Paterson Photography Ltd.

The past couple of weeks I have had a chance to sit down with a number of photographers.  I have been hearing a lot of the same things from these people and I thought that it would be worth sharing with others.

Several points keep coming to the forefront:

1) For those that do shoot & burn weddings (shoot the wedding and burn the digital files to disk for the client) I have been hearing a number of photographers mention that their customers are complaining about bad prints.  What is happening is that the clients are taking the disk of images to a discount lab to get prints made and they are coming back horrible.  Most times the photographer does not know how their client feels as they don’t hear about the bad prints, and the clients think it is the photographer ~ because the lab says it is not them.  Usually when the photographer hears it is through a third party and the printing damage is done.

2) Many photographers have seen a drop in the number of assignments that they are having.  A couple photographers actually inquired of past customers and received some feedback about what they thought.  One big point is that clients were not happy with the final prints (all that mentioned this had been having prints done at local one hour labs), the common statement went something like “…. the service was great, we were not happy with the way the final prints looked.  The prints looked like the ones that you get from a one hour lab ~ not professional prints”.  One photographer actually brought us a couple of images to print that they had done someplace else to see what their client thought, the quote form their client was “These are amazing, we never thought that the printing would do that!!!!”

3) Many of the photographers also mentioned that they needed something to add a WOW factor to the services that they were offering.  They have been giving 4×6 & 5×7 prints and their clients were not impressed any longer with this.

In just about all the comments one thing was clear, clients want/demand something more than a cheap 4×6 or 5×7 one hour print.  We have been saying for years that if photographers want to survive that they need to set themselves apart from what uncle Bob is doing ~ usually for free because he is a relative and wants to be helpful.  Uncle Bob can have the nice camera, but many times he is handing the wedding couple a disk and that is it.  Or he is printing some prints at the one hour place and handing them to the couple.  The problem is if that is what the “professional” photographer is doing we are not setting ourselves apart and WOW’ing our clients.

So what should photographers be doing?

First, every client should be getting a WOW picture.  Something that stands out like a 16×20 or 20×24 portrait fully finished!! Second you should be providing your clients with some professionally printed images that they can show friend’s and family so they can see what a great picture looks like.  Prints that they cannot get at the local one hour!

Finally if you are handing over the disk to the client make sure they know the difference in the printing that they will get.

Remember we need to set ourselves apart for the positive and one of the best ways to do this is with professional printing!

To help with giving some wow to your photography we are offering a coupon for a discount in printing that you can give to your client to get professional printing.  That way they will get the best image possible from your files.  Drop us an E-mail and we will run off some discount coupons for you!

Buyer beware – I have had a couple people contact me in the last month about photography courses.  They mentioned that they had tried other “teachers” or had called them and where VERY upset with the information that they got.

Some of the people that are teaching are not professional photographers (some have just started to take pictures and decided to start teaching at the same time),  some only have basic cameras (just bought an amateur kit camera), some are my previous students that are repeating what I have taught them  and it seems that some are giving out some misleading information.

Before taking any course do your research, make sure that you are getting someone with some knowledge to share, not someone that is quoting from a book.  Anyone that is teaching should have a very good base to start with (has used a number of cameras, lenses, flashes, etc., shot hundreds of thousands of pictures, many years of experience shooting for a living (not just snap shots when they have the time) and a very strong working photography knowledge!

If you have any questions about course, adventures, expeditions or more drop me an E-mail or call the office 403-327-1114

For those that know me I am not a big mechanic, I would like to be but I just don’t have a spot to work on my vehicles.  That being said I do a number of small jobs and recently I needed to get some parts for my truck.  Went to a couple of places and was not able to get what I was looking for so I stopped in to silver Automotive to see if they could help. WOW was I impressed, not only did I get service but I got a lesson in the different parts that where available and that I could choose from.  They guy that helped me explained the differences, the prices and gave me his suggestion ~ I would say this went way beyond exceptional customer service.  I could make my decision based on facts and helpful input.  After purchasing the parts I actually checked into the information that I was given with a couple of other sources and everything that I was told was fact.

GREAT job, you can be assured that I will be back!

Open House – It is that time of the year again for our spring open house. May 20 from 2 till 6 at our studio 1263C 2 Ave South. Stop in to see the new papers that we have to offer from our printing department. Bring your camera, printing, Photoshop or general photography questions. All visitors will receive a coupon sheet for special spring offers on printing and more! Invite your friends and family to come in!

I am often asked if we do Giclee printing, the answer is YES!

Our printers are state of the art and capable of producing the best Giclee prints around.

So for those that don’t know, what are Giclee prints?

From Wikipeda the best description that I have found is:

Giclée (pronounced /ʒiːˈkleɪ/ “zhee-clay” or /dʒiːˈkleɪ, from French [ʒiˈkle]) is a neologism for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word “giclée” is derived from the French language word “le gicleur” meaning “nozzle”, or more specifically “gicler” meaning “to squirt, spurt, or spray”^[1]. It was coined in 1991 by Jack Duganne,^[2] a printmaker working in the field, to represent any inkjet-based digital print used as fine art. The intent of that name was to distinguish commonly known industrial “Iris proofs” from the type of fine art prints artists were producing on those same types of printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the early 1990s but has since come to mean any high quality ink-jet print and is often used in galleries and print shops to denote such prints.

We have offered these prints for years (even before they were called Giclee’s) and continue to do so today.

We print on many types of media from Enhanced matte, luster, semi gloss, high gloss, pearl, canvas and a number of types of fine art papers.

For more information give me a call 403-327-1114 I would be happy to answer all your questions.