First, what is a “shoot-and-burn photographer”? Spend five minutes on Facebook and you will likely find a handful in your area. They are the photographers offering $50 sessions, giving you all 100+ high resolution digital images, not offering products / prints, and generally providing no service. Their portfolio contains lots of similar images, their work is poorly posed and lit and inconsistent (or sometimes consistently bad), and their business structure and procedure may appear flimsy or non-existent.
Now let’s take a look at professional photographers.
A professional photographer will meet with you prior to the session to discuss your vision. What is it that you want to do with your photographs? Do you envisage a large canvas print of a formal posed family photography for your lounge room wall? A coffee table album full of beautiful, natural, relaxed images of your children? Gift prints for the grandparents for Christmas? A statement piece that is just as much art as it is a memento of a point in time? Our goal is to produce what makes you happy, and we spend time with you finding out what that is.
A lot more than ‘point and click’ goes into making an amazing photograph. Professional photographers understand how to “unpose” people, showing their best angle and features at the same time as making them look and feel relaxed and comfortable. Anyone can pick up an expensive camera, set it to auto mode, aim and shoot, but it is the working of people and light that takes experience and patience. The Infocus team delivers a personalised experience for all clients and takes the time necessary to get the best images of you.
Despite our best efforts in camera, what looks great to begin with can always look better, and that is why we spend time culling, correcting and editing your images. Hours, usually days, are spent perfecting your images to make them look their absolute best before they get to you. We primarily use Lightroom and Photoshop, with a suite of other programs at our fingertips for image manipulation. Effort and experience pays off, and the difference can be seen below.
BEFORE
AFTER
Clients often ask us: Do we sell our digital files, and how much are they?
Yes, we do sell our digital files, but it makes us a little nervous! Our images are fully adjusted and colour corrected to suit our printer, and we have full control over the creative process. Once digital files leave our hands, we cannot control how the image will be printed. Printers at other labs may be calibrated differently, and what looks spectacular from our printer may not look so fabulous from another printer. In particular, stark contrast can be seen between images from a high end printer or lab such as ours, and the 15c mass produced prints from chain stores. Our paper is archival quality, guaranteed to last 99 years. If you have any doubts as to quality, ask to see a sample of our printing next time you’re in the studio.
If you’re still set on purchasing the digital files, a low resolution collection (suitable for social media sharing, web posting and emailing) is $249, or a high resolution collection suitable for print is also available. You are welcome to return to us at any time for your printing needs, for our images or yours, printed by us right here in our Ballarat studio.
We also offer a wide range of products such as block mounted images, canvas, acrylic, metallic and framed images and albums. We have samples of all of our products on display at the studio and we’d love you to drop in. Stop by for a chat between 9am and 6pm Monday to Friday to get your hands on our products, or call 5334 4889 to arrange a time outside business hours.
