The basis of wedding photography services is made up of abstract and immediate elements including service, creativity, experience, professionalism and a range of items for sale. Some of these items influence the value of your service now but will soon be forgotten in years to come. The product line I want to talk about is the tangible items that customers take away with them to show to friends, relatives, children and future grandchildren.
The most obvious product for a wedding photographer to provide is an album of prints. Since the dawn of photography, print albums have been a staple of image collections. This is changing, and the change is fast. Since 2005, it has been normal for photographers to deliver their images to the client in electronic format. Some photographers resist change but ultimately clients mark their own path.
Our packages always include a flash drive and a DVD with a selection of the best shots. We also have additional services such as photo albums, prints at the banquet for all guests: take a look at our products page to see directly what we offer.
Wedding photography is retail. The rules don't change. Wedding photographic services
Wedding photography is retail at heart. The rules of retail trade rarely change. There are two opposing arguments that regularly come into play: “give customers what they want” and “give customers what they need”. You could say that these two topics also form the basis of world politics. There is always a balance between morality and desire. In 2005, the McDonald's restaurant chain was under pressure to provide healthier meals, not from its customers, but from its critics. McDonald's customers wanted burgers, but in some cases they needed salads. A careful repositioning of the brand took place to promote a healthier lifestyle. Salads and healthy options were introduced to the menu as a result. Mcdonald's was careful not to alienate its loyal customer base and continued to offer a super size option too. How does this have to do with wedding photography? Well, I suggest you make sure you give your customers what they want and build your product line around their desire.
You can choose to have other products that you feel obligated to offer to fulfill your responsibilities when you have a one-on-one relationship with them. We live in an age where immediate benefits are perceived as much more important than long-term benefits. Wedding albums with acid-free pages and fine prints produced on archival documents are what customers need to preserve their images for the enjoyment of their children and grandchildren for years to come. However, it is likely that next generation of married couples prefer digital files rather than prints. They will likely share their photos via email and texting images from their cell phone. They can produce DVD presentations or create picture books using Apple's iPhoto or other online book design software. Today's audiences are happy to view their photos on tablets and other low-resolution personal electronic devices. The same revolution occurred in the music industry with the rise of the mp3 format. For the most part, hi-fi has been replaced with reasonable quality sound by small, compact, inexpensive equipment.
Convenience, portability and instant access in our wedding photography services
Convenience, portability and instant access are the key to providing creative content to the new generation. My only concern is the long-term risk of losing valuable images as formats and systems change. I expect that what is going out the door will come back in and in years to come the album of perfect prints may reign supreme again. In fact, in this period we are witnessing a great demand for albums: a well-designed finished product in a carefully designed case has a great impact on spouses and families. Digital reigns supreme, but we still love touching.
I have chosen a set of products that reflect these difficult times. We sell packages where we exclusively provide images on stick or disk at high, medium and low resolutions. We also offer album packages and an a la carte menu for other products. The main idea behind our pricing structure is that the customer is purchasing the image, not the piece of paper it is printed on or the disk it is stored on. On the other hand, let's not fool ourselves: by providing prints in an album it will never be possible to get customers to buy reprints. It's all too easy with today's compact cameras for a client to photograph all the prints in the main wedding album and have the photos printed at a print shop or even an online store. The solution to the problem of poor copies is to provide high-quality files on disk of all the images in the album along with advice on how and where to get great prints.
Wedding photographic services: photo albums
The solution to lost revenue due to copyright abuse is to get paid for the right images in the first place. Providing albums of prints has its problems. There are many costs and long times associated with album production. Some photographers spend at least a week designing, printing and constructing a wedding album. Time is a precious resource and ultimately production capacity may be the limiting factor in the wedding business. Being a photographer one day a week doesn't seem like a challenge , but making 50 wedding albums in a year is actually very hard work. Consequently it is not possible to sell off the wedding album. We use the best materials to maximize the value of the albums, so they are worth their price. We craft our albums uniquely, style them, and maintain them far beyond the capabilities of even the most creative clients. We have design rules for designing and producing albums that are a finished product in themselves, complete bodies of work that have a continuity of style from top to bottom.
Wedding photographic services: color images
We have noticed that in recent years there has been an increased demand for color images and our albums now have fewer black and white prints as a result. When we deliver our images to disk, we always include a color option of all images, even those that we think work best in black and white. The trend of mixing color and monochrome even images in the same album may be on its way out. A good indicator of the change in style is the editorial section of major wedding magazines. There are no longer black and white, spot colour, tinted or slanted images in UK magazines.
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