Wedding Photography for $5.00

[Car2n]

I'm putting together a surprize 50th wedding anny for my parents. I snooped through their house looking for the cake topper they used. Didn't find the topper but I did find their wedding album and some other wedding photos. There was an envelope with some photos in it.
Written on the envelope:

Taking of Wedding including proofs $5.00
8" x 10" enlargments 50 cents each
5" x 7" enlargments 35 cents each
8" x 10" mounts 45 cents each
5" x 7" mounts 35 cents each
Album (holds 12 pictures) $8.00


These photos were professionally done - year 1960


.

Originally Posted by Car2n

I'm putting together a surprize 50th wedding anny for my parents. I snooped through their house looking for the cake topper they used. Didn't find the topper but I did find their wedding album and some other wedding photos. There was an envelope with some photos in it.
Written on the envelope:

Taking of Wedding including proofs $5.00
8" x 10" enlargments 50 cents each
5" x 7" enlargments 35 cents each
8" x 10" mounts 45 cents each
5" x 7" mounts 35 cents each
Album (holds 12 pictures) $8.00


These photos were professionally done - year 1960


.

Ask Jim what those are worth now... I think he graduated HS in '55

[Car2n]

I found a Historical Currency Conversions website.

5 dollars in 1960 had the same buying power as 36.48 current dollars.
8 dollars in 1960 had the same buying power as 58.36 current dollars.
.5 dollars in 1960 had the same buying power as 3.65 current dollars.

The photographer worked for pretty cheap at an equivilent of 36 bucks at todays rate. He must of went to the church hall and took a bunch of indoor formals. No reception shots or anything of the sort. By the looks of the photos he may have been there for an hour or so at the most. At todays rates the album would sell for 58 bucks and a 8x10 for $3.65
Actually, at $58 for an empty album it looks to be fairly inline with what you would pay for the same type of thing today.

[Swisstony10]

That's what wedding photographers did until not terribly long ago. Certainly in the 1970s, the photographer would turn up to get the bride arriving in the wedding car, he'd hang around and do the formal groups, and then he'd be off to his next wedding. There weren't as many wedding photographers around back then (you didn't have hordes of Weekend Warriors with decent digital SLRs, for a start) - and many pro wedding photographers would do three or four (or more) weddings in a day, if they planned their time properly.

My sister got married in the mid 1990s, and even then the photographer had another wedding to go to afterwards. Nowadays it's simply expected that when you hire a wedding photographer, you have them for the whole day, and so naturally pro wedding photogs charge accordingly.

Also, don't forget that back then the only way for ordinary people to get reprints of their wedding pictures was to go back to the photographer, so they didn't have to factor into their pricing the undeniable fact that no matter what you put on your contract, many of your customers WILL scan and reprint at least some of their wedding pictures themselves (and unless you're going to go round to their house, their relatives' houses, and their friends' houses every week to check that all their prints are official and licensed, it's a tough one to enforce).

I do love historical documents like that though. I love it when my dad says things like "...So Father got a mortgage for £140 and they bought a house...."

Russ.

pfft...and you guys got on my case for shooting a wedding last weekend for $100

[Jim Bryant]

Originally Posted by maxharvard

Ask Jim what those are worth now... I think he graduated HS in '55

Ha!!!! I graduated in 1970. Still those prices were probably the going rate at that time. Sounds like the prices of some here today.

[Car2n]

I'll be setting up an onsite studio to take portraits and group shots at the anniversary party.
I'm gonna charge the parents 5 bucks. Take That!

[jmb667]

Originally Posted by Photoboothguy

pfft...and you guys got on my case for shooting a wedding last weekend for $100

Ha! I'm doing one tomorrow for a friend for that amount.

Now I'm wondering how much my parents paid now for theirs in 1971...I'll have to ask them, see if they remember. I know my wife and I paid several hundred (don't remember the exact figure) in 1995 for on-location pictures a couple weeks before our wedding. Didn't get to keep our negatives either, but I guess that's standard practice (or was/is with film?).