Tweaking Your Business Model??

My views are admittedly shaped from living in rural Ohio and not the big city but... in my uneducated opinion... it appears that once-common things like wedding albums and high school senior photographs are being phased out and replaced with pictures on the Internet. I don't know anyone in the past five years or so who thought they needed a wedding album, but EVERYONE I know wants wedding pictures to post online for family and friends to ooh and aah over.

 

I can clearly see the superb quality of professional photographs compared to pictures taken by some guy with a camera, but does the general public even care anymore as long as the pictures look "good enuf" online?

 

Come to think of it, the only wedding albums and pictures I'm shown these days are seen on a cell phone or computer and most of the people showing those pictures don't even have prints.

 

There are a lot of talented photographers out there that might weather the storm until they can hang up their gear, but I doubt that anyone starting out will make a successful career in photography as we know it today.

 

I fully realize this may be a viewed as a despicable question to ask, but is anyone out there considering any drastic changes or little tweaks to their business model due to any of that??

My views are admittedly shaped from living in rural Ohio and not the big city but... in my uneducated opinion... it appears that once-common things like wedding albums and high school senior photographs are being phased out and replaced with pictures on the Internet. I don't know anyone in the past five years or so who thought they needed a wedding album, but EVERYONE I know wants wedding pictures to post online for family and friends to ooh and aah over.

 

I can clearly see the superb quality of professional photographs compared to pictures taken by some guy with a camera, but does the general public even care anymore as long as the pictures look "good enuf" online?

 

Come to think of it, the only wedding albums and pictures I'm shown these days are seen on a cell phone or computer and most of the people showing those pictures don't even have prints.

 

There are a lot of talented photographers out there that might weather the storm until they can hang up their gear, but I doubt that anyone starting out will make a successful career in photography as we know it today.

 

I fully realize this may be a viewed as a despicable question to ask, but is anyone out there considering any drastic changes or little tweaks to their business model due to any of that??

 

If you haven't, you are quickly going out of business.

 

The whole prints thing went away quite a while ago. I know few wedding and event photographers who deliver albums and prints anymore. Yes, high-end weddings and the photographers who shoot them ($5-20K shoots) still deliver high-end albums. But the run of the mill photographer who's getting $500-2K generally isn't.

H -- no business model shift, just a comment. Summer of '14 my son and now daughter in law were married. They had the full deal, including a team of photographers. The Father of the Groom, not having many duties, and having shot a wedding or two back in the day, acquired a new Nikon DF and dug out some old Nikon glass to supplement the kit lens. I photographed the whole wedding and reception, though I was a little light during the service due to seating position toward the front. I consciously stayed out of the Pros way. My photos were decent considering a new camera and some gap in time since the last Wedding I shot. I did a bit of tweaking using Nikon NX 2 (also new to me), and sent the kids the photos -- took me about a week and a half. It was nearly two months before the Pro shots arrived. The photographers had behaved professionally through the event, and the photos were quite acceptable, but few remarkably good.

I believe that if I were to decide to shoot weddings (heaven forbid, the stress when you are the Paid Photog is clearly burned into my memory) I would resolve to do a few things. First, though Digital allows unlimited images with no film reloads, I would shoot less and be more critical of image choices. This could be done by presenting the happy couple with a list of photo types with a check the box format. Second, I would emphasize quality and speed, turning the product around quickly. Last, I would offer options from the old Album and Print process to Flash Drive / Disc and even completely on line delivery. Just a few thoughts from someone who will probably only ever shoot one more wedding -- the second kid!

I actually wrote a book on the business of wedding photography and this is one of the things I discuss in detail. A much shorter response than the book would be to say that while it's good to encourage couples to get printed materials for the sake of longevity, most people don't want to pay for that because they haven't been educated. The choice then becomes, do you focus your profit on the actual shooting and post-processing and consider any print product an unexpected perk? Or do you work to educate your clients on the importance of having prints? For myself, I choose to build my packages around the assumption that I won't sell a single print. I make what I need to make for my business expenses, personal pay, and business development. I will then send out an automated email to my clients about two months before their first anniversary reminding them that the first anniversary is the "paper" anniversary. I give them a special coupon code to get a discounted album or showcase print product. It works pretty well.