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Years ago shutterbugs used to tell me things like "all I want to do is
take pictures and not be bothered with all the selling and printing stuff." In those days it simply
didn’t work that way. Every little detail had to be done just
right from the film you used to the way information was printed on the slide. In order to get published
in those days you had to make a name for yourself.
One little mistake and some NY editor would toss your hard work in
the trash and not even tell you anything about it. Were they
mean? No, just busy. They didn't have computers and receved piles of photos and other work from
photographers every day. If everything looked good at first (and only) glance then it went to pile
number two for some low level to go through. If it made it past him then it could land on the
bosses desk for a second glance.
All the lab and sales work had to be done the hard way. It took lots
of time away from shooting and in my opinion more pictures is
where the money is. Today a Photographer can choose from one
of the many ready-made complete photographic web businesses
with everything already set up and running.
This is a tremendous advantage to the working photographer and the
new tools are a great time saver. So you can build it yourself
or use XSiteProV2 on the Resources page and save a whole lot of time and get a site that
works.
With local work like Weddings there were many things that could go
wrong with film so you had to be careful. The father of the bride just laid out thousands of
dollars and you better not mess up the pictures of his little girl. It's a lot easier with digital
cameras and computers. Todays computers and software can fix almost anything if you know
how.
Once I photographed the Grand Opening of a major company and the
negatives came back from the lab with a major scrach down one side. It took me many hours of lab
work to save that one. What's easy to fix today was close to impossable with film.
Walt
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