The above prints are from the fabulous world famous film photographer Jose Villa. I never thought I would blog about another photographer's work, but Jose blows me away. I attended his master class at WPPI this year. Right before sitting down I noticed a bundle of gorgeous goodies on my chair. This selection of prints was packaged beautifully into a hand sewn packet. I was swept away by the color, the composition, and that what I was seeing was exactly what he wanted me to see. Allow me to explain.
The industry norm these days is to give clients a disc of images after a wedding. People like feeling the security of having every single image from their wedding. One big downside to this is that the only way you see your images is through a computer screen. I was just looking at my friend's website with her the other day and she remarked, "Wow my pictures look so different on your computer!" Computer screens vary especially with color. Even if prints are made from a disc most clients are not professional photographers having the very best prints made. Often public print labs will "auto-correct" the color and density in images, leaving you with a product that is no longer completely "me."
I am a bit of a color freak, having spent thousands of hours analyzing color, determining what my color profile will be. I want my clients to receive a gorgeous archival box of prints from their wedding. The challenge is that no one seems to find value in this. It's almost always something that potential clients want to do away with, but universally a disc is required.
Being a fine art photographer I know I see the world a little differently, and the world of photography A LOT differently. Am I being unrealistic in my desire or are prints as amazing as I think they are? I would love to hear your thoughts!
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speaking from a, another photographers perspective and b, having my photographer from our wedding in 2010 simply hand over our images on a disc unedited straight out of the camera...*shivers* (which I was/am completely heartbroken about since you could see every single un-cropped carelessly snapped photo and we were told that she would go through and color correct/edit them.....) we never received images that were worth being printed or had the option from the photographer to order them from her (which I would have happily done) I am just.....there are no words to describe how upset I was about this. I meticulously had to go through and fix all of the wedding photos and as a Christmas gift to my husband that next year I had them all printed from a lab. We both started crying when he opened his gift because it was the first time we had seen the images look close to quality and being able to hold them in our hands and know...know that this was a genuine real thing that happened and we had something to physically touch and see and it brought back floods of memories from that day that looking at the images on the computer screen didn't give us. oh my it was amazing. It upsets me so when clients are immediately turned off by the idea of prints because I don't think anyone realizes how special and precious having PHYSICAL images to hold really truly is. You are NOT being unrealistic in the least I agree 110% with you my dear.
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