FAQ

Pricing is a hugely important and complex topic. Every couple is unique, with different wants and needs.

Because of that, we can't publish a one-size-fits-all "menu" of pricing, because it just isn't the right fit for everyone.

That being said, we are always happy to send you our current pricing and booking information via our inquiry form.

This short form just helps us figure out what you're interested in, so we can customize everything to your needs. This also lets us avoid using bots or automated replies, so we can actually reply to you personally, and start a dialogue about the info you submit on your form.

We usually reply to inquiries within 1-2 hours, unless we're on a shoot or traveling.

If you have a custom or urgent request for us, feel free to use the chat to reach out instead.

7 or 8, usually.

Just kidding. It largely depends on how much shoot time there is for your booking, but in general we like to give our couples a ball park of around 50-100 final images per hour of coverage. For our films, we generally deliver around 1.5 minutes of runtime per hour of coverage.

For example, a traditional 8-hour wedding day will likely have 400-800 delivered images, or around 12 minutes of film runtime.

Keep in mind this number is much lower for engagements or portrait-style shoots.

That may sound like a large range, but we're confident we'll be delivering more than you'll know what to do with (but not enough to overwhelm you). It'll be like Little Red Riding Hood's porridge. Or was it her bed? Or both? Or didn't everything belong to the bears, and she was breaking and entering the whole time? Super weird story. I'm not even sure the analogy works honestly. Basically, it's happy medium.

To put it into perspective- we cull our sets down to roughly 10% of the total number of captured images from the day. "Culling" is the process of going through the images one by one and choosing which ones make the cut and which ones don't. We've found ~10% to the be natural sweet spot for giving full representation of the shoot while also not overwhelming the client with too many lookalikes.

You must be thinking, "holy heck, you guys must be terrible at your job if only 10% of your shots are worth keeping."

Well, yes and no, and thanks for noticing. You could say we're "cautious" shooters. We'd much rather "have and not need" than "need and not have." Especially when it comes to once-in-a-lifetime moments like weddings where you don't get a reshoot if something goes wrong. Like if we miss focus (we use medium format manual focus cameras), or if someone blinks, or if your Uncle Jerry's impossibly shiny, bald-ass head is sticking out behind you and it takes a couple frames to notice and reframe him out of the shot. Better safe than sorry.

To use the same example from before, an 8-hour wedding day will likely have 4000-8000 total images captured by the time we pack up and say our goodbyes. That's a lot of culling.

And did we mention we gag at the thought of batch editing or using presets? We make sure to touch every single image one by one before your gallery ships.

So yeah, that's a lot of editing time too. But hey, that's why we do what we do. We have a passion for it, and we take pride in how special the results are when we put in the time and do things the old-fashioned way. There's another nursery rhyme analogy in the back of my mind but I can't think of it right now. Shit.

We're proud to deliver every project within 18 months of the shoot day.

That's a joke.

It depends on the season, but we ALWAYS guarantee within 10 weeks from the shoot day. And even though this is our promised time frame, we usually get things out closer to the 1 month mark.

And these estimates are cut in half for engagements or portrait-style shoots.

In general, we want things done quickly, but we want them done right too, so we may take an extra week to do another quality pass on a wedding if we feel it could benefit from it.

You're in good hands, like with State Farm. Wait, All State. The one with the red logo. I guess they're both red. And like, the EXACT same shade of red too, that's weird. The one with commercials with the dude from Heat, with the really cool low voice.

For shoots in Reno, no.

For everywhere else- it depends.

In general- yes, we have to charge travel fees to keep the lights on. BUT, that's not to say we aren't flexible.

Our travel fees are always a 1:1 "expense passthrough" of the required travel expenses (hotel, gas, food, etc). It's not an arbitrary price hike to secretly inflate your package price.

We really just love what we do and want to do it anywhere you are. So we're happy to charge the bare minimum to make it happen.

Whether that means working out a payment plan, creating a custom package for you, or possibly even calling in favors from friends or family when traveling to cut down on hotel costs, we're always open to clever planning.

Long story short- if you're having concerns about budget, please just let us know. We'd rather have a conversation about it than miss the chance to make some magic together.

Wow, weirdly personal question.

Yes, we carry a business owner's policy, as required by most CA venues for general liability and other boring bullshit like that.

We think stuff like insurance is really gross and we'd rather not talk about it anymore.

Yes, and we ask 3 forms of identification (driver's license, social security card, and birth certificate preferred, no photo copies please).

Okay, no more jokes below this dotted line.

______________________________

And speaking of dotted lines...

(that's a pun, not a joke)

We do use contracts for anything larger than a portrait-style shoot.

They're very simple, and we really only use them for the sake of everyone's peace of mind. Since weddings can require a lot of planning and structure, there needs to be a strong sense of trust that all the who's, what's, and where's are understood by both parties. We feel contracts help with that massively.

But again, we keep them very simple, and we are NOT the DMV. You will NOT need to present 3 forms of ID.

Yes. How else would we convince people we know what we're doing?

Right now we're using:

• Fujifilm GFX 50Sii's with Sigma Art prime lenses for our stills

• RED Komodo X and Ronin 4D with Dulens APO Mini Primes for our films

If for some sad reason you're a gear nerd like me (I won't pull Alli into this), don't hesitate to reach out if you want to chat about this stuff.

It's a deep, dark rabbit hole being in love with gear, and it gets lonely down here.

You can chat or email us any time.

Seriously don't be shy, it's not a big deal. I'm available most weekdays before 5, and most weekends.

You can call or text too.

Seriously no biggie!!

I'm on Instagram: @chrismstanton.dp.

Please.

Never.

We don't use any tools or services that offer shortcuts in exchange for quality.

Mainly because we're insufferable, self-indulgent quality snobs, but we'll address that in another section.

Paying clients assume (rightfully so) that their photos are being created from start to finish by the photographer they hire. If this isn't true, we believe it's the photographer's obligation to communicate this openly to their clients.

Unfortunately, that's not usually how it goes.

If you're not familiar with these terms:

• Batch Editing: Another term for "copy/paste" editing, meaning the photographer does one edit, then copies those settings and pastes them on the rest of the set. We've heard horror stories of some photographers doing this for entire wedding sets. Ugh.

• Outsourced Editing: Pretty self-explanatory, but this is where a photographer will hire a third party to do their editing for them. Not the end of the world if they pick a talented third party, but that's not usually the case. Also, if a photographer is doing this and not being transparent about it...that's no bueno.

• AI Editing: The world of AI is changing rapidly, and this definition will probably need to be updated every year, if not every month. But for now, this is essentially a combination of the first 2 methods, where a photographer will use AI software to make creative decisions for them (sometimes by using other photographers' work without their consent), and automating these processes in a way that removes the need for a photographer to use their own time, effort, or artistic judgment when editing your images. Yick.

Okay, here comes the rant. We think these kinds of "automated" approaches to editing are deceptive, lazy, and disappointing.

In an industry that's already oversaturated, it doesn't make sense to us why anyone lucky enough to have paying clients would jeopardize their integrity and reputation by sidestepping the very thing they worked hard to be able to do for a living- make art.

All that being said- these things aren't the end of the world. If you find out your photographer does some (or all) of these things, it doesn't mean you've been scammed. But, depending on your expectations and that photographer's promises, it may affect your sense of value for that photographer and their work. We think these things deserve to be communicated transparently between photographers and their clients (so don't be afraid to ask if you're deciding between multiple options!), because they directly affect the quality and dollar value of the work.

We're all for innovation and working "smarter, not harder," but we draw the line when it affects the integrity of the work you do. Keep it simple. Keep it classic.

We thrive on making ourselves available 24/7 (I mean, let's be real we do sleep, but basically 24/7).

We don't really have any preferred method of contact, so please feel free to use whichever suits you best!

We're pretty quick with all methods, but we'll list them in order of "quickness" below:

1. Website Chat / Texting

   This will always be the quickest and most surefire way to squeeze an answer out of us. Just click the chat bubble below or go here and you'll see options for messaging or texting us. Just don't abuse it or we'll tell yer mum.

2. Inquiry

   If you're considering booking with us, submitting an inquiry is always the best way to get more information. The info on your inquiry form helps us answer most of the questions you're likely to have for us. And even if it doesn't, at least we'll have all your private info to sell to third parties for beer money. (This is a joke, we never do this. Ever. Seriously.)

3. E-mail

   Feel free to send us an e-mail to booking@firestepweddings.com any time. E-mail might feel like an uninspired blast from the past, but aren't the 90's having a resurgence right now?

4. Social Media Messengers

   We like talking through Instagram, Facebook, etc, but it's a lot easier for your message to go unnoticed since these apps like to drop updates and COMPLETELY change their interface on the regular. Like that update where Instagram added like 3 different inboxes without ever explaining how to find them, and then you have sad, neglected people sitting in one of them, waiting for a reply for weeks... So yeah, this is our least-recommended method for sure.

Oh yeah.