Selling Portraits: Color or B&W?

[Paul Kuroda]

I'm shooting this school job for a huge fund raiser. The color portraits of the young kids look great, but their initial request is for b&w prints.

What sells better? I see some portrait photographers only offer b&w. Personally I nice vibrant color..especially with kids.
Thanks!

[DougAxford]

I have always found that many people want B&W before the portrait is taken and then after they see the images, they change their mind to mostly color with a few B&W.

I had one wedding who requested ONLY B&W. I told her, no problem, I shoot color and can print everything in B&W. That wasn't good enough for her and she booked elsewhere. Probably just as well, I have enough loonies as it is.

[EricC]

What sells better? Color will out sell B&W if your are doing an across the board comparison. However there are boutique shops that specialize in B&W or hand coloring. Not all aspects of photography have converted to digital nor has everyone abandoned the old ways. There is one studio here that ONLY offers wall prints starting at 16x24 and up. Their typical client will drop $3500+ for A family portrait. Who's to judge.

[Norm_Cabana]

Paul,

At the risk of sounding too pushy, I think you're going about this the wrong way. You like color, and so do I. I almost never show a customer a B&W photo and the ones I have shown, don't sell. That's important. My customers are telling me, with their dollars, what they like.

In your case, your customers seem to be asking for B&W and you don't like them. Here's what I'd do. I'd be prepared with samples of both styles of photos and simply let my customers tell me what they like by watching what they buy and by listening to what they say. Deciding ahead of time, without any prior reference to go by, is not the way I'd go. It really doesn't matter what we, as photographers and sales people, like. It only matters what the customer likes and is willing to buy.