FocalPower…the blog

Another topic that came out of the wedding album discussion with my photographer friend a few days ago was the DIY wedding album.  Since she is a photographer, she really wanted to put together the wedding album herself.  Thus, she looked for wedding photographers who would give her the negatives immediately after the big day and didn’t offer (or wouldn’t include) the album in their price.

During my friend’s wedding, there were a number of enthusiast and semi-professional photographers who were there with cameras in tow and taking pictures that the wedding photographers were not.  In the end, many pages of photos in my friends wedding album were taken not by the professional photographers she hired, but by the guests who were just doing what they love to do.  And at every wedding I go to, I continue to see more and more DSLR cameras of increasing quality snapping away.

The technology of photography is constantly forcing professional photographers to be nimble and adapt their business models in order to stay in business. Thus, with the rise of the enthusiast photographer and the continual price erosion of high quality DSLR cameras, I am wondering: are more wedding photographers seeing requests from clients for the negatives to do their own wedding album?

This seems like a natural evolution of the business trends that have been occurring.  But I would love to hear from some professional wedding photographers to see if this is the case.

There is still huge value that professional wedding photographers offer in both photographing the day as well as album design.  The trick for wedding photographers is to make sure their clients don’t forget this value.