About Our Wedding Services

Hi, I’m David Schloss, principal photographer and owner of Hudson Wedding Photography (an LGBT friendly company), which is the official name for the part of my business that covers wedding photography.

Weddings are precious, beautiful days and I’d like to help make yours one that you’ll be able to look back upon for the rest of your life with happiness and warmth.

These days the term “wedding” is loaded with meaning. Please know that when I say wedding, I’m referring to any ceremony where two people come together and pledge to intertwine their lives. It doesn’t matter if it’s a service in a church, temple, synagogue or mosque; a civil ceremony performed at town hall (or on a ship!) or if it’s in a back yard with cupcakes instead of a wedding cake.

Gone (thankfully) are the days of wedding photos that consist simply of awkwardly-posed and uncomfortable-looking formal portraits. Today’s wedding photography is dynamic, and photojournalistic in style. Today’s best photographers document your wedding with the care and attention we use when documenting our own life’s events.

I love weddings. I love photographing them. I love the joy that they engender. I love watching people exchange vows, dance, smile and (often) cry with happiness. And I love the look on their faces when I show them photos from their wedding.

Each and every wedding is unique, special and wonderful and a good photographer captures the uniqueness of the event and makes the difference between one that’s relived with fondness and one that fades into memory.

What I Provide

Here’s a secret—many wedding photographers make the majority of their money selling you prints and albums. They make you call them if you want copies of your images because they know that after the wedding you’re going to want more prints than you think you will before the wedding.

That’s silly. Your wedding is your day. You don’t pay the florist to make your bouquets and then pay them more if someone smells the flowers.

When I photograph your wedding you get full sized high-res JPEGs from your day, as well as the orignal RAW files from the camera. (A RAW file is simply the term for the un-altered photo that comes from the camera and its what many photographers hang onto for future income from you.)

When I’m done editing your images you’ll be able to print them yourself, email them to people or order cards from online or real-world photo labs.

Of course, I also make them available online so that guests have an easy way to order them (I make a bit of revenue on each print sold, but we don’t require this or pressure guests) and I offer full retouching services, prints, framing high-end books and more. But again, none of those services are required to get your photos.

During your wedding I’ll be on hand the entire day—I never double-book clients on the same day. I bring an assistant (often referred to as a “second shooter” because they’re also photographing during the event) and thats included in the price. We start working whenever you start getting ready and we leave when the guests are gone. While we photograph during the reception, you won’t have to worry about guests being interrupted during their salad course to put on a smile while they worry if they have lettuce in their teeth. As a trained journalist I’ll document your wedding without driving your guests crazy.

And if you’re up for it I’ll create a photo booth for your guests—we bring lights and backdrop and give guests a remote control trigger for the camera. There’s something about the ability to take a self portrait that makes people loosen up at a wedding. It’s a lot of fun and you can see samples in the Wedding portfolio section.

To find out more about me and my photographic background, view the Bio & Clients section and to ask me a question about your wedding please use the contact page or send email todavid@hartplace.com.

Pricing

We have a wide range of service, with prices varying depending on the size and length of event, number of guests, printing and photo book needs, etc. Wedding pricing generally begins at $3000, the average medium-to-large all-day wedding is typically $5000.

To get an exact quote, please fill out this contact form at the end of this page.

More About David

My complete bio is available here on the about page and you can see some of my thoughts on photography and what I’m up to on my blog page.

In short—I’ve been an editorial and commercial photographer for nearly twenty years, have written four books on photography, spent two years travelling the country teaching photographic workflow and was an editor at Photo District News magazine for five years.

The local-services website Thumbtack.com conducts interviews with service providers so clients can find out more about them. Here are my answers to the survey questions. Want to find out more about me? Fill out the contact form (below the interview) and let’s set up a time to talk.

What is your greatest strength?

I truly enjoy chaos and love to pull a job together while something’s spinning around me—maybe I was a police officer in a former life? Something goes wrong in every wedding—lots of little things really—but they’re always able to be solved with a calm head. A photographer is around the couple more than anyone else, even the wedding planner, and has to help fix the problems. I’ve taken cell phones from the bride and used them to track down the groom, flowers and band. I’ve used duct tape to fix a tuxedo cuff. And I’ve helped the couple take deep breaths, make sure they get fed between key parts of the ceremony and have a good time, even when it seems like everything is falling down.

How did you decide to get in your line of work?

I was really born into photography, though I tried to shy away from it until college. My father was a professional studio shooter and my mother was a freelance writer and photographer. I grew up in a house where my dad had his studio—the smell of darkroom chemicals is part of my childhood. I had a string of very good cameras growing up (usually hand-me down cameras from my dad’s studio) but didn’t really fall in love with photography until college, where I was working on the school newspaper. As both a writer and photographer I gravitated to photojournalism, and worked both as the Photo Editor and Editor-in-Cheif on the paper. After college I went to School of Visual Arts where I studied graphic design, but found myself increasingly solving problems photographically. That formed my career as a writer and photographer.

Do you have a favorite story from your work?

I have a favorite story from *each* of my jobs—there’s always something that stands out. In the most recent wedding I photographed I had noticed that the mother of the bride (who was divorced for decades from the father of the bride, and now is in a long-term same-sex relationship, the only same-sex couple at the wedding) had been seeming a bit nervous before the ceremony, and that carried over to the reception. She was shying away from the family pictures a bit, and wasn’t interacting with many guests. I pulled her and her partner aside to a well-let section of the reception hall and spent about five minutes photographing them, really concentrating on taking great shots and showing them the results in the camera’s LCD screen. They were so cute and so loving and they started to hug each other in the shots. After that they both walked to the dance floor and spent the rest of the night partying and smiling. That’s worth more to me than the photos I took of them.

Do you do any sort of continuing education to stay up on the latest developments in your field?

I’ve spent the better part of two decades improving my education by attending trade shows and seminars, reading theory and practice books and magazines, and by actively researching trends for the photography writing and educating I provide.

What important information should buyers have thought through before seeking you out?

Try to have a picture of the kinds of images you’d like to have represent your wedding. It’s great to look in wedding magazines and websites and have examples you love, just like you’d bring samples of a haircut to the stylist. You should also decide the price range you’re looking for and the services you’d like, to make sure the photographer can handle everything you need. (If you want to get a framed portrait for over your wall, it’s helpful to know the photographer can do that.)

What do you like most about your job?

I love the moment when I give a client their photographs and see the looks on their faces. That’s what I love most about the actual process of my job. I think what I love most about photographing weddings is that I get to make a tangible representation of the celebration of the day. The photographs *become* people’s memory over time, just like hearing a song can make you remember something from your childhood.

Why does your work stand out from others who do what you do?

One of my other passions is cooking. While I’m not a professional chef, I’m in love with cooking and I cook for friends and family as much as I can. It’s immediately clear when a meal is cooked with love. You can tell when a chef puts their heart into what they’re cooking just as you can tell when something’s put together in a hurry and lacks any passion. You can find short order cooks and gourmet cooks that both cook with love, and their food is wonderful. I think this is true about photographers. Photography is an art and the photographer really needs to love what they’re doing to capture the moment. If you care about your subject, the photos will show that. I’m as passionate about photography as I am about cooking. I want my photographs to show my love of the subjects as much as I want them to show the subject’s love for each other.

What questions should a consumer ask to hire the right service professional?

It’s really important that a photographer and their customer “click.” There are different kinds of photographers and there are different kinds of clients. Some people like a more “journalistic” style, which is the current trend in wedding photography—the photographer embeds themselves in the process the way a war photographer does. You get rich, vibrant images from this school of photography. Others simply capture portraits of the couple and their families in a structured system more akin to a studio portrait shot. Ask the photographer how they describe their style. Find out what *other* things they photograph. (It’s not bad if they only shoot weddings, but having more experience and depth does help.) Ask the photographer to show you the photos they’ve taken that are their favorites. Ask the photographer to tell you what they don’t like to shoot. (Everyone has things they hate photographing, finding out what someone doesn’t like to photograph is important.) Ask the photographer how they usually get clients. Word of mouth is the best primary method as it shows that wedding clients are recommending the photographer.

If you were a customer, what do you wish you knew about your trade? Any inside secrets to share?

Wedding photographers either make their money in volume of sales or in margin—just like any other business. A photographer that’s far below the average cost in your area is either new to the field (which isn’t necessarily bad) or working by booking as many weddings as they can. Which means that they might have more than one wedding booked on a single day. I’ve already mentioned the fact that wedding photographers often charge for the books/prints/copies and give lower up-front costs, so make sure you check what you’re getting from the photographer.

What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

Many photographers in the wedding market make their money off of prints and albums. That’s certainly a valid business model, but it means that the price you pay up front for the wedding might not be the final amount you pay. Be sure to find out if you get access to your photos after the wedding (as full-size images and RAW files) and if you’re required to purchase reprints, books, etc. from the photographer. If so, try to find out their rates, and ask them their average sales post-wedding.