| Re: Digital wedding shoot:how do you print your pr
Bill you have to ask yourself what your time is worth. Consider the time that you'll spend handling each print and what the stated purpose of that print is. The way that I looked at it is, that we're talking about proofs. They're not meant to last 200 years, or to be hung on the wall, and they're not really making me any money. I had all the same issues that you are having when I moved to digital and even tried to print 2 weddings. The bottom line was that I spent more time printing and then cutting (we use traditional proof albums) prints than I cared to. More over, the back of each print that came from my film lab had a neg #, my studio name, and copyright information. There's no real way to print file numbers on the back of a print, so if something happens and they hit the floor I'm stuck comparing prints to files. etc etc etc.
I found a lab that could take my files and return a product that was similar to what I was accustom to when I shot film. White house custom color (whcc.com) runs maybe 1000 4x6 proofs for us each month. They will print 5 8x10's free to make sure that your color profiles are correct. They have ALL of the services that my wet lab did and they ship my orders back ups 2nd day at no charge.
So lets look at this from a business standpoint I put in half or maybe an hour selecting the files and moving them to my selects folder then run a CS droplet that sizes and saves each file. The droplet runs on its own so I'm free to keep working on other things. Before leaving for the day I start an upload using cuteFTP and turn off the lights. Next morning I log in to the website fill out an order form and that's it 2 days later I have the prints.
I have NO affiliation with WHCC I'm just plain sold on the quality and ease. The fredom of concentrating on my photography and my clients is also a HUGE reason that I got away from printing client files.
As a side note, the owner of the wet lab that was doing all of my work offered to sell me the lab as he is looking to retire and move to FL. Now that took some real soul searching, after all who wouldn't want his own fuji frontier? In the end I came to the conclusion that I'm a photographer and that I really don't want to be a lab operator on any level.
Just my nickels worth for you to think about.
Eric  | 
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