I adore my photographer friends.  The amount of artistic talent, stamina and imagination it takes in their profession is truly admirable.  It is because of their camera knowledge and skill that my work is able to shine and I appreciate each and every one that works with me and shares pictures from events that we have worked together.

I also read several photography blogs on a somewhat regular basis.  While I personally have no desire to be a photographer, I like to see their perspective of the wedding industry and always take note on how I can better myself as well.  It is not uncommon for me though, as I’m skimming through their blogs to come across a post or comment about their work being either credited improperly or someone else using their work as their own.  In addition, with the increasing popularity of Instagram (which is probably my very favorite social media), I often see rants about how important it is to credit their pictures on this platform as well.

While I feel that they have every right to get into a tizzy over this issue, I can’t help but want to cry out and share my side of the story.  What about the other artist?  Shouldn’t they be credited properly too?  After all, it’s their bouquet in the picture, their dress, their makeup, their hairstyle or calligraphy… and the list can really go on and on.

I do everything I can to properly credit people’s work.  I get a little upset when I see a picture of a really lovely floral arrangement that I’ve created captioned with only a photographer credit – which happened again just this morning as I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram.  And I personally struggle with calling the person out on it or not, especially when the caption on the photos is about how lovely the bouquet is.  Why is the photographer always the main focus?  Is it because their voice is so much stronger or is it something else.

So where do we draw the line?   Should every picture we see on this grand old web be captioned with 20 different vendor credits?  Or do we just pick the main one and people can dig for more? Why do I see so many photographer’s wedding posts stating the location of the wedding, but nothing else?  I want to know who catered it, who her dress is by and who created that fabulous cake.  This is our portfolio, our “word of mouth” marketing and how we make ourselves known throughout this world wide web.  Shouldn’t we all give credit where credit is due?

Pictured above:  me — fixing her veil and making sure her hair is perfect so Heather Cisler Photography has something gorgeous to photograph 🙂

 

 

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