by Simon Towler

The first decade of this century saw an extraordinary boom in on-site printing in UK event photography; so much so that the two activities became, for a few years, synonymous. The on-site printing boom may have been enabled by the new technology of digital photography and portable instant photo printers; but it was fuelled by the credit boom. Britain was going out, and Britain was spending money. And one breed of photographer was going to have some of that.

“The gold rush is over, the dust has settled, the present market isn’t difficult to research. On-site printing hasn’t died. It’s just returned, more or less, to its pre-boom state.”

Revellers got used to the idea of stepping onto a photographer’s seamless on a night out, and buying a print. The numbers of these photographers kept growing, and they were raking in cash.

Then came the crunch, and recession. And many of them disappeared.

Or did they? During the boom, no one was able to estimate how many had got into this new kind of event photography, or how big the booming market was. But now the gold rush is over, the dust has settled, the present market isn’t difficult to research.

On-site printing hasn’t died. It’s just returned, more or less, to its pre-boom state. Before the boom, the on-site printers were the equestrian photographers, travelling to horse shows, and the dog agility people. Those people are still doing on-site printing today (and with much better printers). But for others, much has changed.

The Entrepreneurs

During the boom, there were entrepreneurial individuals who established on-site printing companies that grew a lot bigger than others. They either had lucrative ongoing contracts with big nationwide events, or they had more complex business models like franchising, or ‘events-as-corporate-marketing’; or they had superior sales and marketing, that could keep several crews supplied with work.

The photographers who owned those businesses earned individual annual incomes ranging from about £40-60k, right up to six figure sums, on turnovers that in some cases were in the millions. And they’re still around. Most of those people are still in event photography today — though some have survived business failures and, with the exception of a few really very big players, most now trade from home.

The Jobbers

Those entrepreneurs still provide — mostly casual — work, to what we now think of as an events-only photographer: one of the 200 or so jobbing individuals equipped to do on-site printing. They plug into networks for buying subbed jobs, or take second-shooter assignments. They don’t earn a lot of money — it’s not unusual for them to be offered as little as £50 a day, just a top-up on top of a day-job — and they keep a low profile. (The day-job and the need for a low profile may be two of the things that prevent them from trading in their own right.) They’re pretty anonymous, often known only by a trading-name and mobile phone number listed on some basic website.

Today’s Event Photographer

But those guys make up less than a fifth of the photographers who do events. Although the wholly independent, events-only, on-site printers — who earned comfortable livings trading as eventers in the past — mostly withdrew from the market, their place was taken by other social photographers — mostly wedding photographers — who could get event work, but didn’t depend exclusively on it, nor on the on-site printing model.

“Today, most referrals for on-site printing actually come from other photographers.”

Today, most referrals for on-site printing actually come from these other photographers, many of whom choose to hire an on-site printing crew for events that require it, rather than provide the service themselves.

There are about 700 of these businesses active in event photography today. Events are a significant portion of their income, but they typically have at least two other primary revenue streams: wedding and portrait work, and schools and prom photography. They get their own jobs in their own right, and represent roughly three quarters of the market. For all intents and purposes, they ARE the event photography market today.

The Revenue Model

On-site printing was the supreme revenue model in event photography during the boom years: the idea was to sell prints like hotcakes, there and then for cash. Many event photographers even paid for the privilege of attending an event, just to have the opportunity to sell prints on-site.

Hopefully, no one pays for it today. On the contrary, charging to attend has become an important part of the mix. On many jobs, an attendence fee is the main revenue. On-site printing is not regarded as an automatic necessity either. Unless an eventer knows a particular job of old, it can be hard to predict whether most of the per-photo revenue will come from prints on-site, or from web sales afterwards — or indeed if prints will be any substantial component of the revenue at all. The days of the event photographer obsessed with the performance minutiae of their dye sub printers are numbered, if not over. More than one major manufacturer has had to withdraw from the market for these printing machines completely.

The Digital Challenge

It would be untrue to say that event photography has struggled with the digital-sales challenge. The truth is, it has largely failed to struggle with, or even address, that challenge. For customers at an event, an image that can be instantly shared over the mobile phone network onto Facebook and Twitter often has more value than a print — no matter how professionally taken, against whatever novelty background. Event photography lacks technological solutions and revenue models for mobile phone and social network sales. It’s still wrestling with web sales, and experimenting with the blind alley of selling images on disc and USB stick.

Moving Into Proms

One of the most positive and progressive developments in event photography has been the general move into school prom work that has accompanied the growth in the UK of the whole school prom phenomenon. This dove-tails very well with the skill set of today’s event photographer, who frequently does schools work, as well as events, weddings and portraits. They’re the kind of schools photographer who operates locally on a small scale, often doing their own schools printing on — you guessed it — dye-sub printers; and it isn’t difficult for them to add prom photography to this mix. In fact, it’s a natural progression. Local wedding and portrait photographers have the trade qualifications and respectability necessary for schools work, something the more anonymous events-only photographers lack.

Conclusion

So, on-site printing hasn’t died. It has only reverted to it’s pre-boom state. It’s still practiced, as before, by the equestrian and dog agility photographers. And the most successful exponents in other markets haven’t experienced much decline in their business either. Top event photographers will still tell you honestly that, for them, on-site printing is still quite healthy. They’re largely unaware of the difficulties lesser mortals are experiencing. But the supremacy of on-site printing as a revenue model has waned, and event photography has reverted to a more traditional mix of ways of making money. All but the most successful events-only photographers have largely disappeared, their places taken by the wedding and portrait photographers who also do schools and events. For photographers, school proms have become one of the most important categories of event.

They think it’s all over? Well it isn’t quite, yet.

Spotting a disreputable photographer society can be tricky!

With current sensitivities, for schools, prom and event photographers, it has never been more important to choose a reputable photographer society. And — just as importantly — to avoid disreputable ones.

Disreputable societies

A disreputable society is one so lax that it attracts disreputable members — anonymous or black-economy workers seeking a society logo to put on their website and a listing that can make them appear qualified or even CRB checked. Disreputable members infiltrate by exploiting the eagerness of amateurish organizations to accept new members, and the lack of checking they do on applicants’ identity and good standing.

“It’s frankly irresponsible for crank individuals to start rogue groups like this, when the kind of photography involved includes schools and prom work.”

This isn’t the kind of membership a schools and event photographer, or anyone shooting youth sports, can afford to be associated with, and it’s a trap for the unwary. In fact, it’s frankly irresponsible for crank individuals to start rogue groups like this, when the kind of photography involved includes schools and prom work. Groups like this can also become places bigger players use to exploit a supply of cheap assistants and second-shooters; or to sell unprofitable jobs to naieve ‘subs’.

['subs' = (loosely), 'sub-contractors': togs who 'buy' jobs from a bigger photographer who originally got the booking]

Getting sucked in

In fact, the importance of job-trading to the newbie jobbing photographer, and their need to plug-in to job-trading networks, is often what sucks in the unwary. An initial period of free membership may be followed by a charge just to continue to access the group’s Internet forum. Then the newbie finds that more established members require them to upgrade to paid membership before they will trade jobs and other benefits with them. These members, who may not have much more experience themselves, typically market ‘workshops’ and ‘training’ to new joiners.

How do they blag it?

So how do photographers get taken in by this? Well, like so many other frauds on the Internet, these groups are often nothing more than just a good-looking and convincing website. The people who set them up have spent more time teaching themselves web design than learning the camera. They can be backed by unscrupulous or hard-squeezed photographic suppliers, who use them as a sales and marketing tool to identify naieve photographers just starting out, and as a discrete channel through which to sell unbranded, grey market, generic or counterfeit supplies.

Are they legal?

Are they legal? Not really. Groups that lure you into paying to join, by falsely claiming to have substantial membership, are practising a deception and perpetrating a fraud. They’re doing the same when they try to hustle sponsorship. They rarely have more than fifty members at any one time. Many of those haven’t had to pay a fee, because they’re involved as fee-charging ‘trainers’ themselves. You should be able to leave these groups, and ask for your money back, at any time, by asking them to disclose how many paid members they actually had at the time you joined, and telling them you were deceived.

How to avoid them

How do you avoid them? Don’t use pay-sites and stick to the well known societies. By far the largest organization for school, prom and event photographers in the UK is SISEP, the SWPP’s school and event photographer society. At least 75% of UK schools and event photographers belong to it. Larger school photography concerns, particularly those who do their own printing, may want to check out the Professional Schools Photographers’ Association. In the UK this is a small but respectable group under the umbrella of the Photo Marketing Association. And deserving of an honourable mention is Kevin Cheesman’s SchoolPhotoPRO, another small group which some independent schools photographers find suits them. Of course, you may not need to join a specialist schools or event photographer society, in which case membership of the MPA or BIPP may be just as good for you.

So, keep your eyes open, and be careful out there!

—NewPhotoDigest

Schools photographer Jenny Barnard of South Cheshire Studios has applied Fujifilm ASK thermal photo printers to nursery printing, to help them produce affordable packages at good margin

South Cheshire Studios prints schools work on Fujifilm ASK printers
written by Simon Towler

Schools photographers South Cheshire Studios have applied Fujifilm ASK thermal photo printers to nursery printing, to help them produce affordable packages at good margin

South Cheshire Studios is a small schools photography business owned and managed by Jenny Barnard. When faced with the challenge of pricing nursery packages affordably for lower-income parents, while at the same time still making a profit on them, Jenny decided to bring printing in-house. She cooked up an innovative solution based on affordable Fujifilm ASK professional thermal photo printers.

Evolving a requirement

South Cheshire Studios is a relatively young schools photography business. It started its first season in September 2008. Owner Jenny Barnard LBIPP specialised in nursery and primary school photography. She wanted to extend her service into some of the less-advantaged communities within South Cheshire’s catchment area, but couldn’t see how she could price her packages affordably for those parents and still make money from them, given the out-lab costs charged by her schools printers.

“We use a proof-card system to get orders from our clients. The thing that enabled us to apply the Fujifilm ASK printers to our work was the availability of workflow software that links very well to the Fujifilm printers and allows us to make proof-cards for every single child at the touch of a button.”

Jenny said: “We worked in some areas that didn’t have as much money, and we wanted to provide a service to them that they could afford so they could have photographs of their children. But the prices that we were being quoted from our schools labs meant there would have been no profit margin in that for us. So we needed to have a look around to see if we could find a way to make prints ourselves, to cut our costs in order to pass the benefit on to our clients.”

South Cheshire Studios did consider buying its own minilab. But Jenny did the math and realised that, as a small business serving fewer than fifty schools, South Cheshire wasn’t going to have enough volume for a minilab to be economical.

She said: “Because we’re a small company – we deal with about forty to fifty primary schools and nurseries – we didn’t have the through-put to make a minilab cost effective. Our nurseries only have about 30 to 100 children each, and our primary schools don’t have more than 300.”

Luckily, a chance remark from one of South Cheshire Studio’s suppliers, mentioning a family of printers from Fujifilm called the ASKs, led Jenny to the Focus on Imaging show in 2009 to seek them out as a possible alternative.

Finding a solution

Jenny and a colleague saw the Fujifilm ASK 2000 and ASK 4000 printers on the Fujifilm stand at Focus on Imaging 2009.

She said: “We were really impressed with them. We wanted to go with the Fujifilm brand rather than any other, and we thought that what they offered was just as good if not better than their competitors. We were very pleased with them. For nursery school photography, where today’s parents are buying a pack of pictures for just £10 and might only keep them for six months, the Fujifilm ASKs were perfect.”

The Fujifilm ASK 2000 is a professional photo printer that uses a dry thermal dye sublimation process to produce 300 x 600 dpi continuous tone images on rolls of water-proof, tear-resistant Fujifilm photo media up to 6 inches wide, at speeds of just 8 seconds per 6 x 4 inch print or less than 20 seconds per 6 x 8 inch print.

Its bigger brother, the Fujifilm ASK 4000, uses the same proven technology in a larger format, producing 8 x 10 inch or 8 x12 inch photos at a speed of up to 40 seconds (per 8 x 10 inch print).

Both printers cut their output into individual prints automatically.

These machines would require a far lower capital investment than a minilab, making it easier to recover the investment over a smaller volume of prints.

Refining the solution: workflow

By themselves though, the ASK printers did not represent a schools printing solution. Jenny needed to find software that would enable her to print her proof cards, a crucial task in schools workflow, on the Fujifilm machines.

She didn’t have any problem finding workflow software compatible with the Fujifilm ASKs. She stumbled across some straight away at the same Focus on Imaging show. The Fujifilm brand tends to be widely supported by software developers creating programs for professional photo applications.

Jenny said: “We use a proof-card system to get orders from our clients. The thing that enabled us to apply the Fujifilm ASK printers to our work was the availability of workflow software that links very well to the Fujifilm printers and allows us to make proof-cards for every single child at the touch of a button.”

South Cheshire Studios’ workflow now includes using this software to automatically generate proof-cards with the children’s images on them, printing them on a Fujifilm ASK 2000. Parents choose the images they want and mark their orders on the cards. South Cheshire then prints the orders.

The Studios bought two of the 6 inch Fujifilm ASK 2000s, and one 8 inch ASK 4000. It configured the three printers so that one of the ASK 2000s prints 6 x 4 inch photos on 4R roll media, the other does 6 x 8 inch prints on 6R rolls, and the ASK 4000 is used for 10 x 8 inch prints. The 6 x 4 inch printer also outputs 2 x 3 inch and 2 x 1.5 inch prints for South Cheshire’s standard packs.

This configuration allows South Cheshire Studios to print its proof cards and all its packs entirely in-house on the Fujifilm ASKs. Packs are generated and printed automatically by the workflow software, according to what’s ordered. For instance, the Studio’s pack “A” consists of two 10 x 8 inch prints, two 8 x 6 inch prints, two 6 x 4 inch prints and some little prints.

Perfecting the solution: colour management

But a configuration of printers and workflow software by itself was still not a complete solution. If South Cheshire Studios were to produce all the different size prints in its packs from three different printers, the printers would need to be colour-calibrated to produce identical output. Out of the box, no printer produces output identical to another, not even another one of the same model printing on the same media.

Luckily, Fujifilm has a headquarters in the UK, in Bedford, with all the technical expertise to assemble and integrate functioning solutions built on Fujifilm products. Fujifilm’s technical support manager, Leyton Prosser, understood straight away that South Cheshire Studios needed special software colour profiles for their ASKs to make the printers produce perfectly colour-matched output. Within a week he had created and installed these profiles, and even posted them on the Fujifilm website for other ASK users to take advantage of.

Benefits and trade-offs

In-house printing has allowed South Cheshire Studios to be more flexible in its workflow. When the business was doing all its schools printing with out-labs it was imperative for it to shoot in the morning and do post-production the same afternoon, so it could order its proof cards from the lab straight away. This was because it could take a week to get the cards back. Now it can just put everything into the workflow software, and have proof cards coming out of the Fujifilm ASKs ten minutes later.

One of the trade-offs a business makes when it chooses a lower capital investment printer like a thermal dye-sub, rather than a traditional wet lab, is that it’s marginal cost-per-print is typically higher. But this is less of an issue for a schools photography business than it might be for a photo lab, because the schools photographer sells packs, not individual prints.

Jenny says: “The cost-per-print of Fujifilm media for their ASK printers is very good, they’re very cost effective. For example, a 6 x 4 inch print costs us about 7p. We don’t sell individual prints, we sell them as part of packs, so our mark-up is quite satisfactory.”

Bringing so much of its schools printing in-house has also slashed South Cheshire Studio’s out-lab costs.

Keeping it Fujifilm

South Cheshire Studios also does enlargements up to A2 size on an Epson inkjet printer with Fujifilm Professional inkjet media. Jenny says: “I’ve always found Fujifilm inkjet media to be very high quality and cost-effective. I have a fine-art background, I’m quite a tactile person, and I like the feel of the prints.”

She continues: “I have a number of contacts at Fujifilm and I know them quite well. We’ve had an awful lot of advice and support and encouragement from them. At the Focus show they’re always really helpful, brilliant. They’re always available on the end of the phone. I don’t see any reason to go to anyone else.”

Fujifilm solutions

As a case-study, South Cheshire Studios illustrates how Fujifilm UK has the expertise and resources, and the willingness, to design and implement bespoke professional imaging solutions based on Fujifilm products and services, and to integrate them with products from other sources, to the requirements of its customers, no matter what their business size or how individual their requirement. For the imaging professional, Fujifilm is the natural partner.

To ask about Fujifilm professional photo imaging solutions in the UK, including Fujifilm ASK professional thermal photo printers, e-mail minilabs@fuji.co.uk or call Paul Austin, marketing executive, on +44 (0)1234 217 724 today.

John Hunt (l) with his lab manager, Martyn Headley (r), show off the new Fujifilm Frontier 770 digital minilab they installed for schools photography work at John Hunt Photography, in Radcliffe, Manchester, UK, 28/05/09

Schools Photography chooses Fujifilm Solutions
written by Simon Towler

Schools photography is part of our national culture. We all grow up with it as children, and as parents we later consume it. For the practitioners who provide it, the task divides into two major activities, capture and print. Photographers do the image capture, prints are made by a lab. Both activities may be combined in a single integrated business, although many schools photographers use the services of a specialised lab. Whatever the business model, though, all types of schools service choose Fujiflm solutions.

Schools businesses require individually tailored solutions. That’s what Fujifilm Photo Imaging provides. Fujifilm has the expertise to build a solution that matches the region, market, workflow and scale of any individual schools business, and provides the data capture, print packages and production capacity that suits it best.

For the product

In schools photography, the print is the product. The activity has a reliance on workflow. A single schools assignment can involve handling images of thousands of pupils, sorted into many classes, and output in multiple product variations. Each image has to be linked to the students’ unique ID numbers, and these are associated with their classes. All the prints have to be sorted into one job per pupil, and the packages have to be proofed before parent orders are taken. Because the season is so compressed, into two peak periods either side of the summer holiday, a schools photography business has to output all the work from each school in no more than a few days, so they can move on to the next one.

Two crucial points on the critical path from capture to fulfillment are rendering and printing. Rendering is the software process that turns the captured digital photos into the various product images they’ll be used for, complete with school logos, class mates, personalized text and so on. Rendering, rather than printing, will usually be the limiting factor in productivity. The extremely “bursty” nature of schools printing (thousands of prints are needed quickly in a burst at certain points of each job) requires lab printers with throughput rates so fast, most computers and software would have difficulty keeping up with them. That’s where Fujifilm comes in.

For speed and productivity

When John Hunt’s already sizable schools photography business in Radcliffe, Manchester experienced growth, he needed more speed from his minilabs. He studied the alternatives, then chose Fujifilm (the leading provider of photo imaging solutions in the UK). A new Fujifilm Frontier 770 digital minilab, installed this year, proved twice as fast as John’s old pair of hybrid labs. He needs to output all the 6×4 inch proof cards for any school within two days of completing a shoot. With his new Fujifilm solution, he can, and now prints between 2,500 and 3,000 proofs a day at peak seasons.

Software plays its part here too. John Hunt says: “The LiteBox Schools system supplied by Fujifilm processes schools packages more efficiently, so there’s less cutting and sorting. All the work can now be done by just one to two people.”

Major professional laboratory, Dunns Imaging Group, also use Fujifilm Frontier minilabs for their trade schools service. Dunns’ schools lab switched to Fujifilm machines three years ago, with the purchase of their first Frontier 570. Within eighteen months they added two more. The reliability of the equipment gives Dunns the confidence to run just three machines at capacity, rather than add a fourth for redundancy.

Gary Denham, director, said: “We chose the Frontiers because really we are, if you like, a Fuji lab. We already had other Frontiers in the building. They are very good machines, solid, so it was a natural progression for us.”

Fujifilm is the obvious solutions provider for smaller schools photography businesses too. In fact, this end of the market is often where innovation is introduced. For instance, it was the smaller businesses that first pioneered digital schools photography, and exploited the opportunity to link data to their images, something we take for granted today.

For businesses large and small

Dave Clarke runs a small and thriving schools photography business in Scotland, called Snapping Sam. He can adapt quickly to market changes. He switched to Fujifilm minilabs about a year ago, not for higher capacity, but to work more economically in shorter batches. Dave tells us: “A change in the way schools work needed to be printed prompted us to get the Frontier 570. These days we need to be able to run off prints in smaller jobs, and the Frontier is perfectly suited to that. It replaces a number of roll-to-roll printers that we had. You’d print something-hundred feet of paper on one, then you’d go and process it, then you’d cut it. That used to suit quite a lot of schools work. But you’d waste a four meter paper advance every time you cut, so you couldn’t for instance just do one 10x8in print in a hurry. With the Frontier, when you want a 10x8in print, it just comes out, there’s no waste.”

Supporting innovation

Larger schools photography businesses tend to serve an established and relatively static customer base that doesn’t demand much change. They generally offer a standard range of products that changes little over time. For them, introducing new products could be disruptive. Smaller operations, on the other hand, can have more to gain from change than to lose by it. They depend more on continual business development, and on differentiating themselves from the competition. This is where innovation happens.

Software can be a key to innovation. Dave Clarke uses LiteBox Schools from Fujifilm. He used it to pioneer composite group images with children’s names underneath their pictures. He tells us: “I wouldn’t say we’ve invented the product, but there are very few photographers doing this in Scotland. It has gone down well with a number of schools, though of course there are some where the parents prefer not to share their children’s names.”

Dave has also introduced letterbox format panorama images, composited from informal group shots of class members. He innovates in his papers and finishes too, exploiting sizes and surfaces you can only get on a wet lab. He prints the panoramas on distinctive Fujicolor Crystal Archive Digital Pearl paper, for a high-gloss pearlescent surface effect. And he prints his proof cards on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Writable paper, to make it easy for parents to fill in their order forms. This differentiates his products from work produced at larger schools labs, where issues of market demand, cost versus volumes and trade price sensitivity may restrict the choice of papers.

Dunns Imaging Group’s trade schools service is also standardised on the Fujicolor Crystal Archive family of papers. Gary Denham says: “It’s quality paper and we get the right results on it, it’s consistent. When you’ve got Fujifilm Frontiers, it’s the obvious choice if you want that consistency.”

For efficiency

Fujifilm schools solutions enable efficient data and image capture on Fujifilm S5 Pro DSLR cameras, equipped with barcode readers. Fujifilm LiteBox Schools Image Data Link can use this information directly, to greatly increase the efficiency of data capture on site. Dave Clarke says: “The S5 is the near-perfect schools camera. We were one of the first to buy into the S-series. The S1 was the first affordable camera that gave you good jpeg files straight off the camera. I’ve always loved cameras made by Fujifilm because, being a film company, they know how to make colours look good. Image Data Link enables me to use a barcode scanner that’s attached to the bottom of an S5. It has made the data capture extremely easy. It doesn’t impact at all on the speed of taking the pictures at the school.”

For flexibility

Fujifilm Photo Imaging has all the expertise you need, and all the elements to choose from, to tailor a schools solution specifically for your business. That’s what sets the UK’s leading provider of imaging solutions off from the competition. Fujifilm schools solutions have the flexibility to provide a solution that’s the right size, adapts to your regional needs, and accommodates your choice of add-on services.

Dave Clarke explains some of the options he uses with Fujifilm LiteBox Schools: “There’s actually a number of different software packages used by schools. In England the main one is SIMS. LiteBox is compatible with that. But in Scotland we also have another one called Phoenix. Phoenix is used by all but one of the Education Authorities here. LiteBox Schools also integrates with Phoenix, and that’s essential for secondary school work. Also, we’ve currently just added the ROES interface so that we’re now printing other photographers’ work, and that dovetails into the LiteBox workflow as well.”

For schools photography and printing, it’s Fujifilm

Fujifilm Photo Imaging is the outstanding choice of solutions provider for schools photography and printing businesses. Based in Bedford, the company has a long heritage in professional photography, and contains the expertise and knowledge to tailor a comprehensive end-to-end schools solution specifically for you. The company prides itself on striving to know your business almost as well as you do. That’s why schools photography and printing chooses Fujifilm.