New products for wedding clients

Dan — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:52:43 +0000

A couple of weekends ago I photographed the wedding of Lindsey and Dan, and after the day was over and my camera had been packed away, the kettle put on and my feet put firmly up, I realised just how much I love photographing weddings. Yes, it was a tiring day; yes, I had to be on my guard for pretty much eight hours solid in case I missed any important photos, and yes, my back ached for a good two days afterwards, but none of that mattered.

What mattered was that I captured the photos I was after, and it only served to fan the flames of my enthusiasm for growing my wedding photography business. Since the wedding day my head has been literally buzzing with ideas of how to move my business forward, and how best serve my wonderful clients to provide the best experience possible for them.

Here are some ideas I’m planning to implement over the next twelve months or so:

Presenting photographs via iPad and Apple TV

This year I’m aiming to present all of my photographs in person to my clients, instead of solely uploading them to a proofing website. It’s nice for wedding guests to view the photographs on a website after the event, but for me the emotional impact of the photos is lost if you only present them as small thumbnails on a site. After all, you’ve spent all that time creating the images and enhancing them to look absolutely stunning, and then destroy all of that hard work by presenting them as 200 px square thumbnails.

I’ve been toying with the idea of buying / hiring a projector, but a decent one isn’t cheap on both counts. Obviously the photos I take are high resolution, so I’d need a high resolution projector to do them justice. Enter the iPad – in theory (and I’m yet to try this, so watch this space…!) I should be able to stream photos from my iPad over a wireless network to an Apple TV box / High Def television for the clients to enjoy. I think (hope) it’s safe to say that most people have broadband installed at home, so this will be a convenient / hi-tech / slightly flash way of wowing them with the fruits of my photographic labour.

Online proofing area

Of course, I won’t be discarding the ability to view the photographs on the web completely. I currently use Zenfolio, and will soon be upgrading allowing me to create a client-only area where clients can login and view their photographs, and even order various photography related products long after the event.

Moo Minicards

Moo are fab – I recently ordered some business cards from them and was more than a little thrilled with what I received. They also offer mini business cards which I’ll be using at future weddings. The plan? Create an empty gallery in Zenfolio, order some minicards with the gallery URL and a “live” date printed on (two weeks after the wedding usually), distribute cards to the wedding guests, rush home and process the photos before uploading to aforementioned gallery, sit back and feel smug as guests log on to the gallery and wipe tears of joy away as they view my photos…!

Branded DVD sleeves

Along with streaming photos wirelessly via the iPad and uploading to Zenfolio, I’ll also be providing my clients with a disc of images presented in a branded DVD sleeve. Rebinder offer some lovely recycled options, and AsukaBook offer custom printed DVD cases, allowing me to print each sleeve with images from a specific wedding (I haven’t enquired about the price for this service yet, I’m guessing it’s not cheap..!)

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