PHOTOGRAPHY

In any discipline you will have what many call "the purists".  Purists are those who revere the way things have always been done and regard new innovations in the field as upstarts and obviously of inferior quality to the tried and tested methods.

Nowhere is this more true than in photography.  For decades, the process of film and chemical processing has been constantly refined to achieve ever higher levels of sophistication and quality.  No wonder that when the digital revolution came along, the "purists" were, to put it mildly, a little snobbish about the idea of professional photography moving in this direction.

But there are some real reasons to at least include digital technology in your professional photography game plan.  These reasons are so compelling that we are seeing more and more of the big studios going all digital.  So if you run an independent photography business, or are 'just' a hobby photographer (and thank goodness for hobby photographers), you may need to consider the value of moving to digital processing for yourself.

Ease of use

The amount of fuss and the sheer "stuff" of doing a shoot digitally is dramatically less than using the older technologies.  Look at how the digital revolution in photography has revolutionised the world of personal cameras.  Now people can take as many pictures as they want and have them reviewed almost instantly.

Perhaps the biggest leap forward in the use of digital photography is the ability to do reshoots quickly, easily and at virtually no cost.  If you have a portrait session with a client, you can have the 'stills' from the session almost as soon as the session is finished.  If a shot was good but not perfect, you can correct it and re-shoot immediately, saving huge amounts of time and increasing the chances of getting the portfolio you want and the client wants from the first session.

Fast customer service

When technology delivers so much value to the public, one might think that quality would drop.  But, amazingly, this is not the case with digital photography.  If anything, the quality of the photographs is as good or better than anything we could do with previous technologies.  And the cost, both to you as a photographer and to your client, drops so dramatically that the age-old complaint that professional photographs are too expensive can be eliminated, making the client want to use your services more often.

Digital photography, a child of the internet and the digital revolution that has swept through our lives via personal computers, can be delivered in a myriad of ways and at a speed that was unheard of before this technology arrived.  We can deliver the photos by email, post them to an online gallery or burn them to a DVD or CD so that the client can order many more shots for the same cost and have them delivered in a way that is easy to view and store.

Editing

Editing has also moved from the realm of back-room wizards to something we can all do, with sophisticated computer programs such as Photoshop allowing us to enhance the images we take.  It is truly amazing the effects that can be applied to an image with this software.  But more importantly, we can so much more easily correct minor problems with a photograph, so what might have been a lost session can be improved to become acceptable with some clever use of digital editing.

In almost every way, digital photography, delivery and editing is superior to the way the "purists" would have us stick to.  It makes our lives as photographers easier, faster and more profitable.  Most importantly, it is what our customers want.  They get to enjoy their pictures so much faster, at a more reasonable cost, and the pictures can be emailed to friends and posted on their family websites, which is fun for everyone.  So, despite our desire to be "purists", there is every reason to believe that digital photography is the way to go.