A wedding photographer's product base is made up of abstract and immediate elements including service, creativity, experience, professionalism and a range of items for sale. Some of these elements affect the value of your service now, but will be easily 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, family, children and grandchildren.
The most obvious product for a wedding photographer is a print album.
Since the dawn of photography, print albums have been a staple for collecting images. This is changing and the change is fast.
Since 2007, the services sold to customers with photo delivery only in electronic format have surpassed those that also require the printing of an album. Some photographers resist change but ultimately clients decide the business strategy to follow.
Wedding photography is like retail
When planning your product line remember that wedding photography is a retail industry. The rules of retail trade rarely change. There are two polar opposite topics 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.
We live in a time where immediate benefits are perceived as much more important than long-term benefits and it is much more likely that the next generation of wedding couples will exclusively want digital files instead of prints.
With all the applications that exist now, image sharing is a must for all internet users. As a result, offering photos optimized for digital format has become essential.
Look at our packages to see if you are digital too, or if you prefer a traditional package instead!
Today's audiences are happy to view their images on iPods 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 reproduced by small, compact, inexpensive equipment.
Convenience, portability and instant access in wedding photography
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 digital editing systems change. I expect that what goes around will come and in years to come the album of perfect prints may reign supreme again.
Our products in wedding photography
We at “bride and groom photographers” have chosen a portfolio of products that reflect these difficult times.
We provide options that deliver disk-only images at high, medium and low resolutions.
We also offer packages including albums and an à 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.
Do not fool yourself. If you provide prints and files in an album you cannot force your customers to buy reprints. The solution to the problem is to provide high-quality files on disk of all the images in the album together
With advice on how and where to get great prints made.
Problems for the photographer in selling wedding albums
Providing albums of prints has its problems. There are many costs and time 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 your production capacity may be the limiting factor in your wedding business.