Just in the past 6 months, Eric & I (& little Miss Elizabeth Leah!) have had the chance to have two photography sessions. I’m always asked by people “who our photographer is” & how we find the photographers that we do. I thought I’d write out the 3 things I consider when choosing my own photographer & that maybe this will help you as well in the future!

I LIKE THEIR STYLE
I have several photographers that I follow their work & am inspired by. (You can see who they are HERE.) Any photographer that I want to have photograph my family & I needs to be someone that emulates the look & feel that I admire & love.

I LIKE THEM AS A PERSON
As a photographer myself, I want to work with someone that is professional yet fun. Delivers what he/she says they’re going to & in a timely manner. Someone who communicates to us before the session & during makes everything go smooth & is helpful. I also want to work with someone that shares the same values as me & doesn’t just mirror everything they see on Pinterest. I want someone who is inspired by my family & does things to get us to interact & be ourselves & get those genuine moments. I can’t take a picture of Eric & I goofing off together or of the THREE of us looking at the camera but I sure am going to search for a photographer who can!

(Photo by the amazing, AMAZING Amy Paulson. You can see our entire maternity session on her blog HERE.)

I BELIEVE THEY’RE WORTH IT
Let’s be honest, if I was comparing two different photographers & they were both the exact same in every way, the one thing that would decide who I went with is the money. Just being honest! BUT I totally believe in paying a workman what they deserve! When we have needed a photographer for different times in our life we have gone with yes, the one who fit in our budget but also fit our style & caught our family on camera in a special way & if that meant paying a little more we did it anyway. Because friends, finding a photographer who catches the way your husband looks at you, makes your kids giggle & makes your family look forward to having family pictures done is a photographer you don’t want to want to loose!!!

Photograph taken by my friend Megan Decker. I posted our session on my blog HERE.

I want a photographer that see’s into my family what I see but can’t capture because I’m there in the moment myself! We had Amy Paulson do our maternity session & my friend Megan Decker (who has actually retired from photography & now only does it for friends & family) capture Elizabeth’s newborn session. BOTH experiences were different & yet the same-the same in that they were both talented women who shared they CARED about my family. They were different in of course in that they had different personalities & thus different ways of capturing us. But they still had the three things that I wanted in a photographer- amazing style, wonderful to work with & were well worth their price. In each time we’ve needed someone else (other then Eric & I & our tripod or my sister!) we’ve applied these 3 principles & never been sorry!

How about you? What’s important to you in finding a photographer?