Melanie B Photography Blog

A digital negative is a jpg file of your image.  It’s full resolution, which means that you can print it any size you want. You can also print it any where you want and as many times as you want because you own the file.  Other things you can do with your digital negatives:

Put them on your website or blog

Email them to friends and family

Make a card, birth announcement, mug, calendar,….

Scrapbook with them, either as a traditional scrapbook made up of prints or as a digital scrapbook

Lastly, you can easily make back up copies of your negatives to store in a safe place outside your home (like a safe deposit box) so that you know you will always have those images.  I really encourage you to do this, by the way.  Any storage medium (hard drive, CD, etc.) can go bad, so it is really vital that you have more than one copy of all of your photos, not just ones you buy from a professional photographer, but ones you take yourself as well.  So backup and archive your pictures, and check out your archives regularly to make sure that they are still working as well.  [end of Public Service Announcement  ]

Digital Collections are similar to Print Collections except you are buying digital negatives instead of prints.  So you can then make all the prints you want to decorate your home, put in albums, or give as gifts.  I’ve included one product in each Digital Collection.  I chose products that you can only get through a professional photographer so that you are getting something special and unique, something that you can’t easily create yourself.  Also, I want you to have some prints of the negatives that you purchased as a reference; that is, to show you how the negatives should look when printed.  Print labs vary, so if you get some prints back that don’t look so great, you can compare them to the product you got from me to know what your prints should look like.  Then you can show that product to the print lab (assuming you are using a local lab and not an online lab) to say, “I want it to look like this.”

A follow up question I get sometimes is “why is a digital negative more expensive than a standard print?”  Answer: the digital negative is simply more valuable than the print.  Look back at the list above of all the things you can do with the negative!  In particular, you can make as many prints as you want, at any time you want, from that negative. So clearly it’s worth more than just a single print.

Edited to add:  I just found another use for your digital negative!  A friend/client sent me an invitation, and she created the postage stamp using a digital negative she bought from me!  It looked so cool to see her little family smiling at me on the envelope!

Well, probably every photographer and every customer has a different answer to this question, but since you asked me, I’ll give you my answer! 

I think that you need at least three things from every session:  a big, beautiful wall portrait of your favorite image,  an album that includes lots of favorites to put on your coffee table and look at over and over, and some smaller prints to frame for your desk  and give as gifts.

I have structured my 2009 price list so that every Print Collection gives you those three, and maybe a little more!

I’ve included either a 16×20 print or a 20×24 Gallery Mount or Canvas as the wall portrait. I included a larger Gallery Mount or Canvas because once the 16×20 print is framed, the finished size will be at least 20×24 (and probably a little larger if you are using a mat).  Thus you will be filling approximately the same amount of wall space with any product.

The Basic Collection gives you loose 5x7s so that you can make your own album, and the other three collections all include a finished album.

And remember, if the combination of sizes that I’ve included in the Collections doesn’t work for you, you can always make substitutions (of equal or lesser value).  Sometimes a client knows what she wants, but doesn’t know how to fit it into one of my Collections.  I’m happy to help figure out how to make the substitutions to give you the most for your money.

PS  The Ultimate and Luxury Collections include one 11×14 and five 8x10s, which once framed can be hung with the Gallery Mount or Canvas (also included in those Collections) to create a beautiful Wall Gallery.  Keep an eye out for an upcoming post for more information on creating a Wall Gallery!