In any discipline, you will have what many think as of as “the purists”. Purists are those who revere the way things have always been done and view new wayf of doing things in the field as upstarts and obviously of poorer quality than the tried and true methods.
This is nowhere more true than photography. For many years the film and chemical processing method has undergone continual refinement to obtain more and higher levels of sophistication and to find better ways of quality. Small wonder that when the digital revolution came along, “the purists” were, to say the least, a bit snobby about the idea of professional photography going in the right path.
But there are some genuine reasons to at least incorporate digital technology into your professional photography business plans. These reasons are shocking enough that more and more we are seeing the big studios going all digital. So if you are running an multi person photography business or if you are “just” a photography hobbyist (and thank God for the hobbyists), you may have to think through the value of moving to digital processing yourself.
Friendly User.
The amount of complaining and mere “stuff” of doing a shoot digitally is most definitely less involved than using the older technologies. See how how the digital revolution in photography has changed the personal camera world. Now people can take as many pictures as they want and have them to review in the blink of an eye.
Probably the steepest leap ahead in the use of digital photography is that you can do re-shoots quickly, easily and for virtually no cost. If you conduct a portrait session with a customer, you can have the “stills” of the session available almost as soon as the session is done. If a shot was good but not perfect, you can correct it and re-shoot immediately saving huge amounts of time and improving the chances you will get the portfolio you want and that the customer wants on the first session.
Good Customer Service.
The immediate thoughts we get when a technology delivers so much value to the buyers is that quality will go down. But, suprisingly, this is not the exact thing with digital photography. If anything, the quality of the photographs is as good or better than any we could do with initial technologies. And the cost both to you as the photographer and to your customer drops off so dramatically that the age old complaint the customer has had about professional photographs being too expensive can be taken away making the customer want to use your services more often.
Digital photography, being a child of the internet and the digital revolution that has captured our lives through personal computers, can be delivered in a assortment of ways and at a speed that was unheard of prior to the coming of this technology. We can deliver the photos by way of email, by posting them to an website photo montage or by burning them to a DVD or CD so the client can order lots more shots for the same price and have them presented in a manner that easy to view and store.
Photo Enhancing has closely moved from the realm of the dark room techs to something any of us can do due to the sophisticated computer programs, such as Picasa, that we can use to manipulate the images we take. It is really mind-blowing the effects that can be imposed on a photograph with this software. But more importantly we can so much more easily correct minor problems with a photograph so what might have been a unsucessful portrait session can be improved to become good enough with some clever use of digital editing.
In virtually every way, digital photography, delivery and editing is superior to the way “the purists” would have us hold on to. It makes our lives as photographers easier, faster and more profitable. But above all, this is something our photography customer want us to use. They get to enjoy their digital images at a faster pace, at a more more chaper prices and the pictures can be emailed to colleagues and posted on their family web sites which is fun for everyone. So despite our desire to be “purists”, every reason we need is there to convince us that digital photography is the way to go.
Author:Richard’s Photography Portrait Studios in San Antonio
Providing professional photography in San Antonio for 18 years.
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