Every wedding has a budget no matter how big or small.  When money is tight we suggest making a list of everything you want in your wedding (wedding dress, cake, photography, etc.)  Then, put them in the order of most important to least important. Now you know the best place to put your money. As you get further down the list you know you can cut costs without hurting your wedding.  If photography is one of the top few then it would probably be worth taking money from a lower category to pay for it. Many times I find that brides will skimp on their photography just because they know someone who can do it and they will do it for cheap even though the photography is really important to them.

All of our wedding packages includes digital rights to your images.  However, you want to really ask yourself why this is important to you.  When people are asking about a disc there are a few things they might want it for: 1. They want it as an archive of the images from their wedding  2. They want to use it to share the images with other people on social media 3. They want to make prints from the files. Here are some things to keep in mind.

1. The digital files are not your best archive of your images.  The US Library of Congress (whose job it is to keep records) claims that digital files are only safe for 5 years, we believe the average life of a digital file to be about 10 years.  Files get lost, hard drives go bad, cloud services go out of business...there are a lot of reasons why digital files don't store well. The best way to preserve your wedding images is in a professional wedding album.

2. Sharing your images is actually the best thing that can be done with your digital files.  They are easy to put on your phone and social media and many people can enjoy them no matter where they are.

3. Printing is a hard thing to explain.  There are several ways your prints can be produced and depending on the method they will either last less than a year and up to 200 years.  Home based printers will last the least amount of time - usually 1 to 5 years. Store based printers such as Walmart and Sam's Club are usually dye-sublimation printers and they are rated at 5 to 8 years.  Professional Silver based printing is rated at 14 to 40 years and Giclee printing is rated at 10 to 200 years (depending on the materials used). At Masterpiece Images we use high quality, in house giclee printing.  Our prints are rated to last an average of 120 years. So, with printing, you get what you pay for. With images as important as your wedding it is worth the extra price to make them last a long time.

The amount of coverage or hours a photographer includes in their packages can be confusing to understand.  I have seen photographers who say they include unlimited hours but then charge more after 8 pm. We categorize our packages based on the hours of coverage and here is the explanation of what those mean.

• 2 hour package - use this package if you only want the ceremony or the temple part of your wedding covered.  It is a good alternative to having the whole day if budget is an issue.
• 3 hour package - This package covers the temple/ceremony and formal pictures before the reception.  This package is best if you do not have a lot of things planned for the reception you want photographed.  It gets all the most important images but does not cover the activities of the reception like the cake cut, flower toss, etc.
• 4 hour package - Use this package if you are having a typical temple/ceremony and reception.  This would cover the full day of activities unless you are planning an unusually long reception and then additional hours can be purchased if needed.
• Unlimited package - This package would only be necessary if the wedding consists of a full day of activities such as the bridesmaids at the hair salon or the groomsmen at the golf course doing additional wedding activities.  Talk to us if you think you might need this package and we can let you know.

We have 3 photographers, Ryan, Jason and Kami.  All of them do a great job. If you have a preference who you would like to use you can definitely request it.  Once you have began to work with one of our photographers you will always work with that photographer. We feel the relationship between the photographer and the bride and groom is important and we will not switch that relationship part of the way through.

Our costs are pretty up front and simple.  When we talk with the bride and groom we discuss all potential issues but here are a list of those.  On the wedding day our included travel area is between Salt Lake City and Logan.  For Bridals and Engagements it is the greater Ogden area.  If we are going beyond that but within the Wasatch front we charge a minimal fee of $10/hr of travel.  We would discuss this before any charges are incurred, however.  For destination weddings where long distance travel is required, we add on the cost of travel, hotel and transportation while there.  As far as packages we offer the package, printing services and albums.  All of which are able to be decided at the appropriate time.

We use all professional camera equipment.  We use the equipment that is necessary for the sessions.  Many photographers today only use the camera and photoshop.  We also use light measurement tools for perfect exposure, additional lighting equipment when it is needed and any other accessories, filters and stabilization equipment needed to get the best images possible. 

Our goal is to not need to use a lot of photoshop to make the image look good.  Our photographers are trained to get good images in the camera and only use photoshop to help enhance the image and bring out the artistic intent of the image, not to take a bad image and try to make it look good.

We are obsessive is keeping your images secure.  As a rule we never delete or get rid of anyone's images.  However, due to the temporary nature of digital photography we can not claim to maintain a permanent archive of your images.  We do however keep multiple copies of your images to increase the chance that we will have them.

1. We keep all of the images we do for you in every format we create.
2. We keep those images on 2 redundant hard drives as we are working on those images and then put them on an archive drive when we are finished.
3. We also use an industry standard cloud backup service.  That makes it possible for us to maintain an archive here in our studio as well as off location in case of fire or other disaster.

We want your great grand kids to enjoy the images we do for you.  So, we print all of our images in house with an archival system that is rated to last 120 years.  Printing photos is a very misunderstood thing.  All prints are not created equal.  There are typically 4 methods to print you images: 1. home inkjet printer 2. dye sublimation printer (usually found at most stores) 3. off set printer (used for large print runs, usually 1000 pieces or more) 4. giclee printer (this method is highly dependent on the quality of materials used.

1. home inkjet - lasts usually 1 to 5 years
2. Dye sublimation - lasts usually 5 to 8 years
3. Off Set printer - This last a long time but is very low quality comparably
4. Giclee printer - lasts usually 5 to 200 years depending on the quality of materials used

We use the highest quality materials as well as mount everything 8x10 and larger and we apply 3 coats of a UV inhibitor to keep the sun's harmful rays from prematurely aging your images.  Also, all of our prints are 100% guaranteed that if anything happens to them we will replace them at no charge.

In our opinion the wedding album in the pinnacle of the wedding photography experience.  We do not require brides and grooms buy and album but we do highly recommend it.  The album is the cheapest way to archive your favorite images from the wedding.  We have professional designers that take your images and turn them in to a photo story book.  We then use the highest quality book binders to create a beautiful wedding album that will last generations.  

If you talk to most photographers they will talk about "edited" images.  Usually they are talking about what instagram style filter they are putting on the image.  When we talk about "editing" images we are talking about two kinds of things.  The first thing we do is we do color and density correction on all of the images.  Since we have a big push on making great images in the camera, all of the images look great after this step.  Then when someone chooses to print and image we go beyond that and retouch the image.  This is where we go in and whiten teeth, enhance eyes, take out blemishes, smooth out skin tones and do nips and tucks as needed.  This is a polishing of an otherwise great image.  So, you could argue based on industry standards that all of our images are edited and the printed images and polished with our retouch technique.

The best way to describe our style is we adjust our style to meet your style.  Having been professionally photographing for over 20 years we have studies several photographic styles and know how to do all of them well.  We use the style that best tells your story.  A large part of our photography is getting to know who you are and showing who you are.  Our goal is we want your great great grand kids to know who you are because they see your personality in the pictures we take.

Our goal is to treat everyone like they are family.  We like to joke around and have fun.  Many times the brides will tell me that the groom does not want to have his picture taken and afterwards the groom talks about how much fun he had.  We love what we do and we love the people we work with.