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The Wow! Factor! Digital is Finally Here by David A. Ziser

These are just a few of the “wide-eyed, drop jawed” comments heard about a sample wedding album I’ve been carrying around these past few months. I have shown the book to dozens of people, from studio clients to wedding vendors in the Cincinnati, OH area, to the waiters and waitresses at the local Applebee’s. The response has been 100% unanimous—they could not believe their eyes when told the entire album was produced digitally.

Yes, folks, digital has arrived. Digital is now within the grasp of every wedding, portrait, and senior photographer out there. No longer is digital photography relegated to the upper echelons of commercial photographers working on the “big bucks” advertising shoots. No longer is digital the sole province of the “million dollar” studio. Digital has finally come of age and is available to the masses!

It Feels like Flying…
All the images accompanying this article were shot with a digital camera, the Fuji S-1, and the results are spectacular. These are the same images referenced in the opening paragraph of this article. Each click of the shutter gives a grand new wonderful surprise—color, saturation, detail and clarity—basically, it’s a real kick to shoot digital. It’s very cool to do your portrait session and be able to show the finished results by the time the client gets the outfits packed up. It’s also cool to have the freedom to shoot what you want without counting exposures. You can change to black-and-white mode mid-roll and then back to color at the click of a button. Likewise, you can change to ISO 1600 mid-roll on a wedding shoot, when the light level dips a bit too low. You can shoot with a lighter quicker camera with zoom lenses and wider apertures in those shooting situations that call for just such a technique.

The level of freedom one experiences when shooting digital is truly like feeling a tremendous breath of fresh air—it is almost like flying—photographically speaking, anyway. Think of the additional opportunities. It’s an opportunity to concentrate on recording the moment, instead of concentrating on the film budget. You know the average wedding photographer shoots on average about 150–250 exposures per job, capturing mostly the highlights of the event, while missing so many of the subtle story-telling nuances of the day.

Sales Flow, The Real Digital Problem
Lots of questions. How do I get those images in front of my clients so they can make their selections? And how can I take orders for those images my clients want? Then, how do I place orders with my lab once my client decides? And how can I get those images on the Internet if I want?

Figure #1

Not one of the digital camera manufacturers has really addressed one of the most important considerations for the photographers for whom they are targeting these cameras—sales flow.

What is clearly missing here is a very clear distinction between two kinds of digital markets—commercial/advertising vs. the portrait/wedding/senior studio. They are not the same animal and clearly have different needs when it comes to what I will term, sales flow, which also begets a much different workflow.

The commercial studios need to get that one perfect shot for the big ad or magazine cover, and that’s about it. The art director can hover over the photographer as he/she shoots the product or ad set, and then check out the interim results on the computer screen, eventually getting that perfect image that goes to press. Heck, now just fancy things up in Photoshop a bit, burn the image to a CD and ship it.

Nice work if you can get it, but hey folks, you and I know that “ain’t” how it is in the real world of weddings, portraits and seniors. We’ve got to shoot and show a few hundred images if we are a wedding photographer, and at least 20–40 if we are a portrait/senior photographer. No chance of our client looking over our shoulder till we get it just right and printing the favorite one. We are talking about getting it right on all of those images, and the clients selecting a bunch for printing, in different sizes. We are talking about a completely different sales flow!

There simply has been no easy way for the digital portrait, wedding, senior photographer to economically shoot, show, and sell his/her digital product. Viewing options were limited to Photoshop or some other simple viewing programs available. But once we get the large number of our images in front of our buying public’s eyes, how do we keep track of the orders we need to take on many of those images? The quick answer is the “Fred and Barney” pencil-and-paper method. Once we somehow manage to tally all the order info, how do we get the “digital negs” printed to our order and crop specs? Again, the only way has been to open each image in Photoshop, modify the crop, etc. resave the image, and burn it to a CD—I don’t think so, not for 80–100 wedding images. Production costs would go through the roof! So what’s the answer?

	Figure #2

Enter ProShots
I use about the coolest, easiest, fastest process in the world in my studio. It’s called ProShots, a free piece of software available to any photographer for the asking. Simply log on to www.proshots.com and download it, or contact any of the 23 ProShots labs—check to see which ones are offering the digital service (most will be coming on board in 2001)—and ask them to send you a copy. Let me tell you how it works in my studio.

I shoot 300–400 candid wedding images or 50–100 portrait images on my digital camera. Next, I transfer the images from the camera’s 1 gig IBM Microdrive to my computer. Shooting in “fine” mode, the image size is 2000x3000 jpeg-ed down to a file size of about 2.6 megs—on the Fuji S-1, that translates into about 431 images for that drive—plenty of room for most shoots. Next, import the images directly into ProShots.

Now with the images in the ProShots software, I have at my disposal all the ProShots features and benefits available within my new digital domain that I have always had available for my traditionally photographed ProShots images.
What does this mean for the digital portrait, wedding, senior photographer? A Lot! Now I can easily organize my digital images into a very effective sales presentation for my clients. I can also easily combine my digital images with my traditional images, as well, for a complete event presentation. ProShots has a built-in slide presentation feature that makes the process nearly automatic.

After the client presentation, we simply move through the images one at a time, selecting the client’s favorites. ProShots allows us to show and confirm the various crops, as we review each image. We can also take orders for print sizes up to 30x40, order retouching on any of the images—digital and/or traditional, and even order the appropriate mounting services for wall portraits. ProShots keeps a running invoice by client for each order as we go, as well.

	Figure #3

If this is a wedding we are discussing, we also have the option of designing albums on the fly, including panorama pages, with the client previewing and approving each of our/their suggested layouts (See Figure 1). This sales flow technique adds tremendously to bottom-line sales.

Black-and-white photography is very hot right now. In my studio, I can simply preview and order a color image as black and white or sepia on the fly, during the client presentation.

And what about wall portraits? I simply drop any of the client’s digital or traditional images into a favorite frame for viewing, and then I “knock their socks off” by dropping the framed portraits into their living room setting! There is simply no finer way to sell wall portraits and frames than this. The clients love it—they simply can’t believe it (See Figure 2).

The list doesn’t stop there. ProShots also lets me preview all of my digital and/or traditional photographs right in any of the lab’s digital templates as well—i.e., holiday cards, magazine covers, image montages, etc. This is a great benefit for any event photographer reading this article. One feature that will be part of the software by the time you read this will be the “package print” ordering/previewing function. This means that for the senior photographer especially, all that the photographer needs to do is simply drag and drop any selected image on his/her package units, and presto! ProShots orders the units! Finally the cropping/masking drudgery is history for the senior photographer, as well (See Figure 3).

Figure #4

And finally as I finish up the sales process with my client, I simply offer to upload the images to the Internet. Seven mouse clicks later the whole world can enjoy their images—password protected, of course!
For the last three months, I have been shooting portraits, weddings, and seniors digitally. One of the coolest things we have been doing at our weddings and Bar/Bat Mitzvahs is to take the digital images that we have made of the event, up to say… the first hour of the reception, load those images into ProShots, and use the slide presentation feature of the software to present the client their actual wedding or Bar/Bat Mitzvah images right at the reception. The guest response is unbelievable, and the PR benefit is through the roof (See Figure 4).

The process is dramatically exciting and easy. The client enthusiasm is phenomenal, and the results are superb.
2001 is truly the age of digital for the rest of us. The cameras are now within our budget. The images produced are absolutely gorgeous. And ProShots finally makes the digital process completely effortless and transparent to the digital photographer. I recently presented some images to a prospective client whose comments included, “This looks better than film. They just look more vivid.” In any event, the clients are noticing, and so are the photographers. Nothing could be more exciting in this profession.

All images for this article were produced digitally with the Fuji S-1, and then presented, sold, and ordered within the ProShots software.

David Ziser is considered the leading expert on ProShots worldwide and has been instrumental in creating the software’s ever-increasing feature set. He conducts two Digital/ProShots workshops at his studio. He has lectured to more than 25,000 worldwide. He will be visiting Australia for the fourth time in February this year and lecturing to photographers throughout the country. You can also catch him on the ProShots Digital tour starting in the spring of 2001. Check out www.ziser.com for more information about David’s seminars and videos.