Finally - An Decent Album for your Polaroids

I got way to excited this week about something that most people wouldn’t even concern themselves with looking at.

But it solves a huge problem for me!

I posted in a previous blog post about the issue with Fuji Instax Mini photos piling up and having no where to put them. There are so many great albums on amazon for the Fuji Instax Mini photos, but there just aren’t much for the polaroids.

The Polaroid Large Photo Album

Well this week, I happened to notice that Polaroid has released some albums (check them out here). There’s a small album that only costs $11.99 and holds 40 images (which is 5 packs of film) and a large album that holds 160 photos (that’s like 20 packs of film) for only $19.99.

To be honest, I’ve just been sticking the photos back in the pack boxes and then putting those boxes back into bigger boxes. Its kind of this ridiculous Russian doll thing. But these albums will be awesome!

So mine are on order and I’m eagerly awaiting their arrival. If you love Polaroid’s stuff, like I do, check out all of their cameras and film types available on their Amazon story by CLICKING HERE - they’ve got so much cool stuff to browse and buy.

If you purchase one or both of these albums, let me know what you think of them!

Polaroid Instant Film - STOP SHAKING YOUR FILM!

When I was a kid, Polaroid was IT! They were THE BRAND of instant film and no one could compete. But like all really well established companies in the 1990’s, Polaroid just lost their direction and eventually would stop producing instant film all together in favor of producing really really crappy TV’s.

Without going into a really long history, a few guys bought a factory and the tools from polaroid and decided to try to preserve polaroid type film from completely disappearing. They named the venture the Impossible Project and began trying to recreate the Polaroid chemistry, which was a difficult task. I’ve been purchasing their film since the beginning and let me tell you, its come a really long way. Back then, it was not uncommon to get bad batches, frames with flaws, you couldn’t shoot in hot or cold temps at all. Couldn’t expose it to any sort of light immediately after exposure. It was a mess…. But it worked and it gave us all hope. Fast forward a few years and things are very much different!

The Impossible Project did some licensing and became Polaroid Originals and then, recently, just polaroid. The instant film has improved dramatically but its still finicky compared with the old school Polaroids.

This quick guide will help you with everything you need to know today to get started shooting Polaroid film!

The Cameras

Polaroid made a lot of cameras. And some of theme take different types of film. There was pull-apart film, integral film, spectra film, lots of different variants.. In order to know what kind of film you need, you need to start with getting the right camera!

Vintage Cameras

The best vintage camera you can get is the SX-70. They are sturdy, well build, and have a cool factor that you can’t get from any other Polaroid Camera. But, they are expensive. Even old worn out ones are expensive. If you’re gonna get a Polaroid SX-70, your best bet is to spend a little extra money and get a refurbished one. Mint, an amazing company that makes all sorts of stuff for polaroid, has a refurbished and upgraded model that I love! They upgrade all of the electronics and give this classic new life again! Check out this camera here!

Polaroid SX-70 - Updated by MiNT

If you can’t afford an SX-70, you’re in luck because Polaroid switch to manufacturing much more affordable models later on. The Polaroid 600 and subsequent 600 series cameras are cheap, affordable and easy to use. You can also get these refurbished from Polaroid! They are awesome and a lot of fun and super affordable. You can check out a refurbished 600 camera here!

Polaroid Refurbished 600 Camera

Modern Cameras

Polaroid has cranked their camera production back up and they have a lot of really great and affordable cameras with some modern features like Bluetooth connectivity and the ability to shoot a more modern film type. Polaroid also makes a photo printer that allows you to print the photos on your phone directly to polaroid film! I own a ton of these cameras and I haven’t been disappointed by any of them!

Buying Film

With all of these different options for cameras, it shouldn’t surprise you that there are a few options for film. Fortunately, the breakdown on films is really easy to understand!

Polaroid SX-70 Film

Polaroid SX-70 Film

Everything labeled SX-70 Film is just for the SX-70 camera. Some of the refurbished SX-70’s can actually shoot 600 type film, but when you purchase the camera it will tell you if it will take a different film type. I own an SX-70 and trust me, you can only shoot SX-70 film through it. The difference is the ISO of the film as the SX-70 is a much slower camera/film. You can pick up some film for your SX-70 HERE!

Polaroid 600 Film

Polaroid 600 Film

The Polaroid 600 film fits all classic/old 600 type cameras. This includes a really really broad range of models. Basically, if you own an old polaroid and it isn’t an SX-70, it takes the 600 film. You can pick up a pack of 600 film HERE!

Polaroid I-Type Film

Polaroid I-Type

And lastly, if you own any modern device from the OneStep2 to the Polaroid Lab, you’re gonna want to use I-Type film. The I-Type and 600 type film packs is the battery. The old cameras require batteries to be integrated into the film packs. Polaroid now makes the cameras with rechargable batteries which saves a lot of waste! You can use 600 type film in a new camera but you cannot use an I-Type film in a classic camera. It just won’t work because there’s no battery. You can pick up a pack of I-Type film HERE!

Final Thoughts

Modern Polaroid Instant Films are still a little quirky to use. After you expose the image (click the red button) you absolutely cannot expose the image to light. As the image is ejected from the camera body, put it into something dark and allow it to remain there until it is full developed! I’ve ruined a lot of images by allowing them to be exposed to sunlight. Ambient temperature is also a huge issue, especially for me down here in Texas. The heat is not good for the film. Neither is the cold. If you’re shooting in the cold, put the film in your pocket to help keep it warm. And if you’re shooting in the heat, get your shot to the AC or at least the shade as quickly as you can!

There are a lot of great Polaroid products out there. You can browse a broad selection of their products here! Take your time and browse and have a lot of fun!

And lastly - no matter what - DO NOT SHAKE YOUR POLAROID PICTURES!!! Lay them in a cool dark place and let them develop on their own. Shaking does not help!

If you have any questions or need some help - feel free to contact me at tony@shutterjunkies.org

Polaroid is all about fun and that spur of the moment, living and enjoying life. Make the most of every shot!

There's One MAJOR ISSUE with Fuji Instax Mini Film!!!

As a photographer, I had a this brilliant idea for my wedding. Every wedding has this guest book that people wait in line forever to sign. And after the wedding, all you end up with is a book of signatures. Not very exciting at all. But, my idea was brilliant. People were already going to wait in line, why not make what they were doing fun! Instead of signing a book, I had a couple of instant cameras on hand and tons of instant film and we had our wedding guests snap a photo and sign the picture.

Everyone LOVED it. They would snap their photos, sign their pictures, snap a pic of their instant pic, and drop them in the box. Our guests just talked and talked about how much fun it was. We were happy it was a huge hit. But, there was a problem we hadn’t thought about when I came up with this brilliant idea…

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH ALL THESE PHOTOS?!?!?!?!?

After our wedding, we put them all in a box. The box was shuffled from place to place in our house, we moved a few times and each time would ask “what’s in this box?” before we would open it and say “oh yeah…”. Of course we didn't want to throw them away but we really didn’t know what to do with them.

In the mean time, we were still snapping instant photos like crazy and there were mountains of these pictures piling up and filling up boxes in our house. We loved them, but being in a box made it difficult to ever pull them out and look at them and enjoy them.

This is the problem almost everyone has with instant film - we love the film, we love taking pictures, but we don’t really have a good place to store all of them.

WE NEEDED A SOLUTION!!! In a digital world, having tons of physical images became all of the sudden inconvenient. So we turned to an old school solution - photo albums!

Photo albums are an absolutely perfect way to safely store and display your instant photos. We’ve purchased several instant photo albums now and are absolutely loving them! We can set the albums out in a place that’s accessible without worrying that they will be damaged. We can actually organize the photos by date or event so that they tell a really beautiful visual story of our lives. Instant Photo Albums literally saved our photos!!!

Here’s a few recommendations on albums from my own experience!

The Ablus 288 Pocket Mini Photo Album

The Albus 288 Pocket Mini Photo Album

This was the first album we bought, honestly because it has decent reviews and it was cheap. But its actually a really great little photo album and since it holds 288 photos, it put a HUGE dent in a mountain of instax photos we had piled up! Its easy to use and very durable. It does have kinda a cheap looking translucent plastic cover. But you can see through it to get an idea of what’s in the album.

If you’re looking for something affordable and practical - THIS IS THE ALBUM FOR YOU!

Click Here to Check it Out

The Albus 64 Pocket Mini Photo Album

Another fantastic little album. We really like this one because it holds less photos and allows us to sort of create our own little visual story books! The only issues is that the pictures are laid out horizontally instead of vertically. But the best thing about this one is our little kids can handle it, flip it around a lot and not mess up the images.

Click Here to Check it Out

The Rhypez Desktop Photo Album

So this little album is great because we can actually put it out for people to see. I have one on my desk and love the fact that I can flip through it, change the pages from day to day. Its just a lot of fun! It doesn’t store a lot of images, but its great to load images in here just so that you can easily share them with others.

You can Pick One Up for Yourself by Clicking Here!

There are of course a lot of other options out there. These are just the three that we have used and really like! Amazon literally has a huge variety of albums and ways to sort, organize and display your Fuji Instax Images. Just don’t let them sit in a pile, get destroyed by kids or pets, or shove them in a box to never be looked at again. These images are of some of the most precious and candid moments of your life! Hold on to them, protect them, and fix the one major issue everyone has with Fuji Instax Images!

Click here to check all of the options Amazon has for Instax album!

Also don’t forget to follow us on instagram - @shutterjunkies

Prints or Digitals and Why You Should Care!

She wanted to meet at a local coffee shop she had heard great things about. But when we arrived, the inside seating was closed due to Covid. Fortunately, because this is Texas, there’s always a Whataburger near by. Before Covid, I met almost all of my clients in coffee shops. Now I meet them in Whataburger’s because there’s always one nearby and they are open.

Our first face-to-face meeting started off just the way they always do. She was already frazzled from the work of planning her wedding but as she showed me her ideas and we talked about her plans, everything was absolutely beautiful! As a photographer, I love all of the beautiful creative work that brides and their friends and families pour into weddings to make them very beautiful and also personal events. We chatted and the conversation naturally moved on to planning and organizing the photography, I mean after all, it was the reason we were both there!

At some point, usually about half-way through the discussion, the bride-to-be always asks “Now, am I going to get all of the digitals”

“STOP ASKING ABOUT DIGITALS!!!” I screamed at the bride as I flipped the table over in a fit of rage.

Well, not really. But there is an unhealthy obsession with digital images. Brides and families always want the digitals. But digitals aren’t really what brides should be worried about!

The truth is, digital downloads are not actually the best way to get your images, display your images, or preserve your images! Most brides are concerned with digital downloads first and printed images second, but that is actually BACKWARD!

“Ok,” you might be thinking, “so whats wrong with digitals?”

Everything actually. I could write a book on what’s wrong with receiving digital images as your final wedding product from your photographer. Let’s take a brief look at some of the issues

Long-Term Storage

You downloaded them from a gallery, or received a flash drive and then downloaded them to your hard drive and you assume they will be there forever. But hard drives crash, flash drives get lost, and your gallery expires eventually. Digital storage is prone to corruption and loss more so than I am personally comfortable with. Every digital image I have is backed up with triple redundancy because I don’t trust digital storage for the long term. It has failed me too many times. And losing all of your wedding photos because of a crashed hard drive is just tragic. After all, who wants to be showing your grand children screen shots of wedding photos from Facebook because you lost all of the images in a hard drive crash 30 years ago?

Quality

Most of the images you receive digital are compressed and not the full resolution. The high resolution images that us photographers take and store are really large. What you are downloading is not the best image. Its good don’t get me wrong, but its not the best.

Display

Most people’s digital images never get seen. They show up on social media memories every once in a while, but that’s it. You can print the images yourself, but the print quality isn’t usually that great. I guess your desktop wall paper is a good option for displaying them. But who wants icons all over you and your spouse?

Prints actually fix all of these issues!

First, photographic prints last for hundreds of years (when printed professionally). They do take up physical space, but so does the computer or hard drive you are going to store them on. Print quality is also significantly higher when professionally printed. You can select from a variety of papers and finishes as well, not to mention sizes and frames! Printing an image literally moves it from being pixels on a screen to being a work of art hanging on a wall or a preciously moment sitting on your desk. Plus you’re paying tons of money and it just seems silly to not get a physical product.

We feel so passionately about prints, we’ve changed the way we do business!

As a wedding photographer, I’m not just trying to sell you prints. I actually believe in the power of prints personally. I still use my cell phone to take photos, but in the process, I order a print of every image I take! For our personal family photos, I print every image I take! We have wonderful photo albums full of our story and we can sit down as a family and share those moments again and again together.

When you book with us, you will get prints first! And also digital copies but our main focus is to give you an amazing and beautiful collection of masterfully created images, printed on real photo paper in a lab by professionals, ensuring your moments will last for centuries. Digitals, are a great back-up and we aren’t try to keep them from our brides and families, but they shouldn’t be your main focus! Get the prints! Get the photo book or photo album! Get them framed and decorate your home with those precious and beautiful moments from the first real day of your committed lives together!

And please, when we meet, you can ask about the digitals, but don’t forget to ask about the prints!

Delegation - The Best Way to Have an Easy, Fun, and Amazing Wedding!!!

Your wedding day has been something you’ve dreamed about for a while, maybe your entire life. And as many couples approach their big day, your big day becomes something you begin to stress about more and more. Your fiancé isn’t much help (he can’t help it, guys just aren’t that good this sort of thing), your family may or may not be easy to get along with. There are so many decisions to make and so many people asking you questions it just becomes overwhelming. As a photographer, I hear brides say something that just breaks my heart at almost every wedding we shoot. “I just can’t wait for this day to be over, because I’m over it.” So how does the day of your dreams become a nightmare so quickly?

The answer is simple; brides try to take on too much. A wedding is a ridiculously difficult event to plan. Its a special day not just for you, but also for your family and guests and making sure that the day flows and is as beautiful and enjoyable as you want it to be is more than a full time job for one person. So how can you possibly get everything done and still enjoy the day? How can you make all of the arrangements, all of the phone calls, all of the negotiations and selections and still be sane? You have to learn to delegate.

Depending on your personality, delegation may not be the easiest thing for you to do. Some of you out there only feel comfortable if you are in total control. While some of you may be just relaxed and want to go with the flow. The good news is that delegation can work for every personality type!

The Pastor/Officiant

I know, I know, your cousin has been to church a few times and has offered to get internet ordained so he can do your ceremony. I’ve seen this done several times and let me tell you, it never goes well. Ever. Inexperienced officiants get nervous and often don’t have any idea how to craft a beautiful and timely ceremony. Find an experienced member of the clergy or officiant to handle your ceremony and things will go much more smoothly. And, you can tell them everything you want in the ceremony and they will take care of those details! They can also help a lot at the rehearsal to make sure things flow smoothly and that everyone knows where to go and what to do. Once you have a the right pastor or officiant, you can relax and let them do the work to make sure your ceremony goes smoothly!

The DJ

This is probably one of the most over-looked roles in the wedding. The DJ can literally make or break your reception. We’ve seen so many couples decided to save a little money and just play songs off of their iPhones. This has never, ever, ever worked. The DJ is a professional that understands both sound and how to move a party along. I’ve seen talented DJ’s take a reception to from lame to fame in a couple of songs. They keep the events moving and fill in the awkward gaps with music and fun. They also come prepared to handle different technical problems that can arise. One meeting with a professional DJ and you can get all of the details of your reception figured out, planned, and then you don’t have to worry about it again!

The Photographer

I know, your aunt just spent $600 on a new camera and has taken a few senior pictures for your cousins and now you can save a bundle by letting her shoot your wedding. But a photographer does a lot more than take pictures. Photographers can help you plan and organize to make sure you get amazing photos and capture every single moment. Its not just about snapping photos, its really more about telling your story and an experienced photographer can make sure that happens. You can communicate everything you’re wanting, send all those cute/romantic/beautiful picture ideas from Pinterest, and trust your photographer to make sure everything gets done. Also, the quality of lenses, cameras, and lighting that a professional has can make a huge difference. We have spent a lot more than $600 on our equipment (more like 20 times that amount) and the quality of image we can take is a lot higher that what you aunt can get!

The Wedding Planner

A professional and experienced wedding planner can make a huge difference in making everything come together. The decorations, the cakes, the flowers, the details, and coordination is honestly a full time job the day of the wedding and as a bride, you won’t have time to handle any of it. Instead of fretting and trying to solve problems while you’re getting ready, you can delegate that to the wedding planner and trust that things will get done right. Many wedding venues provide a wedding planner as part of their packages, or some offer a planner for a nominal fee. Definitely worth asking about when you are shopping for a wedding venue!

After spending a ton of on hiring other professionals, many people don’t have the money for a wedding planner. Often, they ask a family member or friend to fill the role. Unlike the DJ, photographer, and officiant, we’ve actually seen some novice wedding planners do a good job. You just have to make sure and someone with the right personality type. A good wedding planner is going to be someone that can pay ridiculously and almost absurd attention to even the smallest of details. Get someone obsessive and dedicated to doing the job right and they can help you so so much.

Conclusion

Weddings are just so much, its way more than one person can handle. Find professionals that can make sure everything about your day goes smoothly can make a huge difference. Family and friends can also be a big help. Make sure to include them as much as you need/feel comfortable. As your big day approaches, you should find yourself doing less and less and those you’ve delegated to doing more and more. You do the work of organizing and delegating up front and then your staff of friends, family, and paid professionals will handle all the details you’ve planned out!

Announcing Our New Online Film and Vintage Camera Store!

We cannot get enough of shooting photographs on film. It is truly a magical experience and requires so much more presence in the process. But if there’s one thing that’s been a huge headache when it comes to shooting film, its getting the supplies and equipment you need out here in rural east Texas. After years of ordering film online and waiting a few weeks to get it, or looking for a camera only to have to buy it from someone who wasn’t even sure if it worked, we’ve had enough and we wanted to find a solution that would help us as well as our community of growing film photographers here east of DFW.

Beginning Friday, April 24th, we will begin to offer select film stocks available for local pick-up or delivery through mail. Our selection of film will be limited at first but we will be growing our selection as quickly as we can develop the supply chain. Initially, we will be offering Kodak films but hope to grow to stock some more obscure and interesting film stocks. We are also expanding our developing services so that you can drop of your film and get it back the next day.

We are also offering vintage film cameras, that have been thoroughly inspected and tested to ensure everything is working properly. You can purchase your next film camera with confidence knowing that it will work properly instead of hoping what you bought on Facebook Marketplace works. We will be offering a wide range of cameras, from point and shoots to DSLR’s in 35 mm, medium format, and Polaroid formats. The selection will of course depend on availability, so check our online store often to see what we have in stock!

We are putting the final touches on our online store and website today and everything should be live tomorrow (Friday, April 24th).

Let’s Talk about Covid-19

There is no doubt that these are, in so many different ways, unprecedented times. We have all suffered major disruptions and have no idea when it all could end. It’s all just so physically, emotionally, and financially draining.

But Americans have always been resilient people and I believe that we will come through this pandemic and be better for it. We are taking precautions and following all guidelines, but we are still taking photos. To help out all of those seniors who are facing such huge disruptions and families that are facing some pretty serious financial situations, we will be waiving our session fee for any seniors that want to book a session from now until May 31st. This means you can get your photos taken for free, edited and uploaded to our gallery for free, and can decide later if you want to purchase any prints or digital copies.

We don’t want to let this situation stop you from honoring all of the hard work your seniors have put in over the years and even if there may not be a graduation ceremony, graduating is still something that should be celebrated!

Contact us to talking about booking your session today and stay healthy and happy out there!!!

Senior Year Essentials

Yes, we are still in the middle of a sweltering Texas summer, but the school year is right around the corner and for the Class of 2019, it’s going to begin and fly by.  You seniors will be graduating before you know it!  It’s just insane how quickly it passes.  And with that in mind, here’s a handy guide to help all you seniors and your families make sure you don’t forget any of the essentials that will make your senior year unforgettable!

 Senior Pictures

Of course I’m going to mention those first!  But I do so not only because I’m a photographer but because of years of experience of working with high school students and yearbooks.  Honestly the best time to get your Senior Portraits done is in the fall, between August and October.  So many things depend on and require these pictures, getting them done early takes care of a lot of potential problems up front!   Your senior year has a tendency to crazy as things move on.  Demands from family, friends, school activities pile up and every year we have a flood of students who put off getting their pictures made that end up trying to get them done at the last second, only to discover that all of the photographers in the area are booked up.  Make it easy on yourself and get your session booked and on the schedule while things are still manageable.

Homecoming

Your last homecoming as a student has to be special!  Mums and garters that reflect who you are and all that school spirit you have bottled up inside are the way to go!  And if your school hosts a homecoming dance afterwards, don't forget about planning what you are going to wear and who you will be going with! 

Cap and Gown

Pretty early on in the school year, your school’s slected vendor will come by and take orders for caps, gowns, and other items.  This is your one chance to order your graduation gear.  Most vendors (balfour, josten’s, etc) will allow you to place your order and pay in installments.  Just be aware that you cannot get your cap and gown until your order is paid in full and you cannot walk with your class unless you’re wearing a cap and gown.  Most of the time, you can expect to pay in the range of $80 for your graduation outfit.  

Yearbook

Even if you’ve never ordered a yearbook in your life, trust me, you do not want to miss out in getting a copy of your senior yearbook.  It is something that you will appreciate having in a few years.  If you can order your yearbook early, you can save a ton of money!  Most yearbooks sell at a 30% to 50% discount at the beginning of the school year.  It just makes sense to get your book ordered early and get it done!  Once yearbook orders close, there may or may not be any copies available after everyone picks up their orders.  So seriously don't delay.  I missed out on buying some of my high school yearbooks and I have regretted it a lot!

Prom

From picking out the perfect outfit to taking those awkward photos with your parents, prom is a special part of the year and can be a lot of fun.  Since proms usually involve more than just going to a school dance, you will want to be on top of planning for your event.  What are you going to drive?  Or maybe we should get a limo?  What about the dress or the tux?  Are we going somewhere before the prom to eat or hang out?  Its a lot to consider and plan and it happens to come up really fast, especially since several schools have moved their proms pretty far forward in the year.

Invitations

No, you aren't expecting everyone that you send an invitation to to come to your graduation.  Most schools limit the amount of guests that you can have attend anyways.  Fortunately there's a lot of flexibility here.  The idea of an invitation is fading pretty quickly and now most people prefer to create a graduation announcement or choose to invite everyone to a graduation party that is set at a convenient time for the graduate and their family rather than inviting everyone to the actually ceremony.  Regardless of what you call it, you're going to need to make sure people know you are graduating so that you can get some of those sweet graduation gifts!  There are a lot of great websites out there to order lower-cost but still really high quality announcements/invites.  Most of these will let you customize your announcement with custom photos and text and many provide you with a variety of templates to make your invite stand out from the crowd.  It is definitely best to get your senior photos done early so that you will have these in time to get your invitations ordered.  Generally, you would want to get these out at least six weeks ahead of your graduation date, so your rich family members can make sure and get you the perfect expensive gift to celebrate the big day.

baby pictures

Graduation is a perfect time for parents and grandparents to be sentimental and most schools oblige this by having a really cheesy slideshow featuring you and all of your classmates as goofy looking babies and super mature looking semi-adults.  You and your parents are going to have to sort through all 28,752 photos that they have of you and pick out the absolute cutest or most embarrassing photos or whatever photos of you.  It takes time so plan a day when you don't have a lot going on to bust out those old photo albums, or hard drive or whatever they're stored on and get to work finding the perfect photos for the occasion.

Senior ads for the Yearbook

Speaking of goofy baby pictures, if you're looking to buy up some real estate in your yearbook you're going to need those baby photos, some of your senior photos (they keep coming up, see how important they are!), and some sweet and sentimental words from your parents and/or other family members.  If you want to save your poor yearbook teacher/sponsor a lot of heartache and grief - go ahead and get all of your photos together, get your messages from your parents ready, and get everything converted to digital and put on a flash drive.  Scan your photos to a decent resolution and save them as a .jpg or JPEG.  Do not take a picture of the picture with your phone.  Do not scan your photos to a .pdf file.  Put all of the content for your senior pages on a flash drive and deliver it to your yearbook teacher well before the deadline.  It helps them to have your stuff early and it ensures that you get a decent spot in the book.  

One last fun even with your friends

Its crazy how quickly after graduation that everyone begins to go their own way.  Take time and plan a day with your friends to go do something fun.  It doesn't have to be expensive or elaborate, just a day together reflect and enjoy one another's company.  Take lots of pictures and make the day meaningful!  You will appreciate the day and the photos for years to come, I promise!

It will be over before you Know it

It really does go by so very fast.  So stop reading and make a to do list now!  Stay on top of everything you have to get done and it will make your year less stressful and much more enjoyable!  An easy way to start is to go ahead and get your senior photo session scheduled now.  Before the year gets too wild you can just get that major component checked off!  We love taking senior portraits and we would be happy to get you scheduled so just contact us and we will get you taken care of!

Good luck, Class of 2019!  The fun is just beginning!

Shifting Gears - Moving from Easy Trends to Providing Quality for My Clients

Photo prints - the old but new way to do business. 

It’s really easy, you just hit copy and then click paste and all the little 1’s and 0’s that make up your images go flying onto a flash drive.  Some of them will get uploaded to social media, get a few views and comments, and then fall into the obscurity of the masses.  They become lost in the noise of an image driven digital society.  This is the fate of almost every photo I’ve taken for clients lately and frankly I grown to hate the digital photo cycle.  It’s time for a change.

Digital is easy.  It’s fast, it’s effortless.  Most photographers edit and format for digital distribution of the images they take because of how easy it is.  And our clients perceive the digital-only world to be easier and more affordable and so they go along with the digital trend.  But in the end, the ease actually cheapens the product and delivers to our clients a product that is easily lost and puts more of the work back on them if they want to preserve or display the photographs that they just paid a lot of money for.  So I am making a change in the way I do business.  At the heart of my decision is my desire to provide the absolute best quality images to my clients.  And not just quality, but also a product that will last.  Something more tangible than files on a flash drive.  

Why You Should Demand Prints Instead of Digital 

Digital has essentially become the new disposable.  We look at them for a second and scroll on down and we never see them again.  When you pay out $100, $200, $300 or more for photographs you deserve to receive a product that will last!  That’s the first reason you should demand prints.  And I’m not just talking about prints that roll off of an inkjet printer.  Kodak and Fuji now have printers to optically print digital images to real photographic paper.  The benefit of photographic paper is that it will last for hundreds of years and is extremely resilient.  It’s coated in multiple layers and designed to withstand a lot of abuse.  It takes the ease of digital photography and melds it with the permanence of those 70 year old photos in your grandmother’s photo album of your mom in those crazy pants with that ridiculous hair-do.  It means your moments are going to last as tangible objects that can be viewed for generations.  No need to try to scroll back through 30 years of facebook photos.  It’s right there in your house, in the box or photoalbum.  Easily accessible and unchanged by the passage of time.

The second reason you should demand prints, and I probably shouldn’t be announcing this to the public, but preparing a photograph for print demands more higher quality work from your photographer.  I suppose it’s partially a psychological thing.  With digital images we apply presets, edit a few blemishes, and bam - your photos are done.  When you’ve edited 200 images and you secretly know that your client is only going to look at them on their phone, there’s no need to make the image absolutely perfect.  At phone or even computer screen resolution no one is going to notice the little things you didn’t do as a photographer.  But when an image is going to be printed, every little detail is visible and important.  Preparing images for print takes more work but produces better images.  In the end, it’s absolutely worth it. 

But Won’t Prints Drive Up the Cost of Photography? 

Not really!  It is a matter of shifting from quantity to quality.  Instead of getting 100 to 200 mediocre digital images you get a handful of images that are works of art.  You’ll be able to permanently adorn the walls of your home with the photographs you’ve invested in instead of just enhancing your facebook or instagram feed for a few moments.  What increases may exist are more than justified by the value of the product you receive.  

Digital arrived on the scene two decades ago and changed everything.  It was a new tool in the photographer’s tool box and many new photographers used it to attract clients by touting the affordability and ease.  They stopped printing images and instead gave you hundreds of very similar photographs at varying quality levels and the consumer in all of us was satisfied.  More for our dollars, it makes sense.  But now digital photography has matured and as a photographer I want to use the tool to the fullest and this is how doing so is going to look:  I take digital images, edit them digitally and provide you with amazing physical prints from a professional lab that will last well beyond your lifetime.  Of course we aren’t throwing away the digital images and you will still receive copies of those, but by showcasing your prints instead of the digital images, I’m giving my clients the absolute best I can provide in terms of service and product.  It’s good for you and that’s all that matters to me.

An Anecdotal Conclusion...

 A few years ago, I was the yearbook sponsor at a public high school.  Part of the yearbook includes Senior Pages, a personalized page that parents could purchase for their students that contained messages and photos of their choosing.  As we worked on those pages, I ended up with stacks of prints on my desk from many many different students.  They included family photos, baby pictures, old school pictures, just all sorts of images neatly stacked up on my desk as they awaited processing for the yearbook.  Throughout the day, every day, I had to constantly tell other students to stop picking them up and looking at them.  At first I just thought it was a fluke thing but as the days passed I noticed it was an ongoing practice.  Students were drawn to the stacks of photos like moths to a flame.  They couldn’t resist picking them up, flipping through them, staring at each image like it was a work of art in a museum.  All day, every day I had to tell students to put the photos down and leave them alone.  It became such a constant problem that I had to collect them all and move to a place out of sight.  But in spite of the aggravation, I was surprised that the students, who have thousands of images on their phones that they never scroll through could not stop flipping through the stacks of prints.  Ultimately, I discovered that it’s a human thing.  The physical aspect of the printed photographs begs us to look at them.  To study them.  We glance and continue scrolling with digital images, but when you hand someone a printed image, they view it differently.  They study the details, they take time to observe and consider what the image is.  If it is worth printing, it becomes something worth viewing.  Beginning with this year’s Senior Portrait Season - we are changing our business to provide you with something worth viewing!  It’s exciting for us, and for you too!  Keep an eye out as we revamp our packages and make changes to our website.  And look for more helpful info about how you can print your own images, even from your cell phone or tablet, so you can preserve those amazing moments for years to come!

Learning and Growing

I love photography and I work hard to constantly become better at it.  It’s fun work and I enjoy learning new techniques and tricks because the results are always worth the effort!  But what no one ever tells you when you start talking about delving into the world of professional photography is that you constantly have to get better at your business practices too!  And that can be a very daunting and confusing task for someone who knows very little about business.  You constantly have to re-evaluate, reorganize, and adjust your plans and practices so that you can get your products to your customers.  Learning new business techniques are just as important as learning new photographic techniques!

My first big challenge came earlier this year when I had the amazing opportunity to shoot the Kaufman County Junior Livestock Show.  It was the most fun I have had in a while and I got to meet and work with a lot of amazing people.  But I ran into a problem, in that my workflow and fulfillment methods weren’t up to the task and that caused me to be very late in getting images out to my customers.  Yuck 😞 I want more than anything for my customers to get their images quickly and to be happy with the quality, not just because it’s good for business, but because photographs are beautiful reminders of special moments and they last a lifetime!  After struggling through the process, I learned a lot of valuable lessons and we have put all those lessons to work as changes to our workflow and fulfillment process.  What took us well over a month to get done before will now only take a couple of weeks at most!  It was a huge struggle but the learning process was definitely worth it as we have learned how to deliver photos better and faster to our customers.  

I owe a huge amount of thanks to all of the Kaufman County family for the opportunity but mostly for their patience and understanding.  Most of the parents out there were very kind and understanding of our delays as we tried to process through the literal 10,000 total images and get multiple prints out for them.  These last couple of weeks we have put all of our new procedures in place and developed some new partnerships to help us get your photos to you faster.  I’m just as excited about this as I am about any new photo technique because what good are photos if we can’t get your orders to you!

Thanks again KCJLS, with over 200 individual customers our first county show was a challenge, but it was a blessing as we got to meet and work with some very kind and gracious people and improve ourselves along the way.  Hopefully we will get to see you next year!