somegroovychick- any one go for professional photographer because simply they wana see themselves in a professional environment.
any one can take a picture, but when it comes to professionalism photographer will charge for many other things (both for SLR photography, and digital ones) i.e. exposure, posture (so u look the part of this world and not some other world), eyes, quality of the paper, size of the paper, effects.
so lets say u order 5 photographs. they charge u for 5 best shots (on which they gonna work, and gonna make it as best as they could) even though they gonna take 1000 shots.
i'm not saying pro photographers aren't worth the money- of course you hire a professional to shoot your wedding because yes, you want quality pictures. however a photographer can't realistically limit the number of pictures they take, and you can't order a certain number either. that number depends on how good they are and how interesting the environment they are in- an excellent photographer might only need 100 shots with say, 80 of them coming out great, but theres no way of knowing that unless you keep shooting until the number of hours you have been hired for are through, and then you download the pics and look at them.
that ratio of total number of shots taken to number of good shots taken is what defines a photographer's skill and talent. you can't put a cap on that and tell people i'm only going to shoot 100 pictures, thats it. what if theres still stuff going on in the wedding? you're going to stop shooting and walk away because you're counting the shots you've been paid for? that IS dumb.
and in digital photography, how many pictures are in a "roll"?
most photogs here will say we estimate we'll take X amount of shots in the time you're hiring us for, but they don't charge customers based on number of shots- they charge them based on the time they've been hired for, usually an hourly rate, and then in that rate is included the time they spend shooting as well as the time they spend afterwards going through the pictures and editing them. prints are usually extra if you choose to order them from the photographer, but its not a requirement cos they give you the CD of all your digital images and you can make your own prints off it. that case of charging "per roll" when you're really shooting digitally is a case of someone being greedy and wanting to make as much money off the client as they can- and thats dishonourable and stupid.