional level camera body has invested similarly in the lenses and other accessories they are using as well.

I think if more brides were to ask about backup equipment and viewing full weddings there would be less stories of unmet expectations like the woman who appeared before Judge Joe Brown.