Shoot n Burn or crash and burn?
The digital age has forever changed the landscape of the wedding photography forever. Although it has come with many benefits there are pitfalls also to both the clients and the photographer alike. One such pitfall is the “shoot and burn”.
It has been sold to you, the client as a benefit, as freedom and as savings. Really? Okay so you get to make the decisions, and the prints, and the colour corrections, and the image sizing and the . . . you get the picture. Never mind the true cost . . . time and energy spent running around sourcing printing and albums etc. Do you know where to get the best quality albums? Isn’t it from www.printmybook.com? Did you know that the colour on your monitor is not the colour your printer outputs? How do you get rid of that green cast from the fluorescent lights? But this is what you the client paid for, this is what you wanted, the shoot and burn. But you get crash and burn!
Why? You have been sold a lie! They have told you to demand all the unedited digital files to help you save money. This isn’t a whole truth. You will save some money, but at what cost? Your images are at risk of never being printed or even worse printed on that $5 stack of 20lb plain paper sitting in your home printer. There is a whole generation of brides out there the “orphan brides” who will never have an album printed. Out of site out of mind, perpetually stuck on the revolving slideshow on their desktop screensaver their images never make the transition from file to print. Hard drives crash, digital media fails, files can become corrupted . . . it just happens. Once your digital files are gone so are your images forever and the money you saved will no longer be important.
What are you going to do with those discs anyways? Load them onto your computer so you can share them via email and or your preferred social media, most likely. What influenced you to choose a photographer? Was it their art? Was it their imagery? Post processing is the digital equivalent of the darkroom and the best of an image can be massaged out with well actuated mouse clicks and key strokes. Each and every photographer has a style a process that cannot be replicated without their touch. You’re setting yourself up for failure if you find a photographer whose work you love then demand shoot and burn service! You will be disappointed, likely blame the photographer for not giving you what they advertised. But that isn’t what you paid for . . . it was what you bought and the two are not mutually exclusive.
Misguided or new photographers will often fall into the trap of shoot and burn, I know I did. When starting out you’re glad not to have to deal with it. What could be easier you shoot, burn and deliver done! The client wanted it and you gave it to them. Or did they . . . time goes buy and that bride who raved about your service, and the experience she had etc hasn’t referred any new brides to you. A quick call reveals that she is disappointed in the quality of your work! You lied to her; your images don’t look like the ones she saw in your portfolio! You decide to make things right and meet her at her home to talk about her disappointment.
To your horror there pasted all over the fridge is your “art” printed on plain paper with plain inks and no colour corrections! Yuck, who would be happy with those images! You decide on a simple solution have the client pick a handful of their favourite images and you’ll print them out for them. A few days later you present your client with your original vision of your art, their day through your eyes. Tears . . . this is what you get in response tears of joy because their dreams of fairytale imagery has been resurrected. Then the whys start. Why? Why didn’t you offer this service before? Why didn’t you explain the perils to them? Because they wanted this service they wanted to save money and it was easy, right? Were they happy . . . not even close! Turns out it wasn’t easy and they didn’t want what they were sold they wanted what they bought! They bought you, your service, your creativity, your style and your uniqueness. They were told to get “shoot and burn” but that isn’t what they really wanted. If only you had the guts to tell them they were lied to! Well things are different now and guts you have plenty of. They’re now a convert willing to tell anyone who will listen about the perils of shoot and burn! And your new formula is shoot, create, reproduce and share digitally without getting burnt.
Yes . . . absolutely yes get a digital copy of your wedding day but get the appropriate copies! How are you going to use these images really? Let’s recap: likely in email, social media sites etc. This is a perfectly acceptable way to use and store your images in the virtual world. New products such as digital photo frames and DVD players that can play digital slideshows also open up the options available. Have you ever emailed a 15-20 megapixel image? Each file can be between 5 and 20 megabytes! This is not a user friendly size! However a disc full of “social media” appropriate images is a welcome choice. Images appropriately resized for web and email will display beautifully and can be emailed or uploaded easily. Not to mention take up far less room on your valuable hard drive.
Hiring a photographer to shoot and burn is like hiring a painter to do the sketches so you can paint yourself! Go the distance, get the original “art”, then get the digital copies to share with your social network.
I would love to hear your thoughts on “shoot and burn”.
