Are you still based in film, or have you made the switch to digital?

I’m amazed almost daily at the number of photographers that are still film based. Digital has been such a big part of the consumer market for years, yet photographers still love their film.

We even have a niece who has taken a few courses in photography in college, and she’s still taught through film-based classes.

Yet the types of film that were once available are now quickly disappearing. Why? Because you can do so much more with digital. And it’s the way of the future.

If you are a professional, your whole goal should be to make money with your photography. (If not, there is no reason to start a business.) And one of the best ways to sell your photographs – at least from a portrait standpoint – is to sell immediately on the emotion.

If a client comes in, has their photograph taken, they are excited about their portraits. With digital, you can sell immediately with projection (find out how) and double – even triple your sales. With film, you have to spend days developing and putting together your sales presentation before the customer comes back in for viewing. That’s a lot of time for something else to happen in her life – making her portrait not the most exciting thing in her life.

When we used film, we knew every click of the shutter meant we were spending about $1. With digital, there’s no cost. It makes you a more liberal shooter – getting many more saleable images. When we decided to convert to digital, we decided to run parallel for the first year. After the first month, we had several issues with film (lost in mail, ruined by lab, etc) and converted 100 percent over to digital, and have never looked back. 

Because of technology, digital is here to stay. To run your business, you need to have a website and blog, and know about online marketing. And to continue competing with professionals you must learn the ins and outs of digital photography.

Agree … or disagree? I’d love to have your comments.

We all like things for free. It makes us feel good when we know we got it for the bargain price of – nothing.

But does it have any value?

We recently attended a concert at a local botanical gardens. Every year they have a whole summer of concerts, and every Sunday night you can attend a different concert. They have local talent, and even bring in some big names from the past (we saw Firefall the other night).

For most of the series they charge a small fee for the tickets, anywhere from $10 to $30 a ticket. But for the Father’s day concert, the concert was free. The only catch was you had to have a ticket.

So I went and got my free tickets, along with paying for a couple of the other nights.

Guess what? The free concert was their biggest “sell out” yet. Meaning they had given away more tickets than ever before. Yet from past years I know it was a fairly small crowd.

Is free good? Did people consider the tickets to be of value?

If something else came up, the people didn’t come. The tickets were free, so it didn’t matter if they used them or not. In essence, they had no value.

But if you paid $20 a piece for the tickets, I bet you would make an effort to attend. 

Now let’s swing this around to what I’m seeing with the photography industry.

Photographers love to pile on the stuff in their “package” deals. For one small fee, we’ll give you everything.

Does that put any value on what you do?

The real value comes from what you do that other’s don’t do.

If everyone does a quick shoot and hands over the files on a CD, that’s your competition.

How can you be different?

By providing an entire service, from beginning to end.

People don’t want a CD with 100 photos on it. They want one beautiful portrait of their baby daughter, printed on the finest canvas, retouched to perfection, matted perfectly, and framed in a way that matches their home decor. They want the nail and the hammer to be attached to the frame – less to think about when they bring it home. Maybe they would even appreciate a photographer that hangs the portrait on the wall! What service!

You can’t hang a CD on the wall. 

There is a difference.

source of photo ba1969