Making the CD

Okay so I have been getting a lot of business, which is awesome. But my last wedding and 3 photoshoots have wanted to buy a CD of the pictures. How do ya'll go about it? In the past I have just used the CD's from walmart, and have had to use a million of them because of the picture size. It has been a very time consuming process, and I feel like those CD's just aren't professional looking. Is there a company I can use to just upload the pictures and have them send off a CD? Or do what do you guys do in regards to CD's? Just looking at options. Thanks!

For cd's I just burn to a dvd and then use my epson printer to print onto the dvd and it makes it look a whole lot better.

For portrait shoots I don't offer a cd. It's a $50 print credit for images hosted on zenfolio. They can buy them there. If they want a digital download for their own printing it's $10 an image on the site. If they want to buy the cd it's $200 for all the ones that go up on the site for that portrait shoot. So there's options that you can use. Sometimes after a shoot they only want a few digitals, so they are getting $50 in prints and they tend to buy more than that for prints even with the free $50...and then I get requests for individual pictures and they can digitally download them. Seems to work for me.

I resize to either 3000 or 3600 pixels on the longest side and I save as Q8, that's plenty of data for customers to make prints. Images come to 1-3MB, so you fit around 2000 on a single DVD. I burn the images onto a taiyo yuden brand DVD, inkjet printable, then I print a picture and title directly onto it.

If you're burning images straight from the camera onto the CD... that's not really professional. Cull, color correct (including brightness, exposure, color, etc), and give customers images ready to be printed.

I hope you're selling the images for what they're worth. A good professional should average around $2000 from a portrait sitting, and more from a wedding, if you include the images. If you're doing portraits for $250 and giving away the CD you're losing money, once you take expenses, time, etc into account.

tim wrote in post #11368453
I resize to either 3000 or 3600 pixels on the longest side and I save as Q8, that's plenty of data for customers to make prints. Images come to 1-3MB, so you fit around 2000 on a single DVD. I burn the images onto a taiyo yuden brand DVD, inkjet printable, then I print a picture and title directly onto it.

If you're burning images straight from the camera onto the CD... that's not really professional. Cull, color correct (including brightness, exposure, color, etc), and give customers images ready to be printed.

I hope you're selling the images for what they're worth. A good professional should average around $2000 from a portrait sitting, and more from a wedding, if you include the images. If you're doing portraits for $250 and giving away the CD you're losing money, once you take expenses, time, etc into account.

Wait, you're telling me that a person should make $2,000 from a family/senior portrait session? That is a bit ridiculous in the American market. I mean, there are some that are probably able to do that. But on the whole I have a hard time believing that professionals in this forum make anywhere close to 2grand on normal 1-2 hour portraits sessions.

I can see anywhere between $300-500 overall from a family portrait/senior session but I can't wrap my head around a pro making 2grand for a portrait session. There are plenty of professionals in here and by going to their sites I don't see them making anywhere close to 2-grand when all said and done.

Maybe you can clarify what entails a "portrait" session for you.

tim wrote in post #11368453
I hope you're selling the images for what they're worth. A good professional should average around $2000 from a portrait sitting,

I am apparently living in a completely different part of the world... I'm moving to where you live.

tfizzle wrote in post #11368511
Wait, you're telling me that a person should make $2,000 from a family/senior portrait session? That is a bit ridiculous in the American market. I mean, there are some that are probably able to do that. But on the whole I have a hard time believing that professionals in this forum make anywhere close to 2grand on normal 1-2 hour portraits sessions.

I can see anywhere between $300-500 overall from a family portrait/senior session but I can't wrap my head around a pro making 2grand for a portrait session. There are plenty of professionals in here and by going to their sites I don't see them making anywhere close to 2-grand when all said and done.

Maybe you can clarify what entails a "portrait" session for you.

Most of the portrait professionals making their mortgage nut from it also do not provide a CD of all the images, either. If they did--$2000 would be the cost.

But your post reveals another point of misunderstanding:

You should realize that the length of the portrait session has very little to do with the cost of the session to the photographer or the final price of the portraits to the client.

My own portrait sessions begin with two to three hours of planning and consultation even before the photo session. There will probably be at several hours of post processing and preparing for the preview session. Another two hours for the preview session (which I do in the clients' homes), including travel. There is time to prepare the order (set up and upload to the lab), probably another hour. Time to package the final products, another hour. Delivery to the client, another hour (including travel).

When you're providing a very high level of service, it's not difficult to get into thousands of dollars. But such high levels of service correspond to high-end clients.

kalahmarie wrote in post #11368152
Okay so I have been getting a lot of business, which is awesome. But my last wedding and 3 photoshoots have wanted to buy a CD of the pictures. How do ya'll go about it? In the past I have just used the CD's from walmart, and have had to use a million of them because of the picture size. It has been a very time consuming process, and I feel like those CD's just aren't professional looking. Is there a company I can use to just upload the pictures and have them send off a CD? Or do what do you guys do in regards to CD's? Just looking at options. Thanks!

There are some labs, such as Millers and H&H, that do provide CDs along with the rest of the print order. I do my own using Taiyo Yuden inkjet printable DVDs and an Epson Artisan 810 to print them.

RDKirk wrote in post #11369538
When you're providing a very high level of service, it's not difficult to get into thousands of dollars. But such high levels of service correspond to high-end clients.

this is the difference between portrait artists and lifestyle photographers. I think people tend to get them confused.

sctbiggs wrote in post #11369575
this is the difference between portrait artists and lifestyle photographers. I think people tend to get them confused.

It's just the language. I understand if you say lifestyle photographer but I'm guessing that's just a minor segment of the market. I'm guessing most "professional photographers" don't make anywhere close to 2k. Maybe 1k would be pushing the higher end for most senior/family photographers when all said and done.

The reason I mention the 1-2 hour portrait session is that's what most portrait clients ask about. I know it takes a lot longer than that.

That's why I ask about clarification on what Tim means by "portrait session". By all things said and done I see most weddings in my area (Portland Oregon and surrounding areas) with packages of 2k-3.5k and I know they are only grossing around 12-1800k from those weddings. That's below a simpler portrait session mark that Tim says. I haven't seen/heard/known of anybody in 2 years of talking to people about photography that mention a 2k grossing portrait session unless working for some famous/celebrity/lifes​tyle portraits session or using it for commercial purposes.

tfizzle wrote in post #11370048
It's just the language. I understand if you say lifestyle photographer but I'm guessing that's just a minor segment of the market. I'm guessing most "professional photographers" don't make anywhere close to 2k. Maybe 1k would be pushing the higher end for most senior/family photographers when all said and done.

Actually, $1000 is a realistic average for a senior photographer to shoot for. My minimum is $600 (we agree on at least that much before even scheduling a session) and I do $1200 with a bit of regularity for seniors.

If I get a chance to walk through the home with the wife during the consultation, I can usually plant a seed in her mind for a whole-house decorating solution that gets the final portrait purchase up to $2000.

couple quickies... I do the exact same as RDKIRK,

side note... do the math, add up all your expenses for living... everything.
how many shoots do you want? 50 a year? + 15 weddings....
you need to charge 1500 a session AND 6k a wedding to ACTUALLY MAKE money in most suburban areas. YMMV.

this was a blem, put it in to burn before it was dry in the center... SPIN ART!

Gravy Graffix showed you how to produce a professional product. That's good advice. If your printer doesn't print on the cd, you can buy cd labels, but to just hand over a silver cd with the name written in Sharpie marker is very amateur, regardless of how much you are charging to begin with. You are on the right track by even asking the question.

DVDs hold more shots than cds, if i'm not mistaken?

RDKirk wrote in post #11370202
Actually, $1000 is a realistic average for a senior photographer to shoot for. My minimum is $600 (we agree on at least that much before even scheduling a session) and I do $1200 with a bit of regularity for seniors.

If I get a chance to walk through the home with the wife during the consultation, I can usually plant a seed in her mind for a whole-house decorating solution that gets the final portrait purchase up to $2000.

That sounds a bit better and I can grasp it. That's still about 100% more than my area can bare or solicit. Even the true professionals in my area probably make around $600 but he supplements that with 2 different business fronts. He has a personal marketed business (his name) and a company market (entity) that has a different vibe for a different market. One is more of lifestyle/wedding and the other is for seniors and families. His wedding/lifestyle is priced much more than his senior/families but they both entail "portrait sessions" save weddings. Even with the weddings and accounting expenses I'm guessing the gross is 2k-3k for weddings.

I'm not sure if he has another job or not, though.

gravy graffix wrote in post #11370217
couple quickies... I do the exact same as RDKIRK,

is this the printer you guys are using to do this

http://www.epson.com …Cookie=yes&sku=​C11CA52201