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On the way to Corpus Christi, I ended up seated next to a guy who was initially interesting for medical reasons, which I won't get into here (although it led to the understanding that aircraft are not pressurized to sea level, which is worth knowing). This guy turned out to be W. Russell Ohlson, a rather successful professional photographer who had photographed several presidential inaugurations, among other things.
We got to talking, and the thing that stuck was the idea that clients love to unwrap a well-presented print, and that one could capitalize on it. In his words, this is "selling the sizzle more than the steak." Apparently, he would shoot a portrait or an event, then deliver a framed print with extra texture layered on top of the print, all wrapped up in something fancy. It sounded like his model of work was to sell the prints, whereas in the (very) few situations where I've sold work, I have been selling time of service.
This is an interesting idea, although its relevance in the age of digital photography and websites and facebook is uncertain. On one hand, most people I'm likely to encounter (and are likely to pay me to shoot things for them) basically want some kind of electronic delivery. For instance, if somebody offered to sell me prints of myself, I would decline. Where would I put all the damn things? With a jpeg or other digital delivery, I can post it on my website and show it to all my friends - electronically.
On the flip side, there is potentially a lot of value added by a person who is savvy with print styles, special media, and presentation. It would be a reasonable way to distinguish oneself from the huge bulk of shooters in the world, many of which are just taking snapshots to post on their online albums. I suspect that having a physical presentation in hand is even more striking than it used to be, especially since people are so accustomed to just clicking past a zillion images.
So I decided that I would take some of the images from Gaurav's wedding, print them, and present them. I immediately felt that there was also a need for some futzing in photoshop, because although a lot of the images were really good unmodified, they weren't really the sorts of images you might imagine somebody hanging on their wall and leaving up for a couple decades. I ended up converting a couple of them with an "antique" filter in LR. I've thought of these filters as being a bit gimmicky, but hey, it's such a sentimental set of photos anyway; who'd complain? I also decided to print them on Kodak Endura Silk, which is is covered in large flat bumps , like a super-matte, and for most normal images is, frankly, an ugly paper. But somehow it worked with the "antique" coloring. The Endura Silk also imposes a visible texture on the print (more classic?), so I intentionally kept these images a bit grainy.
I thought they came out extremely well. Spent most of the last week patting myself on the back for it. Here, they don't look quite as good as they did on paper and embedded in an off-white mat. Total cost of printing and mounting was about $10; surprisingly, mats are more expensive than the actual prints. Question is, how much would a client be willing to pay for one? Is this worth the time?
