That’s also a great resource for wedding photographers with a photojournalistic philosophy. (Full disclosure: I am also part of that organization.) So, if you’re looking for unobtrusive photographers, that’s a good place to go. Like the Fearless Photographers cite linked to before, it does not have an open membership; that is, there is an application process and a panel that judges whether your work is strong enough, so it’s pretty well curated. WPJA in particular, since it has stringent photojournalistic guidelines, does cull its membership from time to time when they see a photographer’s website has changed to no longer be primarily about wedding photojournalism, but strays into more directed and set-up type of modern fashion wedding photography or photography with a lot of non-photojournalistic Photoshop post processing, and things like that. Fearless Photographers was started by a guy who was part of the WPJA and then branched out to form another collection of strong photographers, but with no special emphasis on photojournalism, so you’ll see a lot more fine-art and portraiture on that site.
We found it helpful to look harder at their engagement photo examples than the wedding ones - all the wedding ones look alike, whereas the engagement photos have more personality.
Also, what you really want is somebody you can work with all day. Because it is ALL DAY and they’re going to be having you smile and smile and now Grandma and now all the men and smile and “little grin?” and if you don’t like the guy you will kill him and eat him.
We interviewed three and ended up picking the one who a) had the most interesting engagement photoshoots and b) we felt was the most “like us”. We ended up with fantastic photos - I usually take horrible pictures but these are absolutely lovely. We couldn’t be happier with them.
And usually photographers do not take video, that’s a videographer.
While I have no new advise about how to pick wedding photographs given than what already has been suggested - picking the one who a) had the most interesting engagement photoshoots and b) we felt was the most “like us”
I would like to stress that your wedding photographer is the one item you should not include on your list of items to re-negogiate if you notice that your wedding is going over budget. I count among my friends, three wedding photographers and the one thing they all seem to experience is that once the wedding-costs start spiralling out of budget that they are the first to be approached about reconsidering their price…besides you husband/wife and the weddingring, the only lasting memory will be your photos - not your flowers, not your cake, not your music, not your food…yet over and over again my friends are the first to be approached to see if they are willing to drop their price
We loved our photographer(s) (husband and wife team). They’d done weddings of friends of ours, were extremely personable, offered tons of references, we very flexible on negotiating the price and package, and did an amazing job. But finding them was how many people here have already suggested: ask around, get some references, etc. Some things to reinforce or add:
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You want the digital files, and you really don’t want to pay for them. I’d really consider this a pretty important piece. If someone great is going to charge you extra, you shouldn’t have to pay TOO much extra. But like pulykamell said, it’s becoming more and more rare.
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Flexibility. We wanted a bunch of shots around my neighborhood, and they adapted like pros (because they are!). Outside, in the snow and slush, in a restaurant, etc. They were happy to trek through a lot of stuff to find some great shots.
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A checklist. I’m not sure if this is standard procedure or not, but they gave us a form of typical combinations for pictures, and had us spend a few days thinking of others we wanted. For instance:
bride and bride’s father
groom and bride’s father
bride, groom, bride’s father and mother
bride, groom and mother
groom and college roommate
best man and maid of honor
best man, maid of honor, bride’s second cousin twice removed
In fact, that was part of the contract - the photographers didn’t want us to complain if they never got a specific picture that they weren’t aware of, so we were in charge of making sure they had that list.