So I’m going to break my own pattern here, and not post an image as part of this entry. I couldn’t find one that fit the theme, so instead of tossing up some random shot, I decided to leave this one without eye candy. I promise I won’t make it a habit! I figured this one can stand on its own.
After a day or so of thinking about things, and a handful of conversation later, I have a solution to my question of how to restructure my packages. In fact, you may have already seen the fruit of my pacing around and scratching my chin. The short of it? If people want albums… then they should be in the packages. Even if they are just a starting point.
So here’s what I did; instead of actually trying to retrofit the old packages with new stuff, I decided to start with a clean slate. I thought about the weddings that I’ve shot over the last year and a half… and the shortest one came out to be roughly six hours. I figure that’s a good starting point. Real basic… six hours of shooting, and a smaller album. The six hours is enough to cover a smaller wedding if the reception is on the short side, or if the ceremony and the reception is happening at the same place. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for “getting ready” photos, but not everyone wants them, and besides… if there’s one thing that’s the same with every wedding, is that they are all different. Six hours is a great start, and should meet the basic needs of most weddings, and anything above and if it turns out that it’s too short… then more time can be added on. Since I only ever shoot one wedding a day, it’s never a big deal if I need to stay later. The album us nice, very high quality, but doesn’t have a huge number of pages, or any bells and whistles. A simple high-quality flush mount, with 12 thick pages bound in black leather. Simple and classy.
One of the things that is missing from the basic package is an engagement session. Engagement sessions are… well, let me put it this way. They’re important. Not life-or-death important by any means… but very very good to have. In fact, I believe that I should probably write an entire post on them. So, the standard package is an improvement on the great value of the basic one. Still six hours on the wedding day, but this one has a one hour long engagement session that will not only net some great images, but almost more importantly, will get you used to being photographed. Like I said, more on engagement sessions later. The other difference is that the album is bigger; not in page count, but in the size of each page. The basic album has pages that are ten-by-ten, but the standard has twelve-by-twelve pages. Ultimately, it may hold a few more pictures, but the real difference is in that the pictures them selves are bigger and bolder on the pages.
The premium package is where things really start to flesh out nicely. The wedding day coverage gets bumped up to eight hours, and the engagement session to two hours. Given that, it works very well for weddings where the ceremony is at one location, but the reception is elsewhere. The thing with such weddings is that often there is a gap of a half hour or more between the end of the ceremony, and the reception; this is time spent organizing everyone in the bridal party and getting everyone to the reception site… and other things of that nature. The more generous eight hour schedule leaves room for these things, and also enough time to take some of the “getting ready” shots.
It seems like everyone uses some sort of online way of keeping in touch with people. Facebook… myspace… blogs… Many of these let you upload a slide show of pictures or movies to share with friends and family. That’s what the Web slide show is all about. Your wedding photos, set to music, with tasteful transitions. In recent history, these slide shows were created on DVD, which is still a great way to do things, but… people spend more and more time on their computer, surfing the web. So why not let them see your photos right online? Why am I talking about these? Because one is included in the premium package as one of the two physical items that make it “premium”. The other is a beefier album, with sixteen pages. Where the step from basic to standard boosted the presentation of the images, the next step to premium boosts the number of pictures that come in the album.
So I was pretty happy with what I came up with, and I took my piece of paper that I was using as a scratch pad and started talking to everyone that was available to me to run the ideas past. What I had was solid… but something was missing. Something needed to crown it all. This is how I (with some help) came up with the ultimate. All of the packages have Miller’s flush mount panoramic albums. These albums have seamless two-page spreads, so a single picture can be stretched over two pages. The largest page that goes into these albums is twelve-by-twelve, so each spread is twenty-four inches wide. The maximum number of pages that will fit into these books is twenty. And that’s exactly what the ultimate album is; the biggest they offer. I also decided to include both the web slide show, and a slide show on a DVD, so you can watch it on the web, or in your living room. But the biggest difference between the ultimate and the rest is time. All of the other packages have a set limit on how long the shooting goes on the wedding day before additional time has to be billed. With the ultimate package, there is no limit! For the sake of naming a price, I chose ten hours, but if it takes longer, there are not additional costs. As long as the party’s alive, there will be pictures to remember it by.
More than ten hours? It happens. Believe me. My wife and I were guests at the wedding of friends last summer. (She was the matron of honor.) While your’s truly took the opportunity to sleep in, the girls started getting ready at ten in the morning. The ceremony started in the afternoon, and then there was a good hour and a half gap between the end of the ceremony and the start of cocktail hour which then melded in a leisurely pace into a reception that lasted well into the night. We left to go back to our hotel room a hair after eleven if memory serves me right. And there you have it. Thirteen hours. Mind you, this wasn’t the kind of party that petered off at the end. The dancing continued right up until they turned up the lights, and after the reception was done and everyone was back at the hotel, an impromptu after-party struck up in the hotel lobby. I think the hotel management never regretted putting that piano in the lobby as much as they did that night… then again, as long as we were by the piano, the hotel bar was packed. Maybe they didn’t make out so poorly in the end after all.
Anyway. So there it is. The problem of new packages… is solved. Now I’m happy.
