The Good and Bad of Facebook’s Photography Service

Read a great article today – Pros and cons to Facebook’s fast growing role in digital photography.

According to this article, estimates are that 42 billion photos will be printed worldwide in 2013, a third fewer than the 63 billion printed in 2008. And if it maintains its momentum, Facebook will probably host the biggest share of these Facebook Photography Serviceimages.

Because everyone has a digital camera these days, it’s easy to snap a photo, plug it into your USB, and download it to Facebook. Then you can tag and share your photos with all of your friends, thus eliminating the need to print them off to hand to your friends personally.

Because consumers are driving the Facebook craze, it’s easy to see how this will also affect professional photographers in the long run as well. When someone comes in for a professional portrait, they may want the traditional framed images and albums, but more and more they are also going to want photos to share on their Facebook account with family and friends.

I’ve talked with photographers on all sides of this issue. Because most photographers end up giving a CD/DVD with the digital files on it, more professional photos have and will end up on Facebook, whether you want them to or not.

The problem really doesn’t come from integrating this new technology into your professional portrait pricing, it comes with educating your clients on the ramifications of using Facebook for photography. Back to the article from above: [Read more…]