Cheers!

beauty photography

It’s tough to find time to shoot in our Studio with our Wedding Photography in full swing.  When I do get the time, I make sure I make it all worth while!  Working with Jessica is such a pleasure and as an added bonus, she is a highly talented MUA and hairstylist.

Photographer: Ian Gattie

Model: Jen

Makeup: Andrea Losecco

Hair: Jessica Jean

Location: The Piranha Studios

I’ve been getting flooded with ideas for my alt fashion head shots, these are only the surface of the water I want to explore.

Photographer: Ian Gattie

Makeup: Andrea Losecco

Hair: Jessica Jean

Body Art: JZino Body Art

www.thepiranhastudios.com

Sarah Ellis

I had the opportunity to work with Catherine Johnson.  A Buffalo based model that is diving into the scene of fashion, fetish and fine art work.  I look forward to working with her again (when she’s not traveling the country working with other talented individuals).

Author: Fred Molesworth, Salem, Oregon

I’m willing to bet your grandchildren will be upset with you. Here’s why. Imagine, 50 years from now, as your grandchildren or great grandchildren are going through the boxes in the attic. They are enthralled with the treasures and keepsakes they find and how they tie into the story of your life.

Amongst all the old items, they find a number of round silver objects. Some have writing on them, some are blank, but they resemble some kind of a small platter about 4″ across, with a hole in the middle.

Puzzled, they take them to their parents. “What are these, Mom?” they ask. “Oh, I think those are all of grandma’s photographs. Yep, here’s one labeled ‘My Wedding’. Here’s some more labeled ‘Family Photos,’ and some more labeled ‘Vacations’.”

“How do we look at them?” they ask.

“Well, I’m not sure we can. First of all, no one has the device that reads these anymore. Besides that, I doubt after all these years that they’re any good anymore. Being stored in the attic, the heat and cold probably ruined them.”

The kids are very disappointed. Nowhere amongst all the treasures are any actual prints. All that history is lost. Their connection with the past and all the wonderful stories that might have gone along with all those photographs are gone as well.

Along with all the wonders of our digital age come some significant problems that most people have never thought of.

Did you know that over 90% of all images taken on today’s digital cameras are NEVER PRINTED? I’m guilty of that myself. I have gigabytes of personal photographs that have never been seen other than on a computer screen.

In the old days, film went to the lab and everything that was printable was printed. Even if it was a bad photograph, it still was a hard copy, a part of your family history and it had permanence. Even if they never went in an album, they at least went into a box, to be discovered as treasures years later.

The same problem exists in professional portrait studios today. Many people are simply asking for the images on CD. “I’ll print them later” or “I’ll design my own wedding album” are common phrases. Usually this is done with the thought that they’ll save some money by doing it themselves.

But you know what? Most never make it into any kind of an album. Life gets busy and 20 years later they’ll be looking for some way to read those disks.

I bring this up only to point out the importance of what we, as a professional studio do. Our job is not just to create the images, to create wonderful story telling photographs about the people in front of our camera; it’s to create a final product, whether it be a professionally retouched and printed single image, a family heirloom wall portrait, or an incredible storybook album using a collection of the images that were created.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a wedding, a newborn baby, a senior or a family. Having the final product created for you is important. To do less is to leave the job half done and to short change the customer.

So, if you’re asked for a disk with all the images “so I can print them later”, that’s fine, just make sure your customers understand that if not printed, the conversation their grandchildren will want to have about their family history may never be able to happen.

A Bit About Fred Molesworth:

In addition to running a full time portrait studio in Salem Oregon, Fred Molesworth is a small business teacher and advisor, and the author of the Portrait Studio Marketing blog (www.portraitstudiomarketing.com). He’s also a nationally known business and marketing speaker in the portrait industry, and past president of the Professional Photographers of Oregon.

I know when I was a kid there were albums of photographs in my grandmother’s attic as well as a large box of old black & white and sepia pictures. Pictures were important because it was very expensive to have them taken and produced so they were cherished. Those albums are some of my most cherished possessions because they show our family history.

I have been guilty of not printing a lot of our personal family photos because I’ve been thinking (like many of our clients), I’ll do them later and guess what, later never comes. One of my personal goals for 2010 is to go through all of my on-computer photos and make sure that they make it into albums for our family history!

And something else, make sure that you document who is in the photo on the back because in 50 years, there may be no-one around who knows who the people are and that would be a shame.

Please DO “print your pictures!”

For 2010 weddings, I have added a fantastic 10×10 Flush mount photo album to my “Shoot and Burn” Package for this exact reason. I will not let this happen to my clients! And to make things even better, the album is added at my cost, because it’s that important to me that you have hard copies of all the good stuff we do on your special day!