Digital cameras and photo processing technology could signal changing times for professional photographers, and some in New Hampshire are switching strategies, while others are closing up shop.
Rita Barrett, 42, owner of Merrimack Photo will close her business next year after six years in business.
"I really believe I have it in me, my prices are very good and I do work hard," said Barrett, 42, "But you can't be competitive with the prices out there."
Barrett shoots wedding photos, portraits and provides services for touch-ups and restorations, and says that she has many loyal clients, but fewer clients coming to her.
She says she has been flexible with her pricing models -- charging 30 cents for a 4 x 6 inch print -- in an effort to attract repeat customers, however the ubiquity and expediency of the digital age have made it tough to compete -- amateur photographers can now go to CVS and get a 4 x 6 inch print from a kiosk in seconds for 19 cents.
Barrett says that some professional photographers have worked to cut costs by simply handing their clients a compact disk with the photo shoot of their son or daughter written on it, and she thinks that the profession has suffered for it.
"When you have it on CD and give it to them, that's not a finished product," she said. "That's definitely part of the problem, there are a lot of photos on desktops that never get printed."
Out of the darkroom
Professional photogra-phers for years worked with 35mm cameras and darkroom photo processing, using a light to project the negatives onto photo-paper and then moving that paper through developing, bleaching and fixing baths.
The processing time could take days, depending on if photographers had their own darkroom or the photos were sent out to labs, and photographers were largely valued on trust that they had gotten the shots.
The digital age changed everything, and meant that photographers needed to become lab workers with darkrooms built into their computers. In the fast track age of photography, professional shutterbugs were competing with instant and often self-processing photo labs.
Barrett purchased a printer that transferred digital information from the computer onto photo paper and took the prints through the developing, bleaching and fixing baths. The machine was costly and she paid it off over several years.
"I was looking into equipment, I knew that was coming," she said. "I did buy into digital."
In Amherst
Ken Smith, who opened the Golden Times Studio in Amherst in 2003, did not invest in a high-tech photo lab. He continues to send out his digital shots to a photo-processing lab, a process that can take as long as a week and which his customers "are willing to accept."
Smith brings a laptop out on his photo shoots, however, eliminating the hemming and hawing that customers go through while they wait to see if their shots were good ones. After he completes a shoot with the family, he sits down with them at the laptop and gives them editorial power to select the pictures they want to buy.
"You put pictures up on a 42-inch plasma screen, and sit down with them on a couch with a soda, and you do a better job when you get their input," he said. "They are helping to tell the story."
Cameras for all
The digital age has put cameras in many more hands -- Best Buy is currently selling online a Kodak 5.0 mega-pixel camera for $109 (with free next-day shipping) -- making amateur photographers out of nearly everyone.
The top of the line digital cameras can run into the thousands, often more than the premiere 35mm cameras did in their day, however they provide the same settings -- F stop settings to adjust the diameter of the aperture and settings to adjust the duration of the exposure -- and instant feedback with savings on darkroom costs.
Barrett said that even the cheapest digital cameras are instructive, enabling amateurs to set goals and get immediate feedback, learning with the aid of the digital screen, just how they need to make adjustments for lighting and other variables.
"Digital teaches people to take better pictures because they can see them right away," she said.
Learning
She said, however, that it can take years to develop procedural skills, sense of place and timing that separates professionals and amateurs.
"Wedding photographers get paid a lot of money because they are a photographer and not just someone who shows up with a camera," she said. "You have to know what shots to take, and find them within that background in a very short amount of time -- there is no time to say, let me think this out, and there are no second chances."
Barrett says that photographers have skills that ensure that they will survive the digital age, and especially those who can find their niche, such as wedding photography. Barrett says she would have continued if her husband wasn't called to Iraq, leaving three children behind . To be successful in the current market, a photographer needs to work six to seven days, she said.
A niche in the industry
To compete with a consumer industry that makes digital cameras available to all at relatively low costs, photographers are learning to specialize their services.
Ken Smith of Golden Times Studios is currently looking into portrait services that are geared toward special needs children.
Justin Cross opened Cross Photography in Merrimack in 2002 before moving the business to Manchester. Cross specializes in commercial industrial, high tech and medical manufacturing photography.
"Corporations tend to come back; they have repeat business," he said, noting that business has been steady. "It goes right along with the rest of the economy."
The commercial photography he shoots for brochures and trade publications, can often take "several hours to set up and shoot," requiring professional skills, albeit different from the mastery of place and timing needed to get spontaneous wedding shots.
Cross processes the pictures himself on his computer and produces a compact disk from those shoots that goes "directly to a printer chosen by the client," with the client making a separate payment to the printer.
The ubiquity of digital cameras, home printers and self-processing kiosks has meant a roller coaster ride for developers and printers as well in recent years.
In Milford
Lisa Peterson, owner of Photos Plus, a photo developer in Milford for the past 20 years, said, "The industry itself peaked in 2002 or 2003. It then bottomed in 2005 and 2006 and there was a double-digit decline in overall pictures printed at retailers."
Photo Plus subsequently merged with Herb Martin, the former owner of Photographix of Nashua, who closed his doors this spring after 20 years in business. The two now operate under the name Photos Plus at the old location at the intersection of 101 and 101A in Milford.
Commercial work
Martin wanted to concentrate on "large commercial customers" and through the merger, the two companies "now work with more professional photographers in southern New Hampshire than anyone."
Peterson said, "consumers in general are transitioning from film to digital.
In the early part of that transition consumers did not print as much or as often or they tried to print at home."
Photos Plus adapted by merging with Photographics, opening a Web site, citing statistics from the Photo Marketing Association, that show online digital print orders grew by 154 percent over the last year
The company also began gearing their services toward professional photographers, and recently purchased a printer for $200,000.
Peterson said that, "with this printer we can match or beat the quality anywhere in the country. But it is people. Making these adjustments takes a photo lab technician with years of experience and an eye for color," she added.
"The drug stores and super stores just press print and walk away."
Those changes enabled the company to expand, when the industry went on the decline, and Photo Plus "sales have grown by over 20 percent from last year and our orders received through our Web site have probably doubled or tripled."
