Getting a Quote for Baby Photography

As you'll know from recent blog posts we had a family photoshoot over the Summer. The photos are stunning and I do love them. Don't get me wrong I really do. We've had wonderful feedback from friends and family who love them too but I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have had them done outdoors or at home. Doing things we normally do, or in an unusual or picturesque day-out setting rather than in simply a photo studio. So for that reason I was thrilled when bidvine got in touch to ask me to review their website. I knew I'd want to get quotes for a family photoshoot so that we can start planning the next one, perhaps for when Lottie is 1 year's old which is just around the corner after all - I know, time flies! Sniff!

With Bidvine you simply detail what service you require, enter your postcode and you're good to go. You're then given a short list of questions and they are really intuitive and tuned in to the service you are requesting quotes for, meaning the professional gets all of the info they would want and need to give you a really tailor made quote. It's a great service as it brings professionals in their field to your attention that you may not otherwise know of.

I chose to get a quote for "baby photography" but would have liked an option for family photography given we have six year old Aaron to consider too.

I received notification of the quotes on my phone via SMS and it was very easy to click through and read them. Although I had forgotten my password but was thrilled that not only did they have a forgotten option but also, that the email to reset it came immediately.

The two photographers who responded to my quote request gave the following detail:

1. £325. My package would include my travelling to you with my lighting set and child photography props. I generally find that it is better to spend a little time talking with the family before setting up so that the children begin to relax with a stranger in the house. Once set up, I would usually expect to have the photography completed within 1 hour, but will stay until you have covered everything you would like taken. This also includes a review of the images. You then have 2 options. I can provide you with all of the images in high resolution on a USB before leaving, or I can take them away with me and make any minor adjustments that you would like or apply special effects. 
2. £300. First of all congratulations for your baby! As you can see on our profile, we're a photographer couple, and we have an 8 month 'old' :) little girl. We're living in Bournemouth, and happy to travel to your home - as we have a car, we can easily get any location you prefer. We're free before the 20th Sept or after the 29th. For the price we've offered, we can give you 2,5-3 hours shooting on the selected location (home, and/or outdoor). Basically, we use natural light and we prefer to make lifestyle photos which mean you'll get relaxed, natural and carefree photos as a result. We can offer you at least 70 pictures on printed DVD, and in online gallery and in a photo book- within 2 weeks after the shooting. You can have a look at on our references: - They give the details of their website, blog and Facebook page.

If you've ever had a photoshoot done you will know that these prices are very reasonable considering what they are offering. And it is so lovely to get the information sent to me rather than trawling the internet. Plus as you can see with the second one they are prepared to travel from Bournemouth which unless you used a service like this you would never know. It's like a very convenient yellow pages but your fingers DO NOT need to do the walking ha ha. Old enough like me to remember those adverts? Gosh with Google now does anyone use the Yellow Pages?

The other brilliant thing about Bidvine is it shows you if the professional has any reviews and lets you read them. The second quote detailed above has a Bidvine account which has had 3 five star reviews from happy customers. One of them is detailed here just to show you the level of detail you can expect from a happy reviewer and yes it does make me want to book them:

We know Alexandra and Gabor through a friend and we only kept in touch in writing. In the third trimester of my pregnancy, we have decided that we want some beautiful pictures to remember this wonderful time waiting for our baby. It was no question we want to hire them for the job as we saw their work. We asked them, settled the date and the other details and we were excited to see them in person finally. It was a great experience. They were doing this job in a way we hardly felt we were being photographed, meaning we did not have to pose and smile in an artificial way. It was easy and we felt in an instant, they know what they are doing. Apart from some much needed instructions all we had to do was enjoy each other and the beautiful weather at the seaside. They were easy-going and so friendly, open-minded. They got to know us while taking the pictures. And when we got the pictures it was just magical. We could see our happiness and love all captured in the photos perfectly. I highly recommend them if you not only want professional photographers but a lovely day spent with nice, kind people and amazing pictures as a result. It was a great, complete experience with them.

Reading that reminds me of ALL of the reasons why I will never again have a photoshoot in a studio.

What you soon discover when you fall in love with all of your photos, as we did this Summer, is that you can't part with any of them, yet can't afford to receive them all printed either. The modern way to deal with that is to only get a few printed but buy ALL of them on a digital record which makes it very easy to share them on social media too :-) We did that with ours and bought them ALL on CD.

So I was very glad that one of the questions on Bidvine was:

What format would you like to receive the final images in?Answers being:

• Digital files online

• Digital files on a CD

• Prints

• Album

I think it is a great idea to focus the mind and think about things like that beforehand rather than afterwards when emotions are running high and you may make an impulsive decision you'll live to regret, or that one spouse is in favour of with the other being sad with the decision. You can't discuss these things in front of the photographer and if they're proposing to leave you with the USB stick or CD on the day it is good to have conversations like that upfront in private, in advance, as a couple. Can you tell that we didn't LOL?!?!?

I love that the first quoter above offers to take the USB away to do editing. This wasn't offered with our shoot in the Summer, so yes, we and they were lucky the pics were perfect, but it does mean you are literally just paying for the photographer's time and space on the day and not the great deal of time and work that goes into editing like it does with wedding photos for example.

I love that the second quoter above offers a photobook. I know how affordable these are given how often I use photobox.co.uk BUT it is lovely to have the offer of that as the last book I made took upwards of 18 hours and busy family people just don't have that time to spare. Plus the professionals, doing it often, would be faster and know the tricks of the trade to get the desired effect quite swiftly. Photobooks are beautiful I can't recommend them enough. I did one to record a year of Aaron's life. So the first pics were at Peppa Pig where he spent his 4th birthday and the final pics were of his Spiderman 5th birthday party and there were 56 pages in between to record a year of his life. It took a long time to make as most pages had about 4 pics on each with the odd page having one statement photo.

Back to Bidvine, it's not only photography you can get a quote for! Have a go, it's very user friendly