I’ve been having some recent discussions with friends, brides, wedding industry colleagues, and business professionals, as well as other wedding photographers. There is something everybody has an opinion about. A wedding photographer who does 100% digital work, with no albums, and no prints. What do you think? Do you like the idea? Or do you dislike the idea?
I will first start off by saying that moving forward, I have made the business decision not to do albums or signing books anymore. Let me first address why this is a good thing for you if you’re a bride or groom and you’re looking at wedding photographers. First of all, most wedding albums are quite costly to put together. You aren’t paying for something that you might not look at again. You are receiving a quality service, with high resolution edited images, which enables you as the consumer, to be able to create your own albums, with one of the hundreds of amazing websites that make this very easy for you now. The reality is that that cost has to be placed onto the client, and then an added charge for time. There are 2 main types of wedding photography albums. One is magazine style, which is where the image is actually printed on the page. The other is traditional style, which is where the pages are like hard white card inserts, and real photographs get placed inside. Physically, the most common styles of albums are either the photo-book albums, or the large leather albums. A lot of the large leather albums actually cost the photographer $1000 with the minimum number of pages. The photographer then has to spend time designing the layout to fit the album, and has to charge you accordingly for it. You may end up being charged a $2000 album price for an album with a physical cost of $1000. In relation to photo-book albums, it is just so easy for you to do your own. You can make this a fun event for your friends and family! Get together and do your own album! When Josh and I were married in Las Vegas last year, our wedding photographer was 100% digital, and I designed 2 of my own albums, using 2 different websites. The savings were amazing, and the results were fantastic. That is why it’s important for myself as a client, and for my business as a photographer, to supply you with a digital package that enables you and empowers you to do your own album work. It may sound daunting, but believe me it’s not. Most of the websites have their own built in software that allows you to easily drop and drag into the position and page that you want the photograph to be. What a perfect way to have 100% control of your end product!
Let me address another issue about wedding albums! Hidden costs! I once went to a wedding photographers seminar, and they were saying that when a client books your photography package, you should have an album included with say 10 pages. When it comes time to design the clients album, design it with 20, and let them know, ‘the extra 10 pages are another $1500’ and when the client says that they don’t have the extra funds, to emotionally pressure them by saying ‘well tell me which pages you never want to see again, and I’ll delete them now.’
I was pretty shocked and horrorfied, and over years in the wedding industry, have seen that this really is how a lot of wedding photographers operate! I have no interest in hidden costs, or in manipulating a clients emotions for personal gain I actually think that’s a really awful thing to do! So that’s another reason I’ve come to the decision that digital only is the way to go.
Now for those of you who have been following me on facebook for a while, you will know that last December, Joshua and I were married in Las Vegas. After Christmas I had to return to Perth, Western Australia to shoot a dozen or so weddings between January and May, before flying back to California to be with Joshua from May to September. Next week I fly back to Australia for another 6 weddings before Christmas, and a dozen or so portrait shoots. I’m just in the process of setting up business in California, and they have a sales tax that makes having a wedding album a very costly decision, which is another reason why I made the decision to go digital only.
In Australia, GST is a goods and services tax applicable on all goods and services, however in the United States, the sales tax applies to physical items and not services. For this reason, a digital only photographer does not need to charge sales tax to the photography clients, however my understanding of what I have read about United States taxation, is that if a client books a wedding package, and then chooses to add an album, because the service was used to create the physical item, sales tax is applicable on the service as well.
Since I’m new to the United States and already have enough to learn, networking to do, and a new fan base to build, I have made the decision to avoid hidden costs and complications, and to be a digital only photographer. Costco, and Walmart do walk in wedding albums, and there are many websites online that allow you to design your own, including photobox.
In a nutshell the advantages of choosing 100% digital photography are the following
1) Brides and Grooms don’t get told about hidden costs of extra pages later. There’s no hidden costs, and no emotional manipulating. Leave sales like that at the car dealership
2) In cities where sales tax only applies to physical items, and an album would trigger sales tax on the service as well, you can avoid this mess by avoiding albums, therefore making your wedding photography service a lot more affordable for you.
3) You can design your own album, and get together with the family while you do it. What an amazing advantage.
4) With the many websites that offer amazing and affordable albums, the world is your oyster, and you have creative control. Prefer stores to online? Then Costco, Walmart, and Staples are all amazing options
5) The carbon footprint is nothing!
In conclusion I want to add that I am not a tax accountant, or a taxation lawyer. I am not qualified to give financial or tax advice. I have written this blog post to help my brides and grooms understand why I have chosen to go digital only, and how that is an amazing advantage to them! Likewise this post is also to help other photographers in seeing the advantages in going digital only! Save all those hours you would spend on album design to network or further your skills, or help to make the world a better place!
xoxo Sky Simone
