Finding a Photographer, Part II

At the end of the last post, we had visited with one photographer who we loved, but I personally couldn't stomach the price. So we continued our internet search, hoping to find someone who satisfied both Thomas' photographic needs and my budget needs.

At some point, I came across the Wedding Photojournalists Association (WPJA) website, which I really recommend if you're trying to find a photographer. They have listings by state, and you can see if any of their photographs have won the contests that the WPJA sponsors. There were a ton listed for Atlanta, so I got to work weeding out the ones that didn't match our style or our budget. Somewhere towards the end of the list, there was a posting for Nam Nguyen. At the time, he was part of BTO Photography, a collaboration between him and his friend. Looking through the pictures, I totally fell in love. Everyone just looked so happy in his pictures! He had also won three awards from the WPJA, and Thomas approved of his pictures on the site, so we were all set to have a meeting. He just recently switched to being his own business, so you can see his most recent stuff here

Nam lives in a town that is a little bit south of Atlanta, but we met at a Starbucks that was literally 5 minutes away from my house. We had a great meeting, and he found out that Thomas and I take rhetorical questions very seriously.. when he asked for our life story, he definitely got more than I think he bargained for. Thomas and Nam had already been sending emails back and forth about photographer stuff, so we were able to work a lot of things into our contract that usually is not really allowed. At the end of the meeting, Thomas and I were both really excited, so the next day we emailed him and asked him to send us a contract. He sent us one with all of our additional requests in place**, and he became our photographer! At the time, we also set up our engagement shoot for the first weekend in July, and we should be getting our pictures back any day now.

You'll have to go on over to his website to see shots of his, they're all great! I'm really looking forward to showing y'all our engagement pictures.


**if I can, I want to do a contract review at some point in the future. I've usually heard how much people spend on their blogs, but not exactly what they got for their money, which I think led me to have some misconceptions about how much things would cost. I'd like to avoid that in this blog if I can.