Ammo: The Print Revolution

Why it’s important to work with a photographer who gives a hoot about how their work is printed. 

For this month’s ammo blog, I want to talk about the importance of the print. I know in this digital age it’s so easy to take photos to document everything from our food to our most precious moments and while you might not care much about your food photos, it’s those milestones, like your babies first steps, your daughter’s prom, your son’s graduation or even that epic trip to the Maldives you took last spring, those are the memories worth having tangible prints of. 

More often than not though, they end up forgotten. In the cloud floating around waiting for you to do something with them. The digital age has made taking pictures easier than ever, and we are stuck in this fast paced mindset where an image is forgotten just as quickly as it is taken. You must remember, these are your MEMORIES – they are important, not only for you but for the future generations to come.

This ad resonates so well with this topic:

 

I’m obviously not talking about professional photos yet, and I will get to that, but I want to express how important this is even with iPhone photos, point and shoot cameras, vacation photos – because honestly it doesn’t matter if its crappy quality, it’s a memory worth holding in your hands and reflecting on. I didn’t really realize the importance of printing my everyday documentation of my life, which happens more often on my iPhone than I would care to admit, until I put together an album cataloging the first 6 months of my now husband and my relationship. We had been on some amazing adventures in that first six months with so many of our friends, and I wanted to showcase that. The first holiday party we held at our home following that book being printed gave me the ammo I needed to continue on with building these yearly books.

One friend picked it up and began thumbing through it, then another joined her and soon there were 5 others crowded around. “Oh my goodness! Look, I remember this night, it was so fun!” one said. “Hey! Look I made the book!” another exclaimed. It was like many of them hadn’t held a photo album in their hands for years, and honestly it was an incredible sight. Many of them now know that when they come to my house they can bet that there is a new album of the previous year, and with it proudly displayed near the couch, its an open invitation to look through it. There is just something magical about looking through photos with all of your friends. Lets be honest, how many times have you sat down with your computer and friends to thumb through all of your photos from the previous year?

If you’re interested in a few companies I suggest to make quality family albums with your personal photos, check out;

 Chatbooks – a new album company geared towards busy parents who love their photos but just don’t have the time to build albums – **hint hint!** However, be warned, they only print in square format. 

Archival Uprising – has been in the works for a while now, and have some great start up offers to get to know their paper and print quality. 

So, why would it be super important to work with a photographer who cares about prints and products? There are a few reasons, and most of them are pretty simple. 

The first thing you need to know is that a photographer who isn’t offering products is not doing their job.

They are not completing their duty as a photographer or artist to you and they are honestly short changing you. Photographers who really care about their product and their clients, print! Furthermore, those who print offer so much more to get to that final product, than just sending it off to a lab. As experts in our field, it is a disservice to our clients to allow them to walk out the door with multiple media files that have only been color corrected, or finalized for a printed product. 

Here at Shani Studios we work with our clients in a number of different steps. The second to final step is when we invite our client to come in to our office a few weeks following the session for a reveal. This is when all of the most beautiful photos are revealed to the client and we take the time to discuss what is preferred and what is not. This is also the time when clients can say “I love my face in this image, but Johnny decided to stick his tongue out….” By having this conversation and working this closely with my clients, I can offer them options that they wouldn’t necessarily ask about, if they were just at home viewing photos.

So we can go from this….

Family Photo with initial Edits and color correction

To This…. 

Final Print for Print with artistic editing & families suggestions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following the final selection of images, we complete one more round of artistic editing before sending to the professional lab. 

Our final step in our studio is hand delivering your hand crafted archival prints to you or inviting you back to our office for pick up. We also offer an in-home hanging service, so you know your prints are secure on the wall. 

The second thing you need to know; you are hiring an artist to document a special time in your life.

Part of that art is understanding the nuances of printing photography – not just how to take a beautiful photograph, but how to translate that into a piece worthy of hanging on your wall. As artists however, you as the client have to be willing to trust our skill and craft – our knowledge and expertise in the printing of our work. We know that what you see on the screen is what you expect your final product to look like, and that is where our expertise comes in. Furthermore, that final product should be finalized to really be a piece of art. 

Ansel Adams would spend hours upon hours wet printing, manipulating how the enlarger was casting light onto the paper, to create his final imagry. Photography is a craft, and should be treated with the same care by the photographer that a sculptor would care for his sculpture or artist would care for their painting. 

Straight from Camera image

Color & Lighting corrected image

Here at Shani Studios, all of our photographers are trained to understand color correction, color spaces and the fundamentals of printing. We work with professional photographic ONLY printing companies who staff employees who also understand these intricate details of color space and how certain papers react differently to certain ink. The technique behind printing is far more involved than just ink on paper, and that is one of many major reasons you should trust a professional to print these precious memories you have already invested time and money into. 

The third thing you need to know; doing it yourself is not going to help you, nor does it really speak volumes to your photographer. 

First, storytelling is a major part of our job as photographers, we know how to put together albums with photos only that tell the emotion and happiness of your day. We want your album to knock the socks off of everyone who sees it and we want the prints on your wall to make your friend oggle with jealousy. That is why the final piece to any photographer’s job is to ensure you have the best of the best printed product. The prints we make you we know we can trust the color quality, the archivability of and we know it is a true representation of the art we created specifically for you and your family. 

Secondly, let’s be honest about this. I have friends who were married 5 years ago who still have their wedding photos on a thumb drive, possibly in a drawer, possibly safe but most likely not. One friend who asked me to build an album for him, went home to retrieve his thumbdrive and couldn’t find it anywhere. He eventually found it, but the sheer shock and heartbreak I saw in his face when he told me he may have lost the drive was awful.

I also know clients who were married over 10 years ago whose photos are on a DVD and are deteriorating as we speak. Despite your best ideas, efforts and hopes, you’re just not going to do it. 

At Shani Studios we work with many clients who were married years prior to ever knowing us and create beautiful albums of their wedding day for them. It is an additional part of our studio that we thought was important to offer. We are a community over competition studio, which means we collaborate with other photographers who are like minded all over the bay area. 

We believe that you deserve to have beautiful art that will last you a lifetime – that isn’t stuck in a drawer, never to be seen. You are beautiful, your memories are beautiful, so show them off with beautiful hand crafted prints. 

Watch this short film that backs up all of the points we have made here: 

 

For more information on our process, feel free to call Katie at 925-683-8484 or email us at info@shanistudios.com

We are here to create for you. 

www.shanistudios.com | 925.683.8484 | info@shanistudios.com