Digital is cool, but Analog is still old skool

When I started shooting weddings...actually when I started shooting anything on a professional level, digital was king.  Mind you, when I began shooting oh so many years ago, it was film that was king!  I used Polaroid backs on my cameras to check the shot for exposure. Once I nailed it I would throw the film back on and shoot away...and pray I didn’t screw something else up. My camera of choice was the Pentax 67. It was a 35mm on steroids. It shot 120 film and it was a beast! Bulky and heavy, its negatives were so big it impressed anyone who knew crap about cameras. A MONSTER I TELL YA! Changing the rolls of film took so long I would rent a couple of bodies, along with a body with a Polaroid back, so that my assistant could change the film while I continued to shoot with another body. (yes, it took that long).

I loved the Polaroid because everyone was able to walk away from a shoot with a hard copy of a vintage style image in their hands. It felt good to hold something in your hand. It made it real. It’s kind of like using cash instead of ATM cards. When the cash leaves your hand, it makes it more real, so to speak. It was analog baby and it felt good. But it was expensive and risky compared to digital, and when I got my hands on my first digital camera I loved that I was able to show my clients right away, not to mention check my exposures and shoot on and on til the break of dawn and not blow through film, only to have to wait a day or so for the lab to do their job. It was a drag, but it was analog.

So what does this have to do with anything you may ask? Well, immediacy is where it’s at now. The digital age is about NOW. No waiting. When I got my iphone, my business took off because my clients were able to email me right away and I, in turn, was able to respond that much faster. They like that immediacy thing. I get it. Because I’m a techie at heart and I like things fast and furious too. But the one thing that always puzzled me was the fact that clients, my wedding clients to be more specific, never inquired about purchasing wedding albums. They wanted the disks. “We want the images on a disk please because we want to make the album ourselves”. Which they almost NEVER do. How do I know this? Because when I got married, we didn’t have enough money to hire a photographer. Can you believe that? I know, right? I asked a few friends who were working photographers in LA if they would take photos and just hand me over the rolls of film so I could just print the stuff myself. And guess what? My photos are lying in a damn Kodak box in my closet. No album. But I do have the images to have and to hold. And when I do look through them, I’m thrilled to have tangible photos to share with my kids and anyone else who will look. But you can hold them, see them, react to them, pass them around. Well, you get the idea.

What I’m getting at, is really take the time to think about the fact that you may just need an album and not just those DVD images. In the beginning, I never had albums to show my clients because no one ever seemed to want them. I thought, why bother, no one wants them, so why dish out the dollar bills to make samples? Then the amazingly talented and wise Carla Ten Eyck mentored me at a retreat I attended last spring called Inspire (which I’m going back to in two weeks), and she told me something so simple. She looked at me and said “Gurrrlllll, who is gonna want to buy albums from you if you don’t have anything to show? If you make them, they will come”. She had a point. I felt like an idiot, but at that moment, I promised myself that I would start doing albums. So ladies and gentlemen, here are a few photos of some samples albums that I am offering. They are from Kiss Wedding Books, Couture Book and Pinhole Press. They range in prices and styles. Keep in mind I just snapped a few for show, but if you want to come in and hold the analog version of a wedding....drop me a line. 

I will post images of the Kiss Album tomorrow.  Gotta hit the hay

This is a Couture Book.  They start at 100 pages, which is pretty big in the wedding world.

Both the book and the case have images on the front and back.

The Couture Book is more like a coffee table book of the highest quality.

This album is 10x10. I'm hoping to do another sample that is 10x13.  I love the square format but I gotta give options to all.

This is a small Pinhole Press 5x5 album.  It's a great layflat book that would be a great brag book option with a step up from the norm.

See...layflat.  And it holds a lot of photos too.

This is a small Pinhole Press sign in book.  It's great because the quality of the paper is fantastic and even though it's more traditional in terms of  sign in book (it has the lined paper for writing, you can place lots of photos throughout)

Here is a two page spread from the sign in book by Pinhole