Author: Ashley Whitehead

All you’ve been able to think about is your amazing, beautiful, caring session with your photographer last week. Your little girl is only three days old once, and you’re so happy and tearful about the photos you’re seeing on the projector. They’re more then you ever expected and you’re so happy you hired a professional photographer. You spent so much time, money and labor decorating her room, wait till its hanging up on her wall! Then you say, “Okay, when can I purchase the DVD so I can run to Target and print these out?”

As a photographer, my heart sinks a little because I know that after all your hard work to decorate your little girls room, your hard work picking the perfect photographer, your hard work to pack the little one up and come to my studio, you decide Target equals all of this unparalled hard work.

No ladies. Although Target is great for so many things. Prints of your (only once) newborn little girl, is not one of them. I’m not just going to pick on Target. There’s also Wal-mart, CVS, Walgreens, Sams Club, Costco, etc.

I know you’d like to print your photos because you think it’ll help save on costs. You’ve already invested on professional services just to get where you are, the final product should also be from a professional lab. It does make a difference and the difference will impress you. Why degrade all of your investment on the one thing that will be displayed for all of your family and friends, and will speak to the beauty of the session you were involved in and the beauty of your newborn little girl? They weren’t there for the session so the photo quality and durability needs to speaks volumes for generations.

Paint the Moon did a comparison analysis on print labs from those listed above that you can view here. Her blog is directed towards photographers but the photos are great for families to view and see the difference the colors and quality make. The most important part of her blog about this is “The important thing to note is not the comparisons between the chain labs, but the fact that all of the non-pro labs turn out not only mediocre at best quality, but wildly inconsistent prints each time you send something to print, so all the time and effort and money you’ve spent getting your photos just right is wasted by turning over the final product to a lab that is not dedicated to making the absolute highest quality prints possible. A pro labs job is to make your work look AMAZING.”

In addition to her comment above, photographers have to color calibrate their software to their pro labs color profile which cannot be done at a non-pro lab. Every machine is different, ever technician is different so you leave it all up to chance.

There’s a lot of work involved to provide you high quality images. After all, you wouldn’t invest all this time, effort and money if you didn’t expect superior images, albums, etc. Obviously, an added bonus is that we do all the work for you, find the best pro lab, pick the highest quality paper, order your prints, and inspect for quality.

If you have any questions please contact me at 813.277.6275 or email me at info@ashleyyvonnephotography.com

Up next week, we talk about selection of Albums and the ever so popular Shutterfly.

Ashley Yvonne Photography, a Local Florida Photographer in the Tampa Bay area specializing in Family and Children Photography, Portraits, Water Birth and Newborn Photography.