The other day my Grandmother asked me to help her with a drawer. I opened it and was instantly taken aback at the treasure I saw. No it wasn’t stuffed with cash, although nice, was not near as priceless as the photographs in it. I took to digging through them and could not stop. It felt almost magical seeing near pristine photographs from 1890’s up to around the 1970’s
Photography and technology have come a long way in a relatively short time. I am sure no one thought in 1920 that we would be viewing photos on a computer/screen like that of a tablet. So who is to say that what we do today will even be viewable in another 70+ years. LED T.V.’s will be a joke compared to the holographic 3D displays or whatever they come up with. Are these CD’s that you all want as a client even going to be usable in the near future? Delivering them on a USB drive is a new trend but even then it’s prone to failure.
So here is what I am trying to get across. ”You need prints in your house!” There is a BIG demand from clients that they NEED the CD of all the images. It is the same as asking the photographer for the film in a sense. Those of us that are a little older all had pictures developed back in the day and with the 4×6’s and they packed the negatives in there as well. Now be honest, what did you EVER do with those? Nothing I bet. I sat here, 116 years later and since I had a “tangible” print to hold, I was able to enjoy family photos. There was no negatives anywhere in that drawer.
So you do a session with me and all you want is a CD of the “negatives” and no prints. Great, but here is the realization. You take it home and you might copy them to your laptop. But the enthusiasm pretty much stops there. You might send some in an E-Mail or post to Facebook. I give scaled down files for this purpose alone, I want you to have the ease of sharing, and after all it is a social media world right now. But what are you going to do with those HUGE files (negatives) that you just had to have?? For most of you, probably nothing…
Everyone has all the intentions of running to the local printer and printing off some but never really get around to it…
If you do manage to get down there, once you load them up and realize that 8×10 you printed off cut off the top of your daughters head since you can’t control what gets cropped off.
Not to mention the color and quality are terrible at best. When professionals have images printed we tend to use one professional lab so we know what we are going to get back and that it matches our expensive calibrated monitors. We put a lot of time and effort into making sure colors are right for you; let us deal with all the issues of getting a great print.
When some out of town relatives come over and you want to show off your new family photos, they all have to come hunched over your computer chair, backs in pain as you flip through them. How fun is that? Most consumer LCD screens are terrible with viewing angles and colors are WAY off. I cant tell you how many times I looked at some ones screen and it was a cold blue and they had no idea. Also saw they had picked the wrong resolution and circles were squished to ovals, I offered to fix it, and the next day it was back because it looks odd…. “face-palm!”
Again this isnt about us NOT giving you the CD, IT IS about encouraging you to get SOME prints thru your professional photographer. Sure they are not .19 cents but we dont print at Wal-Mart for a reason…
Please leave comments below, whether you are a fellow photographer or on the client side. I would love to hear thought on why you just have to have that “Full Res CD”
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