DO YOU STILL PRINT PICTURES?

Nikonfan99 wrote:

I am in a heavily saturated market and it is standard to either provide a disc in the package or sell the disc as an option. I also am not charging what some others are. Your market may not be like mine and pricing can change city by city and photographer to photographer. I agree no substitute for prints but that is when the client actually wants them or sees them the way you do. Not all do. I am sorry but prints are a dying industry and KODAK is a living proof of it. Most brides use online galleries and facebook and that is the reality we live in or at least in my neck of the woods. If you have brides that want the prints by all means you should sell it to them. I don’t and have not since digital took over and only have seen a decline of print orders year to year to the point that some photographers only offer them as an option on the online gallery and even at that point some guests contact the bride and have her email them the file for free (welcome to the digital world). Even in my film day’s people would scan prints and reprint from them to save money or for guests. People live in a digital world and we as photographers will need to evolve and will be forced to as technology changes and delivery methods change to digital. Right now it is small digital photo frames and one day it will be digital affordable walls that can display your photos and digital screens built into surfaces of furniture. The kindle and IPAD changed books and these same digital formats will change photography as they are already doing. I can tell you that as many peoples homes I have went to, a photo album is very rarely in sight and they may have one that belonged to mom or dad with familty photos but right after the wedding the online gallery or blog followed with maybe a printed thank you. My own wedding I hired a great photographer and took the basic package wth disc. The images sat on my harddrive for 4 years. Just this year we printed 2 canvas prints and that was about it. Parents asked for prints and they each wanted a few 4x6's to have. My own place has only a few prints up and most are from my wife to me as a gift.