One of the hardest parts of my job is educating my clients on the benefits of purchasing beautiful prints, canvases, and my favourite, photo albums after their amazing photoshoot or wedding. Generally, people ONLY want to walk away with a disc or USB in their hands. This saddens me slightly as I really want them to showoff their family and re-live the experience over-and-over again with family and friends. I love seeing photos on walls and listening to the heart-felt stories behind them – you cannot do this when the images are on a disc or USB.
Thus, I am officially making the switch to in-person sales. This is so that my clients have the opportunity to get gorgeous prints and high quality albums that they are proud to show off.
I am writing this blog post, with the help of an amazing post from Designaglow, to enlighten you about the benefits of professional prints and to give you confidence in me. I will stick with you through the whole process, from the beginning of your photoshoot to helping you decide on the best images and sizes to print.
Ultimately, you are investing in pieces of your history, and I want the experience and pieces to be talked about for years.
I have read this post over and over again so that I can confidently inform you about everything. Please enjoy reading and become educated
10 Reasons why you don’t want the disc:
1. Discs (and even USB drives!) will soon be obsolete. Remember floppy disks? They’re not around anymore and CDs, DVDs and USB drives are going out the same way. Why invest in something that will require you to constantly update your backups so you don’t lose those precious memories? Guess what will never be obsolete? Printed photos!
2. Discs are surprisingly easy to damage. Even if you take great care of your disc, the fact is they start to wear down over time or they can get scratched. If your disc gets damaged, you lose all the photos stored on it.
3. Properly backing up digital files takes serious commitment. You’ve got to back them up on your hard drive. You have to make sure your hard drive is well organized so that you can actually find the images when you want to. You have to back up your hard drive to the cloud so that if your computer crashes or your hard drive fails, you don’t lose your images. Photographers have this system down, but it gets complicated for those who don’t back up like clockwork.
4. Digital images are not as easy to show off in person. Nobody ever pulls out their disc and says “Want to see my wedding photos?!” Images stored on a disc typically die on that disc. Wedding images deserve to be preserved in a heirloom album forever, just as portraits deserve to be displayed and enjoyed on the walls of your house.
5. Most people won’t ever get around to printing their images. We all have great intentions but the truth is, we just get busy and printing portraits or designing an album falls to the bottom of the to-do list. Before we know it, it’s been three years and “How did we get three years behind? We’ll never get caught up now!” It happens to the best of us, so it’s best to leave these tasks to the person who loves printing images and designing albums, who also happens to be really good at it… your photographer.
6. Occasionally people do actually print their photos. That’s definitely a step in the right direction, as we believe that photos were made to be printed. But the reality is that prints and albums from consumer labs have inconsistent colors and are often mediocre quality at best. Consumer labs don’t calibrate their printers as often or as carefully as pro labs. They don’t use high quality paper or ink. Often, the photo lab associate isn’t properly trained in using the printing equipment. All of these things add up to green skin tones, fading images, and all-around poor quality products.
7. Printing problems are common when you use a consumer lab, but you might not even know there’s a problem. You might continue to get poor quality prints and just assume that the wonky tint is normal. Trust us, it’s not normal!
8. Images on a disc are typically sized for specific uses. Printing web sized images instead of high resolution images will yield disastrous results. Photos may be pixelated or over sharpened. Consumer labs aren’t typically set up to flag low resolution images, so you will end up paying for photos that you won’t even want to display.
9. Unless you’re particularly great at arranging wall displays, even choosing images for a wall display can be overwhelming. Photographers have an eye for what images will look great next to each other on your wall and also what size and crop ratio will do your photos justice. Trust the process!
10. Your kids love seeing photos of your family… and the best way to make sure that happens often is to display them so they can be seen everyday! Experts agree that seeing family photos boosts kids’ self confidence and helps them learn their importance in your family. What better way to decorate your home than with images that document your family’s bond?