I hope you all had a great weekend despite the rain. Spring cleaning has been taking up most of my time lately but there is progress being made so I am excited to have everything finally completely organized (I am slightly embarrassed it’s taken me almost a year in our new home to do this). I stumbled across this video the other day and I have to say I’m a bit jealous. It’s a beautiful video and I’d love to have videos be a part of my website. This video was made by Red House Motion Imaging for Meg Borders (Eastern Washington based Photographer), music by Ian McIntosh and graphics by Seth Burnett.

Meg Borders from Meg Borders on Vimeo.

I was looking over my pricing and the fact that I don’t advertise that I offer the disc with images and do all in my power to convince a customer not to purchase it and to purchase prints or an album from me instead. There are many reasons for this but the most pressing is that I care about my work and my clients. I have spent years working at becoming the best photographer I can be and defining my style. I hand picked out every prop and accessory to accentuate my work. I have spent years learning photoshop and hours and hours custom editing each photo from your session to deliver a top of the line piece of art. That’s how I view it. It’s my art, my passion, my work. That’s why I have gone through lab after lab after lab to find the one that I feel creates the best tangible piece of art from my work.  I have hand picked out the products I want to offer based on what I feel my clients would want and what will be the best products for them. I care how my work looks in your home. I want it to be the feature of the room, a beautiful display that you will love. To accurately display why I fear giving clients the CD I have borrowed an image (with permission) from Erin Noie Photography. With so many consumer labs out there offering prints at such an irresistible price my poor clients stand no chance. Unfortunately all labs are not created equal and to show you that you really do get what you pay for here is an example:

As you can see the other labs are either over or under saturated and have unpleasant color casts. I haven’t done my own test of all the labs but I have compared to Costco and Walmart and they really can’t compare. I had issues of lost detail, color casts, or just completely distorted color(especially in the skin tones). The biggest issue is inconsistency, you may go one time and get an ok print but the next time you could print the same image and have it come out terrible. My computer has also been calibrated with my lab, so what you see on my screen is what you get in a print. Every lab is different though so you take the risk of no other labs’ prints looking the same (even other professional ones!).

For consumers I advise using MPIX, while they still won’t be as beautiful as my professional lab they are the best consumer lab I have found and are owned by the same company so the color will be close to accurate. I hope this helps put into perspective how a photographer sees his or her work and why they may not offer a CD. It really isn’t because they don’t care what you want but because they desperately care about their work and the final product that you receive. I hope this has been a good Wednesday tip and that everyone will think twice about where they print their images. Happy Printing!

How was everyone’s Easter? Mine was very busy but very fun. My toddler is finally old enough to really get into it so that was fun for me. Sorry I didn’t update the blog yesterday, I had some family in town so things just got a bit crazy. Just a quick reminder that since Easter is now over so are my Easter Tiny Sessions, hope you all were able to take advantage of those! How is everyone enjoying this warm weather? I am pulling out the swimsuits today, I can’t wait for summer. Hope you all enjoy the sun!