The age old comment photographers everywhere hear from clients…”I only need the digitals”
Ok…so maybe “age old” is a stretch but the number of times I’ve heard this as a photographer is large and I’m here today to help you realize why walking away with only digital images from your photoshoot is a waste of your time and money.
Leave the Experience with Something Tangible
A photoshoot isn’t something that happens every day – it’s something you do for a special occasion. So why would you walk away from the experience without something tangible to remember it?
Whether you go the classic route and print the images on 4×6 prints to put in a book, choose your absolute favorite to put in a frame and hang on the wall, or go the extra mile and create an album from your session I really think you should make sure you leave the session experience with an item you can hold in your hand.
I can hear you now saying this…”but Jaden, I still only need the digitals because I’ll print something myself.” And to that I say, “no you won’t.” Unless you are in the maybe 8-10% of people who do actually take their digitals and print something you’re going to need to find a photographer who is selling you things in addition or along side of those digitals.
Accessibility and Share-ability
Bear with me and “share-ability” I’m not sure it’s actually a word but it fits and I’m going with it 🤩 You want to SHARE the amazing photos from your session and I know sharing online is a big deal but what about sharing with the people who aren’t online or who aren’t part of your recent algorithm? They don’t get to see unless you’re sitting around and you pull out your phone.
And let’s be honest, who wants to sit around a phone or iPad and share photos – if you can even find them. The quality isn’t as good as a printed item and it’s so small – grandma be zooming in trying to look at your face(es) while missing the whole moment of the photo itself. Get her a print haha!!
For real though, you can display photos in your home via frames, albums, or canvases. You can give prints, make calendars, paperback “look books”, magnets, the list is endless to the special people in your life and guess what! They can enjoy the photos without having to go to your IG or FB and trying to find that post or going back through the camera roll on their phone to find the digital you texted them.
Having a printed product also makes it so much easier to grab to show to someone. Come to my house and Ada can show you her 5 favorite photos in less than 5 minutes, want to know why? Because they are all in various albums sitting on the shelves in our living room, she doesn’t have to wait for me to grab my phone and scroll back to April of 2019 (if it even goes back that far, hello iPhone 200) so she can show you a baby pic.
Longevity
Digital images get lost! I don’t care how you save them, store, them, keep them digitally organized they get lost. General data loss, digital corruption, outdated tech, etc. I’m telling you things get lost and then what, well they are just gone.
Ask me how I know…and I’m a photographer.
I’ll tell you a little story about a wedding I went to one time, mine. We got married in Forsyth, just Chris and I, the officiant, photographer, and my sister (of course). I didn’t want a big wedding but I knew I wanted photos. We got the digitals from the gal – this is before I even considered becoming a photographer so this is really awful but I don’t remember her name. It was a co-worker of a friend of my mom’s or something like that and I think her first name was Chelsea but that was 2015 and a lot has happened since…
Anywho – I printed photos because professional photographer or not I’ve always been into printing photos and I shared some of the photos on Facebook, this event predates my Instagram days. And today if you asked me to show you my wedding photos there are 3 places I’d point to…
- the gallery wall in my living room
- another framed photo in my living room on a different wall
- this wood thing I made to display in the living room that I modge-podged one of the pics on that I *think* is in my attic now 🤷🏽♀️
Notice I didn’t say Facebook or a computer somewhere or an external hard drive or email or online gallery or cloud etc. That’s because outside of finding them from 2015 on Facebook, I can still do that, they are gone. That’s right – I have absolutely no idea where the digital images from my own wedding are – because digital images get lost.
Oh and guess what – I don’t remember the girl’s name so I can’t just email the photographer and ask if she still has them. Also, while I’m here, it’s not the photographer’s responsibility to keep your images stored forever and ever amen. Storage costs money and after 1000s of sessions it gets expensive and it would be ridiculous for me to expect her to still have them.
Bottom line – protect the investment you are making when you spend money with a professional photographer and print your photos. It will be worth is down the road when you have them and can find them easily – or at the very least after digging in a closet all day then coming up with the album or storage box!
So what now?
Well…book that photoshoot you’ve been putting off and make sure you print your photos! Pretty easy, right! I highly suggest finding someone who offers packages, products, and/or print credits instead of someone who only offers digital images. It will make it easier if you choose someone who doesn’t just dump the digital in an email and wish you well.
If you’ve just had a session done log back into your gallery and see if they have a shop. My clients can pick and choose what they want to print right from their gallery without having to download images, upload them somewhere else, get sidetracked, forget to come back, you get it right…haha. If you don’t see a shop option in the gallery reach out to them and ask if that’s available so you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting to make sure your images are preserved forever!
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