Why do you give away your images?

I don't think the real answer is up there.... it's because the consumer wants them. All business, not just this business evolve around what the consumer wants. If you aren't willing to provide what they want, someone else will!

Also my wedding photos were taken on film which the photographer only agreed to keep the negatives for 10 years due to storage issues. So I'm "SOL" if I want copies now. I would have loved / and paid for a high quality "non-copy written" CD.

Number 1 for me.

I can do without the hassle. I sell the service. making prints is a PITA. I would rather just do the photography, convert in DPP with maybe a bit of Photoshop then hand the CD/DVD over and be done.

It means less hassle with accounts. It means I don't have to faff about with online printing services. I can give away coupons from labs that do work that I like with each CD/DVD. It means customers know I'm not ripping them off.

I do not shoot weddings, but have 4 daughters. When my last daughter got married we purchased the DVD with the high resolution images on it. We paid $500.00 for it and that was if there were $500.00 worth of prints ordered. I was happy to have paid that amount as we are now using them in a digital picture frame. From my standpoint that was important and we would have found a photog that would include it. All of them around here now include this option for a charge.

Business is driven by the consumer as they are the ones that have the money that you want. If you want the money you have to give them what they want. Just thought I would give the viewpoint from a recent consumers standpoint.

The times are a changing and we need to get with it. This digital age empowers people to print at home, email, scan and do what they like with photos. People are demanding it. Gone are the days when photographers held all the power and called the shots. Printing and selling wedding photos seems old-school to me. However in my landscape side of my business the opposite applies. It depends on where you live I suppose but where I come from people see my job nowadays to take the photos, hardly anyone requests an album, if they do I refer them to someone who wants to do it. The industry has been in a state of change for several years now - in a similar way the music industry has changed. Technology will continue to affect the way we work. here's a quote for you
“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.” Stewart brand

Cheers

damian

If you look at the industry you can get a clear idea that those that include album and prints are typically the ones that are in the high-end side of the business.
It is not only a logical belief that if you pay a lot more you should get more "stuff" (not just quality) but also a psychological one.

This type of age is where a lot of people give out their images is a perfect opportunity to differentiate yourself.

One of the cornerstones of successful businesses is the fact that they are different than the other guys, they have a niche.
By operating in an area where everyone gives their stuff away you can distinguish yourself from them by offering prints and albums.

People will pay a lot more if they have something that is tangible (like an album or a proof book).

It will take a bit of practice to learn the answers to the typical questions you will get ("Why are you not giving out the high res DVD like all the other photogs?", etc) and I think with some small effort it can be done.
I look at not giving your images away and providing albums, prints and proof books as an opportunity to enter the upper and high-end wedding photography business.

The old model is to charge a small amount to show up and shoot, then make money on the back end with reprint and album sales. Under the old model, the couple would get a book of paper proofs and an order form.

Problem is, scanners became prolific along with kiosks at every corner drug store, where folks could scan the paper proofs and not need to order the expensive products from pro photographers.

The answer to this seems to be to charge a lot to show up and shoot and not worry so much about back end sales. Under this model, it doesn't matter if folks use snapfish to make their prints, because the photographer is charging enough upfront to cover the lack of back end sales.

I think Jamie has hit the nail on the head, so I have nothing to add in that regards. It's what you have to do to be competitive and to make enough money that it's feasible to be a wedding photog. The problem therein lies that some people simply sell themselves short and they charge hardly anything for their time and the disc. This can drive down prices in your market if your work doesn't stand on it's own and command the price you are asking.

This isn't really an answer to the question, but I have been a web designer for many years. Used to be I got a fairly decent price for my basic web designs. However any kid coming out of high-school (or younger) can put together a basic website, so you find you have to change and adapt to keep in business. No different than any hardware store, manufacturing company, restaurant, heck any business. You adapt to stay alive because someone will always find a way to undercut what you are doing, or offer better services to 'beat the competition'. It's how life works.

I don't give anything away.

I'm with Rhys on this one. I don't like screwing around with it. I would rather spend the extra time playing with my daughter or out kitesurfing/biking/win​dsurfing/skiing.

I price myself just like Jaime had mentioned.

#4, every photog here includes Cd/DVDs, high res.
However we also tell clients that if they took the files to print @ local DIY printers, we don't guarantee the results.
I could prefer we do the printing, even though it's actually quiet a bit more work for us for not so much money this days.

I prefer to get my money up front. That way, I'm satisfied with the job regardless if there are back-end sales or not. I charge for my time and I include unedited digital negatives on disc. However, I'll throw in a couple of prints as a bonus at the end. Most customers see the editing done on the prints vs. the raw files and end up ordering large prints from me. This is something I encourage them to do right from the beginning. Do the small ones however you want, but let me handle the large, high quality stuff.

When my husband and I were searching for a wedding photographer we interviewed a dozen. One photographer mentioned he just spent a boat load of money on a mobile photo lab. He could give you books 20 minutes after he finished taking pictures... but did not offer digital images for us to have. Impressive but I'm not that interested in instant gratification, I want the memories. What happens if my house catches fire or my basement floods ruining the pictures (this actually happened to me this spring)? We have to pay for all new pictures? Not in the digital age!

In the end we ended up going with a girl who shot only digital and gave us both hi and lo res disks, she did very minimal post production and we were told of that ahead of time. We didn't order any prints but she got more than $2k from us. I wanted someone who shot only digital and wanted someone to give me the images so I could use them in my scrapbooking, make photo gifts from them and email to friends.

We interviewed over a dozen photographers until we got one who would give us the pictures we paid for in digital form to do what we wanted. We were married 4 years ago and a friend going through that process now is finding that to the norm of the photographers she's been interviewing, which is refreshing.

In the end I got 5 x 7s of all my pictures and 4 CDs - 2 lo res (b/w & color) and 2 hi res (b/w & color).

I recommend her over any of the others to everyone who asks


Jen

jamiewexler wrote in post #4251313
The old model is to charge a small amount to show up and shoot, then make money on the back end with reprint and album sales. Under the old model, the couple would get a book of paper proofs and an order form.

Problem is, scanners became prolific along with kiosks at every corner drug store, where folks could scan the paper proofs and not need to order the expensive products from pro photographers.

The answer to this seems to be to charge a lot to show up and shoot and not worry so much about back end sales. Under this model, it doesn't matter if folks use snapfish to make their prints, because the photographer is charging enough upfront to cover the lack of back end sales.

Glen Johnson talks about this in his recently published book (Digital Wedding Photography).

He breaks it down into two models.
1. The creative fee model - Larger upfront costs with little to no sales afterwards. The couple pays for your time and may get albums or discs included in the fee.
2. The aftermarket sales model -low initial cost for the photographer but the photographer relies on selling prints and albums after the wedding.

It's two different ways of doing the same thing, making money. As everyone has said, you aren't GIVING AWAY anything. If you are planning on selling prints then you generally aren't charging much up front (because really you aren't giving them anything tangible up front, your charging for your time).

Glen also looks at these business models with regards to style and photographer motivation which I found interesting. He suggests that the photographer who uses the aftermarket sales model will be inclined to shoot only what he/she knows will sell and will tend to be less creative (because something that doesn't work probably won't sell). The creative fee model will be working to earn that larger shooting fee and capture anything and everything so more of the day ends up in the clients hands.

I've been on the other side of this. I got married over a year ago and finding a photographer was a daunting task (both because I'm critical of my craft and because like many we had a budget). Times really have changed. Our society is embracing media rich lifestyle from HD TV to home movies and slide shows. People want the creative freedom to make their OWN projects. I really agree with others, some (many?) people may not WANT prints anymore.

Anyway, as Jamie says, you have to adapt. I don't think anyone is GIVING away anything if you are charging a couple 5,000 plus dollars for a day of shooting and a CD of images. That's my .02

I include a disc with my package as I prefer to charge my clients with upfront costs and not subject them any additional costs. Sort of a "Turn Key" plan. I'm trying to avoid the appearance of the ice cream scene from "A Day At The Races" I was on the wrong end of that exchange and hated it

Kevin