Snapshots and your shots, together or never?

A couple of weeks ago, Jason Kiefer (CEO of www.Pictage.com) and I attended the annual Infotrends’ (www.infotrends.com) Digital Imaging conference in No. California - two days of panel discussions from the industry’s top thought leaders. The attendees seemed to largely be those involved in the Online Photo Sharing “retail” space, and focused on new ways to make money from that vast world (as opposed to our "tiny, focused" world of Online Photo Commerce, where monetizing, rather than just “sharing,” is the basic premise.) I found it an enlightening event that I will no doubt continue to draw from and comment on in this blog over the coming days and weeks.

Overall, it appears that, while the interest in the “sharing” part of online photo sites is still strong, the resulting retail sales of (ever cheaper) prints is flattening or even declining. I think this is great news for our industry in that it indicates some movement away from DIY digital fad and back to the higher expectations that only professionals can deliver consistently. However, this change in direction is causing some radical ideas to surface.

For instance, at the top of my “I’m not sure I heard that right” list was a statement made by the CEO of a category competitor, indicating his belief that, in the near future, professional photographers will need to learn to live, and even promote, the blending of consumer-snapshots and their professionally-captured images into the same bound albums and coffee table books.

I immediately lept onto the table and bellowed, “TRAITOR!" (well, at least in my mind, I did. )

Over the course of the conference, this theme of “blending” Pro images and non-Pro images (aka snapshots) came up a couple more times, with its advocates indicating that this hybrid result would be a requirement for “future success” and the main reason Professional photographers were “afraid” of it was because an increasing number of snapshot images could equal or exceed the quality of their Pro images – thus making consumers aware of this and driving a devaluation for Pro images, and photographers.

As a detractor of this idea, I feel its biggest problem aren’t those rare occasions that snapshots looks as good as Pro shots, but the overwhelming occasions when they DON’T and they’re still bound into the same page or book. Why should you care? Well, I figure it this way: a large part of your business growth success is based on referrals and, noting that the printed and bound result of your expertise is often a key indicator to these potential referrals, the LAST thing you’d want to reinforce is the assumption that you supplied the snapshots as well as the Pro shots. When it comes to books and albums, I believe in the “one bad apple spoils the whole barrel” theory.