Sell Prints Not Pixels

Many of the photographers that I coach are achieving some incredibly high numbers in their portrait sales.

In an era where we hear so much about photographers selling files at incredibly cheap prices, there are many photographers who are regularly making sales well over $2,000 and more.

Whether it is babies, families, or even pets, there is a big market out there for people wanting to buy wall art, albums and other products that will become priceless memories of their family history.

I came across this great article last week in Photography Spark, that really gives a good case for printed products.

“As a photographer, you should be thinking of printing long before you sit down to edit.

During a shoot, printing should be forefront on your mind in order to capture the correct images and ultimately cut your workflow in half.

It is crucial to shoot with intent to create a printed product that tells the full story.

For example, when photographing a wedding, you know to always get the emotional shots (for example: that moment when the mother of the bride puts her mother’s bracelet on her daughter, the bride).

But if you shoot with intent, you know that images that support that story will help in an album design—the follow up shots that complete the story (close-up of the jewelry; the tear on mom’s cheek).

To accomplish this way of thinking, we need to move beyond the concept of “printing” as only prints, because a single print will never tell a full story.

As children who grew up in the age of snapshots, we may have had them all around us, but we may only have had one or two of a specific story.

As professional photographers today, we are hired to tell the whole story, and to create the fullest account from the images, and to put that in print.

Then we have more than just slices of time but a full record of that moment.

The truth is: photographers who shoot with intent have less design changes from clients because they are telling a full story versus just trying to arrange images on a page.

When a printed product is designed well, telling the complete narrative, it truly becomes an item the client cannot live without.

Whether your images are digital or print, at some point, they will all go into storage.

As we are constantly adding to those images, we just can’t keep everything out at all times.

Let’s take the wedding photo example again; at some point, those framed photos or albums are going to end up stored in a box.

If the photographs weren’t printed out, that thumb drive might end up in that box instead.

The difference between digital and print is that twenty years, thirty years, forty years later—when someone other than us finds this artefact, how are they going to access it?

Someday, that box will be found.

Who knows if the same technology will exist?

Sure, there may be some specialist who could recover the images, but maybe not. If you pull a print out of a box, you have access to a final artefact.

You are basically guaranteeing that you will not disappear.

No matter who finds it, no matter who discovers it, they will have the final product.”

FULL STORY….www.photographyspark.com

Need help in your photography business? Simply contact Wendy

.wendy@aswpp.com.au  ph 0417 526 466

photography business coach Bernie Griffiths has had over 40 years of experience in proven, profitable, photography business solutions.