What packaging do you use to deliver photos?

Hey wedding photographers?

What packaging do you use to deliver photos? I always deliver the images on a (wooden) small drive. Is there a company you can recommend for packaging small wooden drives to deliver the final wedding photos to clients?

Thanks!

My daughter or I will do an occasional wedding. We order a wood thumb drive on Amazon, along a white wood box to place it in. We meet the client in person and review the finished images on our laptop together.

Assuming these are USB flash drives, how long should the drives retain their data?

Assuming a couple in their 20's are married today, assuming their marriage lasts, and there is compatible hardware/software at that time, is it reasonable to expect them to share their wedding photos with their grandchildren? Their great grandchildren?

To be absolutely safe, I'd recommend making a minimum of 3 copies every 5 years. Store 1 copy on site ( along with having it on their laptop), 1 copy off site (relatives home) for backup and have stored on Google/Drive or other Cloud storage for best security. Separate locations is the real key here.

Printing books is still a good way to view (I prefer weddings in a book). Maybe even print a 2nd/3rd sealed copy for the family to have in pristine condition later. Store in a dark dry place.

oharing wrote in post #18871837
Hey wedding photographers?

What packaging do you use to deliver photos? I always deliver the images on a (wooden) small drive. Is there a company you can recommend for packaging small wooden drives to deliver the final wedding photos to clients?

Thanks!

I don't do weddings, but I deliver on a Lucite flash drive in a box, both of which bear my studio logo. I recommend Rice Studio Supply:

https://www.ricestudio​supplies.com …g/box-flash-drive-bundles

But what I primarily do are wall and desk portraits. What's on the flash drive is what they purchased for printing.

All digital now for us. All via pixiset.com

Capn Jack wrote in post #18935374
Assuming these are USB flash drives, how long should the drives retain their data?

Assuming a couple in their 20's are married today, assuming their marriage lasts, and there is compatible hardware/software at that time, is it reasonable to expect them to share their wedding photos with their grandchildren? Their great grandchildren?

It is sad...while I can imagine great grandchildren sitting around the kitchen table viewing 'the album of great granma's marriage to great granpa'
I have a harder time imagining folks plugging in a USB memory stick to do the same thing!

USB ports might have evolved and the plug on the USB stick might no longer fit the socket on laptops/PCs 50 years from now!
How many folks under 40 remember the parallel port which the Zip drive could be plugged into? (what if Zip drives were used to deliver wedding shots...30-35 years ago?!)
For pros delivering wedding photos on DVD, how many households own laptops which HAVE NO DVD player to play them on?!

Wilt wrote in post #19017592
It is sad...while I can imagine great grandchildren sitting around the kitchen table viewing 'the album of great granma's marriage to great granpa'
I have a harder time imagining folks plugging in a USB memory stick to do the same thing!

USB ports might have evolved and the plug on the USB stick might no longer fit the socket on laptops/PCs 50 years from now!
How many folks under 40 remember the parallel port which the Zip drive could be plugged into? (what if Zip drives were used to deliver wedding shots...30-35 years ago?!)
For pros delivering wedding photos on DVD, how many households own laptops which HAVE NO DVD player to play them on?!

Agree.

Wilt wrote in post #19017592
It is sad...while I can imagine great grandchildren sitting around the kitchen table viewing 'the album of great granma's marriage to great granpa'
I have a harder time imagining folks plugging in a USB memory stick to do the same thing!

USB ports might have evolved and the plug on the USB stick might no longer fit the socket on laptops/PCs 50 years from now!
How many folks under 40 remember the parallel port which the Zip drive could be plugged into? (what if Zip drives were used to deliver wedding shots...30-35 years ago?!)
For pros delivering wedding photos on DVD, how many households own laptops which HAVE NO DVD player to play them on?!

Absolutely.

From our wedding, we received 5 albums of photos, 3 flash drives (all duplicates), and 3 CDs. It was from a husband/wife team out of Lancaster, PA. We also ordered 2 photos blown up and framed...but to be honest we only see those two framed shots as all the rest of the stuff is in a box stored away (for the past 14+ years!). So maybe even printed photos don’t get too much action anymore either.

But I do see the point about USB drives. Even now the USB C is becoming the standard so if you get a USB 2.0 or 3.0 you will most likely need an adapter inside of 5 years.

Quadna71 wrote in post #19017706
From our wedding, we received 5 albums of photos, 3 flash drives (all duplicates), and 3 CDs. It was from a husband/wife team out of Lancaster, PA. We also ordered 2 photos blown up and framed...but to be honest we only see those two framed shots as all the rest of the stuff is in a box stored away (for the past 14+ years!). So maybe even printed photos don’t get too much action anymore either.

But I do see the point about USB drives. Even now the USB C is becoming the standard so if you get a USB 2.0 or 3.0 you will most likely need an adapter inside of 5 years.

That's why I push wall portraits.

Quadna71 wrote in post #19017706
From our wedding, we received 5 albums of photos, 3 flash drives (all duplicates), and 3 CDs. It was from a husband/wife team out of Lancaster, PA. We also ordered 2 photos blown up and framed...but to be honest we only see those two framed shots as all the rest of the stuff is in a box stored away (for the past 14+ years!). So maybe even printed photos don’t get too much action anymore either.

But I do see the point about USB drives. Even now the USB C is becoming the standard so if you get a USB 2.0 or 3.0 you will most likely need an adapter inside of 5 years.

Yeah, I am just as guilty in knowing which cabinet contains the wedding album, but not having leafed thru it in a long time.
Yet I can tell you where to find every neg of every wedding coverage I have done!

But I also know that when my wife and I are both dust, the next generation or their offspring will reatively easily find the album.
USB drives or memory cards have to be found... in which drawer?, and of a dozen of them around in multiple drawers, which USB stick or CF or SDHC?
Even DVDs need to be found...where are they filed, in between the pages of what book? and if I find a DVD will it have a professional label applied to identify it from all the other photo DVDs?!
But I would be remiss not to see that if a USB stick or SDHC card were delivered in a professional box nicely decorated on the outside, it will be just as obvious as my wedding album.

Wilt wrote in post #19017802
Yeah, I am just as guilty in knowing which cabinet contains the wedding album, but not having leafed thru it in a long time.
Yet I can tell you where to find every neg of every wedding coverage I have done!

But I also know that when my wife and I are both dust, the next generation or their offspring will reatively easily find the album.
USB drives or memory cards have to be found... in which drawer?, and of a dozen of them around in multiple drawers, which USB stick or CF or SDHC?
Even DVDs need to be found...where are they filed, in between the pages of what book? and if I find a DVD will it have a professional label applied to identify it from all the other photo DVDs?!
But I would be remiss not to see that if a USB stick or SDHC card were delivered in a professional box nicely decorated on the outside, it will be just as obvious as my wedding album.

Yes, it's very unlikely the grandchildren are going to bother looking for a method to view that flash drive or DVD unless it's identified and otherwise presented as something particularly significant.

I remember times, in my elementary school age childhood, having some idle moments in which I casually took out family photo albums laying conspicuously on a coffee table or shelf, and leafing thru them...seeing photos of my grandmother and relatives at the 1939 Golden Gate International Expo and photos from WWII times, before I was a gleam in daddy's eye. Family pictures taken during historically significant times.
I cannot imagine casual curiosity becoming similar learning opportunities about history, by kids two generations from now looking at smartphones or tablets that no way to accept the digital media of today. And no family albums to leaf thru, because posting on Facebook was the rage, yet all that is lost when Facebook ceases to exist, like Cray Computer and Digital Equipment Corp, and Nirvanix.
The media lying about will get thrown out, as too much of a bother to see what's recorded. And historians and anthropologists will lose billions of photos, many of them with historical or anthropological significance.

The last few weddings I shot 20 years ago were digital. The B&G got two CDs with a release on them, along with a list of printers who could produce their images. Six months later, I was contacted by the parents and asked for two more CDs because theirs were "lost". The truth was that they were too lazy to burn more disks for relatives even though they were given releases and license to do so. Their disks were supplied in CD liners with my company name and the B&G's names on them. I printed sleeves at home that made a nice presentation.

Perhaps now, the ubiquitous laptop may not have a burner, but that is a purchase choice. There are major manufacturers that produce machines with burners as an option, but many choose not to include the feature in their purchase of a laptop. They can always buy an outboard burner if they need one. I have yet to see a machine that has NO usb input.

USB drives? Sure, the time will come when legacy drives will no longer work. That's not my responsibility. If I were still shooting weddings, I'd keep a copy CD (they haven't disappeared yet, despite the doomsayers) and (maybe) a copy thumb drive. Copies of my CDs and thumb drives would command a steep price. Storage of these things require space and record keeping, services that cost money. If I were still in the wedding rat race, I'd supply an elegant presentation box similar to the boxes used by jewelry stores. In large quantities, they don't cost much.

I kept NO negatives of weddings that I shot 25-30 years ago. After five years, I sent out letters offering to sell the negatives if the couple (or parents) who wanted them. In many cases, both the B&G and the parents were no longer to be found, so I burned the negatives. In my contract, I stipulated that I would not keep negatives past five years. It was rare that anyone came back for reprints after five years anyway, so those negatives piled up pretty fast. The B&Gs who never purchased reprints and who could be tracked down almost always hopped at the chance to buy them.

RE: media becoming "legacy" and no longer readable. It wouldn't be my responsibility to maintain images on current media. I wonder how many film shooters are willing to provide scans of negatives (or even have the means to do so).

Again, I have been out of the wedding rat race for some time, and people's attitudes change through the years. Relative newcomers to the industry want to be everything to everyone and really want to provide documentation and memories in style. Hats off to them.