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 p.1 #4 · Providing your images to your clients on disc? | |
OK, I think the topic is getting a bit done now but i'll bite anyway....
In refrence to what you have posted on your web page......
What I am talking about here is the the control you have over the final product, which is a direct representation of your work. From post processing to the final prints from professional labs. Again, this is a struggle for us as so many clients request high res files. I do not want to place the look/style of my work in someone else’s hands. The exception being if I were to farm out the images to a professional retouch artist for a particular project. But, to burn all my raw images to disc or high res jpegs, and turn them over to the client…makes me cringe at the thought of it. ...Show more →
I suppose it depends if you are more concerned with making money and giving your clients what they want or stressing about how pretty your images look that really are of little use to anyone but the people in them.
I burn full res images for clients most weekends. I make a lot of money from them because it is what people want these days and are prepared to pay for them. I think it's fundamentaly flawed to be concerned about YOUR look and style. The primarly concern shoulfd be what your clients want, IE the people that are PAYING you and are the reason you are in business in the first place.
I do not understand how photographers can do this in good conscience. To turn over our work so it can be poorly printed, edited, and displayed as a product we produced, is placing far too much control in the clients hands over my work and business…in my opinion. Or is it? I just said I provide files to certain clients… do you see the struggles I have here? Do you have the same issues?
The automatic assumption in this debate is always that the images will be poorly printed or edited. Who says or more importantly, who has experienced that to be the case? I have sold THOUSANDS of high res images on disk and I have yet to see a single example of my work being adulterated. If I saw 50 images tomorrow that were not to my liking, it wouldn't cahnge a thing I do because the ration is still too far in my favour.
There is also this " ideal" which to be honest I find quite iiotic, that one or 10 imaes not printed to the perfection or exact style the photographer would do or approve is going to destroy the shooters reputation and business. Who the hell came up with that idea and why has it been perpetuated so damn long?
Does anyone think that if a shooter gets a once in a lifetime, million to one shot that suddenly they will be seen as the worlds greatest shooter and their success for the rest of their life is assured from there?
If not, why do people espouse that some poorly edited shots are going to destroy them?
I find the notion in practice and theroy to be quite moronic.
I also wonder about the people who think like this as to what sort of real world experience in business they have as against reading crap on the net and parroting it on without knowing that things in the real world are very different to the paranoia that is rampant on the net in all intrests and subjects.
This sort of brain washed ideal of never letting high res files out is parroted all the time but the lack of supporting evidence to warrant it is completely missing. We hear the gloom and doom paranoia all the time however personaly, I am yet to read of a single First hand accounts of people saying "Someone edited my images poorly and someone else said they wouldn't hire me because of it. "
Untill I see sufficent and definate reason not to do something and MY EXPERIENCE is the complete opposite, I'll just laugh and put it down to more internet forum paranoia espoused that spend too much time on the net and not enough working in their business with real clients and making the most from their business they can.
Again an example of how the theroy is flawed compared to practical experience.....
There is a very clever gentleman on this board that I am sure is the most successful person in event photography. He covers the biggest events with thousands of competitors far more than hundreds and is now being asked to cover events overseas as well as having event organisers all wanting him to cover their events rather than him having to ask them.
He burns tens of thousands of CD's of an event and I am sure has a far bigger and better business than anyone else.
Basicaly, If he does this and has grown and is growing his business on this model, then to me that really puts all the fear mongering of the gloom and doom of burning Disks into practical ( and completely laughable) perspective.
Or, am I just behind the times and I need to rethink everything? It’s looks to me like a losing battle at this point….or is it?
Its your business and up to you how to run it. I'm definately behind the times in most things but in business I try VERY hard to be ahead of the times with new and innovative products and marketing of my business because once again, real world practical experience has shown that to work very well for me.
If you do offer files on disc, how do you educate your clients about handling the images? Where they should be printed, used, etc?
I don't.
I don't have time nor do I see it as at all nessacary.
Where for instance are all these terrible prints going to be produced anyway? The local wartmart?
Sure, some of them arent great but by the same token, a lot of technology goes into these kiosks to make the pics as good as can be. If the image is good to start with, why would it be so horrendous coming out? The few times I have used these kiosks the results have been fantastic and I used to set up minilabs for Kodak and I have a lot of experience in colour printing both by hand on machines so I do know better than most what really constitutes a good print and what dosen't.
Now there is also the alternative of someone printing the the shots at home on their printer. I use $100 printers in my event photo business and I have done nothing more than plug them in and hit print and the shots are great. Mine even have a slot you put the card into and print straight from that and they look fine.
Now sure someone may have some old POS printer and use regular copy type paper but the examples I have seen of this make it so obvious that it's home printed ( along with the second word out of the peoples mouth that did them announcing they printed them themselves) I cannot for the life of me see how anyone could be so ignorant not to be able to tell the difference between the crap printing and the image itself.
If they can't tell and think its my fault and won't hire me because of it, Fantastic!
Clearly they would never be able to appreciate good quality either and would be pain in the butt customers whom were only fixated on price.
Lucky for me i'm well past having to put up with those people as clients.
If you do NOT offer files on disc, what are you doing to educate your clients to why you do not offer your work on disc?
I'd be interested in teh answers on this one. I'd very much like to see how people can pitch it to their customers without sounding totaly self centred and more concerned about themselves than giving their customers what they Want.
Not that I could ever know, but I'd also be very interested to learn how many customers would walk away having spent nothing or a lot less than they were going to because they couldn't get what they wanted no matter how well it was pitched to them it was supposedly in their best interests.
How is it profitable to turn over all your work from a shoot? Are you not missing out on print/product sales?
In event photography people have a higher actual spend on Disks than they do prints.
Although the split of sales is about 50/50 I make much more PROFIT from the disks.
In weddings, I offer all the disks either as an add on sale after they have spent $4-5K on the wedding album etc which further bumps my profit or I can use the disk as leverage for getting a higher price ( and the deal in the first place) for a coverage.
I never got worthwhile re-orders and most of the time they were more pain and time consuming frigging around with than what they were worth. I also have tens of thousands of negatives up the back I am now Paying to get rid of that no one in the last 10-20 years has shown the slightest interest in.
Had I been smarter and wiser like I am now, I could have got good money for the things when the people thought they had some value. Statistic show that half the people would now be divorced and the other half would probably take half an hour to find their wedding album so have no interest in the negatives either.
Because they already have an album full of properly printed pics, if they go to a lab and get a reprint that is crap of do a home print that is not up to par, the root of the fault is immeadiately known because they have proof of what the images are capeable of.
In my glamour work, for the last 10 years I have sold a disk only to 90% of my clients.
that makes me a lot of money sinply because all the other shooters are too busy worrying about "What if someone makes a bad print of one of my pics?" and therefore don't allow it. People come to me ans see getting all the pics on a disk as a fantastic deal. I know they also reccomend me to their friends because of this.
If the people look at thier pics on the computer which looks great and then get a print from a lab that is crappy, they will know where the problem lies.
Do you just charge a flat fee for a shoot and it includes all the images from the day?
In my glam work, yes.
In other areas this business model is not applicable or not the one I use.
Do you worry about what the end results will be if you do provide the images to your clients? Or, is it nothing more than about the business of making money?
As can be seen from above, No, I don't worry in the slightest because practical experience I have nothing to worry about in this regard.
I am in business to make money not pretty pictures and anyone that thinks the 2 are solidly linked has a lot to learn in business IMHO.
The thing I do worry about often is the pics themselves. Last weekend and several times before I have seen people get prints in our sports work from images that are unsharp or have motion blur. We tell the people this is a bad shot we missed please choose another TWO so we can make up for it. Not only do the people insist that the pic they chose is fine, they refuse the offer of another print to make up for it when we then offer that! I cringe when I see them showing the print around but the fact is those people come back and so do their friends!
While I am all for producing the best work possible and hate showing inferiour shots, the fact I have learned is that clients look well beyond the technicalities of a shot and go more for the emotion and it s that which they buy the shots for, NOT technical perfection.
What made you to start offing images on disc?
As a way of providing my clients what they are prepared to pay me money for that in most cases would otherwise be lost.
Hope this epic reply/ rant is not too boring and of some value to someone.
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| May 19, 2011 at 03:59 AM |
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