What is Shoot and Burn?
Why “cheap” may not mean “cheaper”…
Weekend photographers will often shoot a wedding, burn it to CD and pocket a few hundred dollars. Nice money on the side for not much work, but are you really getting value ?
Now I’m not denying that people have the right to ask for a CD, heaven knows the wedding and portrait markets have been screaming for it since digital began. What’s concerning is the CD costs just a few cents and whats being put on many of them is worth even less.
As a professional photographer our aim is to create images that let you live and feel the emotions.
Creating such images requires continual practice, learning, and years of experience. Capturing the right images to tell the story involves identify elements of importance, and presenting them to the client in a meaningful way. In many cases, carefully preparing files can take days, whereas the shoot itself may have been merely hours.
Weekend “shoot and burn” people often go out with a set agenda of shots, download them and then walk away. Often times the quality is less than desireable, from wrong exposures, missed opportunities, poor composition etc.
I have often been called upon to design an album from couples who were roped into “package deals” from island resorts offering photography into the reception / accommodation deal. It’s a real challenge to design a meaningful story when presented with poor quality disjointed images.
So before shopping for the cheapest images on CD, ask yourself why you’re engaging a photographer in the first place. It’s a simple question to ask. Do you want images that engage the senses or not ? If you do, then shop for images respecting your priceless memories, which show pride of workmanship.