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I offer FREE wedding photography to lucky couples who are after the best quality at the lowest price.

How does it work?

Myself and my partner will waive all professional fees and charge nothing. That’s right. We shoot for free!

You only need to pay for rental of our equipment and we shoot for free. Rental is at a very low rate, only 10% of the actual value.

We will also throw in a free album. Woot.

As this is going to be an in demand package don’t delay in booking as soon as you can to avoid disappointment.

Let me know!

And for the professional wedding photographers reading this…smile knowingly

Why? The equipment we bring to each wedding is worth more than RM120,000. Ouch!

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I have made lots of mistakes on my journey as a wedding photographer and have decided to share some to help the up coming generation of photographers avoid some really easy traps! It could mean the difference between you being out of a job or having a thriving business. Today’s tip is about giving back soft copy.

This is a decision that is balanced on a razors edge, and the chance of cutting yourself in two is very real. First some history.

Back in the days of film photographers used to either never give back softcopy, or would hold on to it for a year or two then either give them back to the client for free, sell them to the client, or dispose of them. For my own wedding we never received the negatives back. Not helped by the fact that the photographer disappeared

So, why was this the normal policy? Two reasons, one was to maintain print quality, as the person holding the negatives was the one who controlled printing. Secondly, negatives didn’t duplicate well, so giving them away meant he photographer could never reprint photos for their own portfolio, advertising etc. As most photographers practiced not giving them back, clients were fine with the situation.

What changed when we went digital?

The second reason evaporated as digital reproduction is easy enough, however the first reason still remains, i.e. print quality control.

Now think for a moment, what are your down lines from a wedding? It is going to be your clients friends and family. By giving back full resolution files, you have surrendered quality control of all printing, and believe me, very few of your clients will spend on QUALITY reprinting. They will likely use the cheapest lab they know and the results will likely be DISMAL compared to a PROFESSIONAL LAB. When their friends and family view the muddied reprints, they will not blame the lab, they will blame the photographer. Your down lines are burned.

The other thing that today’s post film photographers usually do not know, is that the real money in wedding photography, and by this I mean the profits, what will keep you in the black instead of red ink,  is reprint and ALBUM sales. This is not profiteering, it is about whether you will be able to earn a livable income (like your clients do!), so you can pay your mortgage, meet your car payments, save for your kids to go to college, and for your own living expenses and eventual retirement. And believe me, to be a successful wedding photographer you will be working harder and longer hours than the vast majority of your clients do, so expect to be recompensed appropriately.

I personally know talented photographers who no longer shoot as they did not understand this, and are now back working as a salaried worker in a job they don’t like. Their dreams are burned, and the wedding industry as a whole is the loser.

So, what should you do?

Here’s my current policy. I give back watermarked  images re-sized for easy emailing and previewing on web sites and computer screens. Most peoples monitors are calibrated OK enough for the quality of my editing to be apparent. If people want to print from them…well good luck. BUT my packages always drive towards some sort of printing by me. That way poor reprints from a budget lab will look bad next to mine. Then the client will know the truth. A year later I give them back images suitable for 4R images, which is what they are most likely to print. By this time they already have my prints, so they know what quality is and will seek out the best labs they can possibly find. Lastly I retain ALL photos from ALL weddings in my storage systems, so that for the next 50 years or so they can get professional canvas prints and albums done at top quality.

This is why I will be in business until I can no longer carry a camera.

So, how do you convince your client to accept this. Simple.

1. Use a pro lab for your printing. Maybe print the same photo at a pro lab and a budget lab on their cheapest no-brand paper and show them the difference.
2. Print on the best quality papers you can – BTW some pros in Malaysia still compromise on this. I don’t compromise and it shows in better prints
3. Ask your clients how they wish to use the images. If they want to do an album tell them that it is part of your package. If they threaten to use someone else explain why you want to do the album, to ensure quality. If they get bolshy, walk away. They are likely going to be a pain. Be nice about it but maintain your standards.
4. It’s more probable your clients will be using the images only for their web site, blog, facebook, and phone anyway, so 72dpi 700×700 pixel images is enough for most people
5. Make sure your contract stipulates that you hold the copyright.

Remember: ALBUMS are your main reselling tool, so NEVER do a shoot without an album included. I have, and deeply regret having done this. It has usually resulted in no referrals from these clients as no one ever sees the photos

All the best and I will do another story along these lines in the future.

When is a back up not a back up?

When you ony have one copy.

Let me explain.

Some photographers copy their images to their hard drives as a “back up”, and then format their cards so they can continue shooting. This is not a back up strategy. Backups mean you have a copy of the photos you have taken, in two different locations. If one source fails, then the other is still intact. Therefor “backing p to a hard drive is a backup, but deletign the files from your cameras cards eliminates the back up, as you are left with one single copy, and therefore one single point of failure.

There are various ways of doing this. I use all of the following techniques as they work for me, and I can think of nothing worse than telling a client that you lost their photos!

First method is copying the photos on to your hard drive and having enough CF or SD cards, so that you need not erase the cards before you have completed editing the photos, and handed back your client the deliverables. I use a LOT of 4GB cards, and as they are fairly inexpensive this is a a sound method. The only time this gets awkward, is when you have a lot of shoots back to back.

The second method I use, is to have my computer do a regular back up, and to back up the photos to an external hard drive BEFORE you erase your cards. This method is very cheap, with terabyte hard drives being very inexpensive these days. If you are using a MAC then things are even easier, as Time machine automatically backs up your hard drive every hour without you even thinking about it.

The last method I use, for when I move the files off my main system, is what we call “near storage” or files we can access easily enough if required. For this I used to use DVDs. Once your collection of post shoot DVD archives gets over a thousand discs you realize there has to be a better way. I use DROBOS. I have two of them. They are very expandable and pretty fast once they boot up.

Their only weak point is that they use a proprietary OS, so if the main unit goes, you must buy a new one if you want to recover your data. That’s why I have TWO.

Other options include running your own servers, and should you opt to do this FreeNas is a pretty excellent one to use. You can learn more here. Well worth a look.