Wedding photographers in Tuscany: how to choose one

This page used to rank ten photographers from one to ten, each with a Style line we wrote and a sentence of praise. Two were described as award-winning without an award we could point to, one as internationally renowned.

We have never seen these photographers work. The ranking was ours and the characterisations were invented, so we have removed them. We do not rank the businesses we list.

Photography is also the category where a ranking matters least, because you can judge the work yourself. Here is how.

Look at complete weddings, not portfolios

A portfolio is the best twelve frames from three years. What you are buying is every frame from one day.

Ask to see two or three full galleries from weddings like yours — same rough guest count, same kind of property, ideally the same season. Then look at the parts nobody puts in a portfolio: the speeches, the middle of dinner, the hour when the light was flat, the group photographs. That is most of what you will receive.

Look at the light they were given

Tuscan portfolios are full of golden evenings, and Tuscany does supply them. But your wedding has a date.

A July ceremony happens in a mean daily maximum of 32.2°C, often in full sun, and the images look different from a June evening. An October wedding has meaningfully less daylight after the ceremony, which changes when the portraits can happen. If a photographer's gallery is all late-summer sunsets and your wedding is in April at three in the afternoon, ask to see April at three in the afternoon.

Our month-by-month guide has the figures.

What a quote should cover

Ask for each of these in writing:

• Hours covered, and the overtime rate. Italian weddings run late.
• Whether a second photographer is included. Worth having when you dress in different places, or when the legal ceremony is at the town hall and the reception is forty minutes away — a common shape in Tuscany.
• How many edited images, and when. "A few weeks" and "by Christmas" are both answers people give.
• Album, and whether it is extra.
• Travel and accommodation. Rural venues mean a drive from Florence or Siena, and sometimes a night.
• Whether the price includes IVA.
• What happens if they are ill. A serious photographer has an answer.

Permissions, which people forget

Municipal ceremony rooms have their own rules on where a photographer may stand. Historic buildings may restrict lighting and equipment. Val d'Orcia is a managed World Heritage landscape where what may be set up outdoors is regulated — relevant if you are planning drone footage or lighting for an evening shoot.

Ask the venue and the comune rather than assuming, and ask early enough that the answer can change the plan.

The one thing to book first

After the venue, the photographer. They take one wedding a day, so peak-season Saturdays go first — often more than a year ahead. If a particular person's work is the reason you are booking, contact them before you fix the date rather than after.

What our listings tell you

Each photographer's page carries what that business publishes about itself, with the source and the date we checked. Where a photographer states the styles they work in, we record their words; where they do not, the field is empty rather than filled in by us.

Browse them in the wedding photographer directory.

Why there is no ranking here

Because photography is a matter of taste, and because we have not seen these photographers work. The ranking that used to be on this page told you which images we liked. That is not information about them — it is information about us, presented as though it were about them.