Burn, Baby, Burn - Part 3

In the final part of the series, Take Off Your Mommy Goggles discusses how clients and photographers feel about digital files, and to what extent digital files are good for printing.  If you are considering digital files, or have already purchased some, this is good information to read, as it also talks about care of your digital files and media!

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Burn, baby, Burn – Part 3: The Ins and Outs of Digital Files 

 © 2011 Take Off Your Mommy Goggles - Original Post can be found here.

Let me say right now that in this digital age, when everyone wants their images on their Facebook page and their iPhone, digital files are a hot commodity.

Back before digital, wedding photographers sometimes sold their negatives, and brides liked the insurance of owning the originals.  But traditionally, portrait photographers never sold their negatives.  You bought the prints you wanted at the time of your session, and that was that.   Ten years ago, heck even *three* years ago many Professional Photographers like myself wouldn’t have dreamed of selling their negatives or digital files.  Even after digital media became the norm in portrait photography, most of us just didn’t sell our session files.
I fought the concept of selling portrait files very vigorously – mainly because I know how steep the learning curve is for working with digital images and learning to print them effectively.  If it’s a lot for me to handle, as a full-time Professional Photographer, can my clients really ensure the safekeeping and proper printing of these digital files? I worried about distortion from improper resizing. I worried about people not taking care of the CDs. (Come on now, tell me the truth, do you regularly make backup copies of all your digital images?  I thought not.) I worried about clients trying to make enlargements without the knowledge of what’s involved to make a 20×24 look great.

And, ok, yes.  It’s true.   I worried about my clients taking my carefully retouched images and creating a god-awful collage with high-key and low-key images mixed together, or maybe even doing their own selective coloring and adding bright blue eyes to their baby – and then displaying something ugly on their wall and telling everyone it was my work.




But eventually, you’ve got to either change with the times or be left behind.  Everyone wants the digital files these days.  Many people assume that a Professional Photographer’s session fee *includes* digital files.  (It does not!)  So I started offering them a couple of years ago.  And while I do understand the desire to own the digital files, and respect the insurance against loss that they represent, digital files in and of themselves are not the answer to people’s imaging needs.

Oh yeah, you guessed it – that’s one of those Really Important Sentences that I’m going to repeat and put in some asterisks and stuff to emphasize – *Digital files, in and of themselves, are NOT the answer to people’s imaging needs.* The fact is, the ONLY way to ENSURE preservation of an image is with a professional quality archival print.  Oh my, can you believe it?, that’s *another* one of those Really Important Sentences – *THE ONLY WAY to ENSURE preservation of an image is with a professional quality archival print!* CDs can fail. Hard drives and external hard drives can fail.  Those images can be trapped forever on a non-functioning piece of plastic or machinery and be unrecoverable. *So don’t rely on digital media 100%.  A professional quality, archival print is the safest way to store your precious memories.* *Whew*, there are a LOT of asterisks in this paragraph.  Think I feel strongly about this?  You bet I do.


This is why, in my photography business, I simply do not offer digital files without an accompanying professional print of that image.  If you purchase the digital files from your session with me, the disk of images will not come all by itself.  No way.  You’ll also receive an archival print of that image, created at the professional lab that I use.  It’s peace of mind for ME.  This way, you not only have a ‘hard copy’ of the image which will remain beautiful for many decades (assuming proper storage!), you’ll also see how the image is supposed to look when printed out.  So if you take your disk to a drugstore to print copies for the grandmas ,  you’ll be able to compare that drugstore print to the professional print I supplied for you and clearly see the difference. (p.s. – Of course I don’t want you to have crappy drugstore prints!  With each file purchase, I include recommendations for an excellent consumer printing lab that you should use.)

If I had to guess, I’d bet that at least half of the people who purchase digital files from their Professional Photographer never do anything with the files.  They plan to print more copies but never do.  They know they should make copies periodically, store them safely, and update to new technology as it becomes available – but they just don’t do it.  It’s on the never ending to do list, and we all know it’s impossible to cross everything off that list.  They figure, “I have the CD, everything is fine.”  And maybe it will be.  I’ve got CDs of images from ten years ago that were stored in the heat of my Florida attic and they still work fine.  On the other hand, I also have CDs of images from 6 months ago that were stored in my air-conditioned office safely ensconced in archival sleeves which don’t work at all.  CDs are an unstable media in some ways, and you cannot rely on them 100% for preservation of your images.

So what’s the answer?

The answer is, if you want the digital files from your session, and it’s something your photographer offers, then purchase them.  But know this:

1 – They will not be cheap. It is not about ‘the cost of the CD’ any more than buying a print is about ‘the cost of the paper.’  When you purchase that CD on print, the photographer knows that you won’t need to buy any prints from him.  Since the photographer must make a profit to stay in business and feed his kids, and since the only ‘product’ you are buying from him is the digital files, they will be priced so that the session is profitable for him.   Commercial photography has been run this way for years – and commercial rates are HIGH for this exact reason.

2 – They will need care. Not as much care as a kid, or even as much care as a low-maintenance houseplant.  But you do need to make sure you a) make at least one copy right away to store in a separate location, to protect against loss by fire, etc, b) make high-quality prints of all of the images on the CD right away, if copies were not provided by your photographer, c) store the CD safely, out of extremes in heat and cold,  d) make copies of the CD periodically (I recommend once per year) to prevent against degradation of the media, and e) be sure to upgrade to new media when the CD goes the way of the cassette tape.

3 – They might not serve all your portrait needs. Many photographers, myself included, provide high resolution files that are designed to make prints up to about 11×14 in size.  Small prints are what most people plan to produce with their digital files anyway, but more importantly larger prints require more attention and care, and are best printed by a pro through a professional lab.  Yes, the consumer can find a lab that will print a large canvas for them – but please trust me, you don’t want to do this.  After 9 years in business, I honestly still agonize over every large wall print.  I go over the file with a fine tooth comb.  I spend extra time making sure everything is perfect, and I know what things won’t show up on an 8×10 but will be obvious on a large wall portrait and require extra attention.  The difference between an excellent quality large print or canvas and a crappy quality one is very, very obvious.  You really want to have those big wall prints made by your photographer, and use the digital files to make small prints to your heart’s content.

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I thought this was a great series, and I hope that you have found it useful and informative.  If you have additional questions about digital files, please shoot me an email at heather@heatherslaterphotography.com.