My wife’s a photographer. That business is going through a major transition. Everything going digital was just the start of the commodification. These days, the wedding guests and photographer assistants typically have better gear than the photographers. Why? Well because those people have day jobs.

“Wow, is that the Nikon D300? I can’t afford it because I’m a photographer!!”

For me, as someone who spends too much time thinking about technology and business, it’s an interesting problem. There’s clearly been a massive shift in the entire framework that the current wedding photography business model was predicated on. That being limited access to resources in the form of camera gear and a darkroom. Yes skill etc comes into play but what’s primary is camera and darkroom. So I’ll ask you, what do you do?

For me, I start looking for the value in the new environment. What clearly has no value is having a great camera, access to darkroom, etc. Weddings are filled with great cameras today with hobbyists behind them. All that really matters is staging the shot and capturing the data. I have to manipulate the data into a pretty picture even if I’m the one who shoots it.

What has value? The staging of shots and the cat herding that’s required to get people paying for their photos to cooperate. The deft skill required to make the overall day a pleasant experience, ie bedside manner. As well, the long hours spent in photoshop after the wedding, editing the good shoots into great ones.

My photography 2.0? Hire me to shoot your wedding. I won’t bring a single camera of my own to the event. Instead I’ll coordinate the multitude of cameras and photographers at your event. I’ll have a memory download/storage device with me that I’ll download any and all camera memory to at the end of the event. Then I’ll edit and put together 200 high quality proofs for you, attributing the person who took the shot. All this for a fraction of what I’d charge to actually shoot your wedding.

Dumb idea? Likely but what would you do? This massive shift pattern is occurring more and more, as an exercise, what’s your wedding photography 2.0?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 4:48 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.