I’m 29 years old. My first camera was digital. I’ve never shot film before a couple weeks ago (disposables don’t count).
On a recent road trip to Los Angeles to shoot The Casery‘s new catalog campaign, I decided to bring Mrs. Anthony’s father’s old 35mm camera with me. I had two rolls of black and white (Kodak Tri-X 400) and one roll of color (Kodak Portra 400) for a total of 108 images.
My tool was an Olympus OM-10. Quite a beautiful piece of machinery, although a tad dusty (it was more than a tad). The day I left North Carolina, it was dark and gloomy and the rain clouds prevented any real non-wet photo opportunities.
Then the storm broke…
You can feel the difference right away**. Film is different than digital. It has a certain something that’s impossible to explain, but is felt by everyone who sees old photographs. None of the photos above have been edited in any way.
**It’s ironic that I have to show you digitally.
What Film Has That Digital Doesn’t
The best part about film was that you could never be absolutely certain what you would be getting back from the lab. People could be blinking, settings could be totally wrong, or worse. But that’s part of what made professional photographers so respected. They were craftsmen of complex tools that mere mortals couldn’t operate without intense training.
Today, everyone is a photographer.
Everyone has a GREAT camera on their smartphone, and everyone takes pretty high quality photos with next to no training whatsoever. Technology has made the professional photographer obsolete seemingly overnight.
Or has it?
Many of my clients elect for digital files only, and recently I began to feel as if I were selling them short. Here I am charging a hefty fee for something that others are doing for 10{02c3dc976f131c0a3548e94984e4a838101d1b8d4e09da6f6b16c6c58815f44e} of what I cost.
Their photos might not be quite as beautiful as mine, however I’ve lost many potential clients to cheaper photographers simply because they cost less.
Back to film.
The 4×6 prints you used to get back from the print lab are wonderful physical keepsakes that literally document our lives on this impossibly beautiful planet. But we don’t print any more. We “save as…”
Nobody opens up a shoebox filled with prints from this decade. They’re ALL from the 90’s. Digital has taken over our lives. Don’t get me wrong, the conveniences that the digital revolution offers are priceless and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. But the absence of the photographic print from our culture is stunting our efforts to leave behind a rich history for the next generation to remember us by.
Finally circling back to the reason I wrote this post (sorry for the long-winded backstory), film has absolutely inspired me to offer my clients a service that is beyond the digital world.
I will now be offering sales sessions to all of my clients after their photo shoots. This includes weddings! We will sit down at my studio (or Skype!) and discuss the options as we view your photographs for the first time together.
I will make every effort to educate you on the different options I offer in terms of print products: albums, wall art, metals, and matted portraits.
I will no longer be selling my clients short and just offering digitals.
I get great satisfaction while editing a wedding or a portrait and viewing the level of detail and beauty that our modern digital cameras can produce, but the sad truth is my clients just aren’t seeing it. I edit on a 27″ 5K iMac in my studio, and my clients are most likely viewing their photos on their phones or 17″ computer screen.
It’s not the same!
Shooting three rolls of 35mm film has rocked my whole world to the core. Seeing the physical prints in my hands radically changed my philosophy of how I run my business. I’m so proud to be able to get to the next level of professional photography, and to start offering my clients exactly what they deserve: beautiful physical works of art that will probably outlast their lifetimes.
What Millennials Must Learn :
- Physical Print Is How We Archive Our History
- Think about couples who only got digital files for their weddings 10 years ago. Do they still have their CDs? Can they even find a new computer that reads CDs? Digital files come with no guarantee of their safety. A hard drive corrupts or a cloud service gets hacked. It’s that simple.
Digital files are GREAT! They make our job so much easier, but professional photographers are still very much needed. In fact, they’re needed now more than ever!
And let me just be clear…when I say professional, I mean a photographer who offers a comprehensive experience that INCLUDES PRINTS! I would go so far as to say that I wasn’t really a professional before this awakening.
I’m very good at what I do, but what I do is take and edit photos. Lots of people do that. And with all the filter programs out there (VSCO, Instagram) everyone can make a mediocre photo look great! So why hire me over any of the other hundreds of people that do this?
I finally have a REAL, heartfelt reason to do what I do. I’ve always loved being a photographer, but as a business owner you need a reason other than your love of the craft. It cheapens the industry if you don’t.
I can now say with confidence that I do this because too many brides and grooms are being left without prints, without physical keepsakes of their most important memories.
From a client recently: “We didn’t realize how much detail was there until you sent us our prints. Laptops don’t do them justice.”
I mean that really says it all folks.
Katie with bald cap and mustache lol
In closing, I would like to announce the opening of Marcus Anthony Studios in Downtown Wilmington, NC!
More information will be available soon, but I can’t wait to share the new space with the community and I’m so excited for the future I can hardly stand it!
For now, please enjoy more film shots!
