Wedding Photography Market research and feasibility study

Wedding Photography Market research and feasibility study 

(Unit 5) Outcome 1, 2, 8

I have been carrying out some market research lately on the wedding photography business in and around my local area. I have visited many local wedding fayres to find out more information and to gather further knowledge of the local competition I would be facing should I decide to continue and set up a wedding photography business

I have deduced from my research that the town is absolutely saturated with wedding photographers in and around this local area. I have counted approximately 25-20 wedding photography businesses around this area, which can be found on web pages, yellow pages and local phone directories

There are various standards of photography offered by these photographers and prices range from some of the cheapest at £400 to the top end £1500-£2000

Most offer different tiers of service for eg: bronze, Silver and gold packages and many offer a bespoke service especially tailored to suit your needs

The competition is huge and you have to be a good photographer to stand out from the rest. There are a lot of “weekend warriors” out there who have bought a couple of 5D’s or equivalents and produce wedding photography that is far from inspiring. The budget market is out there and there are people willing to pay for a budget wedding on the cheap. You get what you pay for and they are obviously  not bothered about a high standard of quality. They will undoubtedly receive budget standard photography and budget standard photos

I have looked at the top end of the market around here and there are one or two excellent wedding photographers. Their prices are quite high well over the £1000 mark but they do provide high quality photography

Not only do you need to be a very good photographer to succeed in wedding photography but you also have to be a very good businessperson

Not only does your standard of photography have to be very good but your business skills are paramount. You need to be good at Marketing, Finances,

Management, admin and IT, etc. Looking at research statistics on the Internet, you need to be 30% photographer and 70% businessperson to be a successful wedding photographer

I’m confident I have a lot of these skills, and want to expand them further. I’m positive and focused and like the buzz of the competitiveness. This I believe pushes your standards even higher. It’s imperative to have an excellent website built up front that show cases only your very best work. Potential clients get their first impressions of how good a photographer you really are while looking at your first 6-10 images. Produce a sub standard website with sub standard images and you will ruin your photography reputation for ever

I am not ready yet to complete a good website at the moment and my images are not at a high enough standard to show off my skills . I will be working with different models over the summer period to improve my wedding photography, better my skills and give me more experience of the industry