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One of the things you add in the contract is a clause that states that no other photographs are to be taken at the wedding........well,...that is of course after you managed to get them to sign you..
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Few wedding parties will sign an agreement that disallows other photographers. And you could not enforce it anyway. What do you do, call a policeman? Do you ask the parents to stop the other person from taking photos and they get in a shouting match right in the middle of the wedding.
I've shot several hundred weddings over the last 30 years and as they said in "Music Man", "It's not like it used to be". The other photographers with the benefit of really fantastic digital cameras and Photoshop Elements or Photoshop itself can now turn out a much higher quality of photo that used to be possible for the casual camera buff. Part of this is due to the greatly increased number of photos they can shoot and see the immediate results, and then self correct. This was never really possible in the past. Of course we're talking about the candids at this point.
When we get to the staged shots, is where the pro still has an advantage, especially if he has set up a couple of strobes with umbrellas, etc. to get better lighting for the group formals. The other non-pros will not have those lights. They may shoot the same shot from behind the photographer, but they will be almost all bad due to great difficultly in evenly lighting the larger group shots. I never try to bar other photographers when I shoot the formals, but I shoot quite quickly and I'm in front and jumping around and so it is really hard for them to get the well posed formal shot.
As to whether someone who charges less gets the job, well that's the competitive system. The quality may be poorer in some cases, but with nothing to compare it to, the wedding party doesn't know.
Quality and professionalism still count, but one has to work harder now days to convince someone that these are important parts of the equation. I think the overall rates that pros can charge will steadily move down, simply because there will be more people who actually can do a credible job of shooting a wedding because the learning curve is so much less with digital and there are 101 books that give all the details of shooting weddings as well as seminars, DVDs, etc. In fact right now in Barnes and Nobel they are selling a complete course on wedding photography.
Cheers,
rfs
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