Making the Point About Selling Prints

In yesterday's "Mind Your Own Business" hangout, Michele Celentano was our guest. Michele is one of the finest family portrait artists in the world and she believes 100% in printing all her work. One of the topics we spent a great deal of time talking about was the challenge of selling prints in our digital world.  A year ago, Michele shared "I Believe". 

I believe in photography - but more than that I believe in photographs.  Printed photographs are tangible. We can hold on to them, pass them around, frame them and hang them on a wall.  We can make albums to be treasured and looked through by children for years to come.

We can’t touch a file and the truth is we don’t know the longevity of a file or if we will even be able to find it someday.  A digital file is a bit of a mystery - if it’s lost, where did it go.  If a drive is damaged what happens to the files?  How many people truly back up all their images?

What happened to disc cameras, eight track tapes, Walkman's and other technology we thought would last forever?   What will our children be looking at in 20 or 30 years?  Photographs are special - files are not! 

This is just an excerpt.  "I Believe" in its entirety is just a click away. Michele has offered it to any photographer to use the way she does, printed and given to clients, which she shows during the webcast. You're welcome to plagiarize to your heart's content.

During the webcast, I went ahead and did some of my own creating, just to illustrate her point. This morning I dove out of bed and immediately grabbed the shot above. The next time you're working with a client and want to make the point about the importance and impact of printed photographs, you might want to create your own prop or two like I did.
 
By the way, that's one of my favorite photographs of me and Sheila ...