Frequently Asked Questions

Proposals to Weddings . . . And Everything In Between

Primarily that is weddings, engagements, proposals, boudoir, and post wedding sessions.  As much as we love dogs and families we would rather photograph your dog on the engagement shoot, your dog at the wedding, and your family in the moment on your wedding day!

Investments with Joe and Robin begin at:

$2000 – 5000 for Wedding Photography

$350 – 950 for Proposal, Engagement, and Boudoir Photography

Please go to our Contact page and fill out a request for information to get full pricing.

The information on that page will help us know what your looking for in photography, lets us check if we are available, will help us begin the process in seeing if we are a good fit for each other, and lets us send you our full pricing.  We will respond within 24 hours so if you haven’t heard back check your spam / junk email for a reply to ‘Joe and Robin Photography Inquiry’.

1. Reach out to us from our Contact page
2. Talk to us and get any questions you have answered.  We can talk via phone, FaceTime, or Skype.
3. Decide if you want us.  If we are still available we will send over 4 and 5.
4. Review and sign the online contract we will populate
5. Provide a deposit using one of the accepted payment methods.  We will send over an online invoice so you can pay by card.  Deposits for weddings are $1000.  For things like Proposals and Engagement sessions it will vary based on the package and how far out it is from the date.  If you have a balance, payments can be made at your convenience or in full when due.  For weddings balances are due two weeks prior to the wedding.

Our Packages Align to What Most Couples Want

We leave out the fluff and seek to keep things simple.  We do not charge extra for the things required to get you images such as image rights or travel.  Our packages differ based on the different types of weddings.  Not everyone wants two photographers, an engagement session, or a wedding album so we do not require you to get them.

Here are the key things we have in Wedding Packages:
Plenty of Time
Joe + Robin
Digital Images with Print Rights
Engagement Session
Variety of Leather Albums
Travel Costs Covered

Go to the Contact page to request more information on our packages.

The Online Gallery Provides the Core Standard Services Couples Want:

1. Image Download in full size and web size formats.  This allows for faster image delivery.
2. Image Backup online for 10 years by the gallery service provider.
3. Sharing with friends and family for download and printing
4. Printing on Canvas or Paper at near cost discounted rates through a vendor who will print it with the right coloring and exposure.
5. Self designed Album in square shape with linen or leather covers at the cost of the materials.

Self Service at cost levels is the idea behind what we offer with the online gallery.  The idea of these additional features is that you can get professional vendor prints, photobooks, and albums without the overhead costs of going through your photographer and getting something custom.  If you want custom we can certainly offer that and share how we can do custom prints through our Store on Metal, Wood, or Acrylic and how we can do Custom Designed High End Albums.

What are the steps to get you your custom album?

1. 1. We will enable an album design feature in the online gallery allowing you to select your favorite images.  You decide on the size and style.  We have a number of samples and can provide recommendations, show swatches, and recommend against using a pumpkin spice / electric lime album leather combination.
   2. We design the album based on your favorite images.  We include as many of your favorite images as possible.
   3. You review the album design online, make change notes, submit changes for updates.
   4. We update based on your comments and what will look best for the album.
   5. You approve and we submit for printing.

How long does this take?  

We would love to get them to you in a few weeks but it depends on how quickly you get us your favorite images and approve the design. We have seen some people with other photographers take a year to get an album due to their clients life getting busy. We want to enable you to have something to enjoy shortly after marriage.

For the Researchers:

We hold $6000-8000 in our hand and use $1000-4000 in lighting equipment with that camera when we shoot.  We use two D850, one D810, and two D800 Nikon full frame cameras, 11 pro lenses (F/1.4 for primes,  F/2.8 for zoom, some specialty), 2 high power stobe flashes with 5 flash heads, 4 on camera flashes, 6 battery packs, 5 video lights, 2 tungsten constant lights, radio remote triggers for flashes and remote firing of cameras, light stands and soft boxes.  Implications for you:  Our cameras are 1.5-2x the resolution of most photographers cameras commonly used and we employ a same quality redundancy of our equipment. 

For Visual Learners:

Get a better glimpse of what are shooting look at our behind the scenes gallery on the Photography page.  If you have been to many weddings you would likely find we do things a little different.  We live in a beautiful state so do things to capture the beauty of the mountains and believe the photos of not just you but also your guests will help you relive the day.  For that reason we need the best equipment and lenses for whatever the day holds.

YES.  However, if one of us were to become deathly ill on your wedding day and cannot be revived by Starbucks we have trained substitutes that can plug in and fill our shoes.  We believe it is very important to have two ‘primary’ shooters that understand our flow, lighting setup, equipment, and can balance our shooting style.  Likely this is assumed but for Boudoir you only have Robin available.

Simple Answer: We keep your images in 2-3 places.

More Technical Answer: All our cameras have dual memory cards for instant backup every time we take a picture. We have 896GB of storage in camera between our cameras so never take out a camera card. We always have a backup camera if not multiple backup cameras.  Once off site the images are uploaded to a computer and wirelessly backed up throughout the editing process.  We retain them on a set of 6 mirrored hard drives (RAID 10 configuration).  We will contractually keep images provided for 2 years in RAW format but will likely keep them longer.  Through the online gallery images are retained by the service provider for 10 years.

All our wedding packages include travel to all of Colorado at no additional charge.

For travel outside of Colorado and outside the country we charge the cost of travel.  We handle all travel arrangements and add them into the deposit amount so we can book the travel.  We do this because it is more simple but because we need to ensure our camera gear is not damaged on a flight and can fit in our car.  

For Proposals, Engagements, and Elopements (shoots less than 3 hours) we limit travel to an area depending on the package.  The idea is we do not want to drive 9 hours round trip to Aspen, CO or 12 hours round trip to Telluride, CO for something like a 30 minute shoot.  We are photographers that love hiking mountains.  If your shoot involves some backcountry Colorado travel we are all for it.   We are certainly open to hiking a 14er.  You can find our current list of those we have summited on 14ers.com.

Simple Answer: Yes – We Prepare to Shoot Your Wedding.

We think the reason for getting the question about ‘checking out a wedding venue’ is making sure your photographer is prepared.  Assessing preparation is subjective and differs in methods between different people.   Some people prepare for tests by studying weeks ahead, participating in study groups, some sleep on their books, and others cram the night before.  We believe effective methods are best illustrated by the output of the photography and reviews.   Often we see the assumption that the most effective preparation is going to a venue in person before the wedding day.  We are open to doing that but have found it added little value to how we shot the wedding day due to the differences in weddings we cannot control.  These differences include: weather, lighting, setup, rooms used, schedule, and guests.  Our perspective is that the key to the quality of photography is being able to adapt to variable changing conditions.   We go into this more in our Colorado Venue Experience planning blog.  What we find is effective for us is to review the many resources available to us online prior to the wedding and to help you develop a wedding itinerary with good flow that will allow things to occur in the allotted time.  On the day of the wedding we often arrive early and would then use that time to plan things out based on the conditions of the day.  This method is one that allows for an effective use of time balanced with a readiness for your wedding day.

Simple Answer: For 99% of Couples . . No.  Our “shot list” is everything you spent money on and everyone you invited.

More Details Answer: Most people come to us for candid and natural looking photos.  Working from a shot list will create the opposite with getting you traditional posed photos.  Additionally, it will increase the the time to take photos taking you away from your guests and will lessen the amount of photos cause time is spent working from a list.  The problem with 99% of shot lists is that most people will lump names together in tons of combinations when creating lists.  While this might make sense to you it is of no value to give it to someone like your photographer who has never met your family or friends. If you must (lose sleep at night kind of must) have this kind of thing we recommend giving this kind of thing to a pushy friend or family member who knows the people. We find though when you have a list for something like pictures of family that the flow is not as good than our standard flow.

You are in the 1% if you require things + things together in photos or people + things together in photos.  We will get photos of the things in the way that seems best but we may not put certain things together if it doesn’t look right.  We will likely not get a person and an object together by default unless that is how the day unfolded. We believe you hired us to do what we do as you see on our website but if you require us to do something different we are not opposed.

As Many as You Want Within the Time of the Shoot

If you book a 2 hour shoot that means we are with you doing whatever you want for 2 hours.  We can get in the car and go wherever you want in that time and you can change clothing as many times as you want.  The impact for you is that the more time spent traveling and the more time you change clothing the less time we have to shoot meaning the less photos you will get.  We are not sure where this idea came from in the photography industry of limiting the places or clothing choices but it poses a core business problem of having an unlimited duration to the photography shoot.  The problem for a business is this means you may run late to another shoot or not be able to take on additional work.  We believe in keeping things simple, balancing that being flexible to your vision, and meeting your preferred price.