SnapBox Vs the Wedding Photographer — and How Not to Win the Heart of a Wedding Blogger!

Shall we begin? The press release from Snap­Box is in gray text, and my responses are in a suit­ably hot pink! I’ve cor­rected some of their typos as well. Enjoy. Claire xxx

Pro­fes­sional wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers are *sup­pos­edly* on the way out, sug­gests research

Sur­vey reveals that 41% of new­ly­weds pre­fer their guests’ pho­tos to those taken by the offi­cial photographer

As more and more peo­ple have access to high qual­ity cam­eras on their smart­phones, the need for pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers appears to be dwin­dling. New research from dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy ser­vice, Snap­Box, reveals that around half (41%) of those tying the knot in Britain actu­ally pre­fer pho­tos of their big day taken on guests’ smart­phones, rather than those taken by the pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher. With wed­dings rack­ing up a large pro­por­tion of pho­tog­ra­phers’ sum­mer work, this could be an indi­ca­tion that their future career is in danger.

Oh! I won­dered where the research was from. So Snap­Box did it them­selves? What a sur­prise. The only thing which could amaze me more would be for Snap­Box to reveal that their own ser­vices were on the way out. Go fig­ure.
It’s to be expected in any mar­ket research that if a busi­ness asks its own cus­tomers for infor­ma­tion about the com­pe­ti­tion, those cus­tomers will say they pre­fer the busi­ness itself. I’ll accept that Snap­Box cus­tomers pre­fer their own snaps to qual­ity pho­tog­ra­phy. But what per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion are using Snap­Box as the main provider of their wed­ding pho­tos?
More impor­tantly, just how bad were these cou­ples’ “pro­fes­sional” wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers, if they’re telling Snap­Box their friends’ images are bet­ter?! Scary.

A digital-savvy gen­er­a­tion — but are we miss­ing out on memories?

More nat­ural and less posed pic­tures was the top rea­son new­ly­weds sited (shouldn’t that be ‘cited’?) for pre­fer­ring their guests’ pho­tos (13%), fol­lowed by the fact they were more per­sonal (11%) and that they cap­tured the entire day instead of just key moments (8%).

It seems that digital-savvy young peo­ple are more likely to stick with their smart­phones when it comes to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy, with only a quar­ter (25%) of 18–25 year olds pre­fer­ring pic­tures taken with qual­ity cam­eras. How­ever, the older gen­er­a­tion appear to remain in favour of tra­di­tional wed­ding snaps, with 57% of those aged 55 and above pre­fer­ring the pro­fes­sional photographs.

A sim­i­lar trend was noted with the pre­sen­ta­tion of such pho­tos, with only eight per cent of 18–25 year olds now dis­play­ing their pho­tos in a tra­di­tional photo album, com­pared with 26 per cent of peo­ple over the age of 55. These find­ings sug­gest that the trend for tak­ing pho­tos on smart­phones rather than cam­eras and dis­play­ing snaps on social media has changed the way young peo­ple now cap­ture and share mem­o­ries, but the older gen­er­a­tion are more will­ing to stick with tra­di­tional methods.

With the rise of per­sonal pho­tog­ra­phy edit­ing through the use of apps such as Insta­gram, it is now eas­ier than ever for smart­phone images to look pro­fes­sional. Addi­tion­ally, with access to ser­vices like Snap­Box, your smart­phone images can now be printed directly onto a can­vas, cut­ting out the mas­sive cost pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers charge.

Hang on a minute — are they say­ing Insta­gram makes phone snaps look pro­fes­sional?! No way!!! Where do I start with that one? Over­processed snaps are fine for a night out, but they’re worlds apart from qual­ity pho­tog­ra­phy… and Hey! Snap­Box? We’re just not that stupid.

The mark of a press release writ­ten by the PR com­pany with­out thor­ough check­ing… John Doe? Really? Isn’t he dead?

John Doe at Snap­Box com­ments on this research, “It is evi­dent that young peo­ple are becom­ing a lot more reliant on their smart­phones to cap­ture, store and share mem­o­ries – even those as sig­nif­i­cant as a wed­ding day. The shift from tra­di­tional pho­tog­ra­phy meth­ods to mod­ern, dig­i­tal forms are (is) clearly hap­pen­ing rapidly and we are likely to expe­ri­ence fur­ther change in the industry.

This research sug­gests that we could see the death of the pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher in com­ing years, but it is impor­tant for peo­ple to not rely too heav­ily on their smart­phones to store snaps from a loved one’s spe­cial day – what if you lost your phone? Unleash your pho­tos from the con­fines of your phone and dis­play them with pride!

Death? That’s maybe a lit­tle harsh.

But seri­ously — I’ve read dozens of arti­cles about hir­ing a good wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher. Why so many? Because there are some cheap and nasty wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers out there. Put sim­ply, you get what you pay for. Plenty of sur­veys will tell you that cou­ples’ num­ber one regret is hir­ing a cheap pho­tog­ra­pher. Snap­Box have mis­in­ter­preted their own research when they con­clude that pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers are on the way out.

This actu­ally wor­ries me. It’s a dan­ger­ous arti­cle. Please — if you’re a bride or groom try­ing to save money on your wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy DON’T take research like this at face value. Your friends’ images will never replace the pho­tos a good wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher will give you, and you could end up regret­ting it for the rest of your lives if you don’t have good images to remem­ber your wed­ding day by.

The pro­mo­tional bit about SnapBox…

Snap­Box turns pho­tographs, includ­ing those from Face­book and Insta­gram, into high qual­ity can­vas prints. Fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful launch last year in the US, Snap­Box is set to offer Brits a stress-free solu­tion to the worry of what to do with the grow­ing num­ber of pre­cious images saved on smart­phones today.

What they’re for­get­ting to tell you here is that even Snap­Box can’t pol­ish a turd (as the say­ing goes). It might well “turn pho­tographs… into high qual­ity can­vas prints” — but only if the orig­i­nal images are of a decent qual­ity. And unless you’ve hired a really bad, ama­teur wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher (you’ll usu­ally know if you’re pay­ing less than £1,000) there isn’t a chance in hell your mates’ Insta­gram snaps will be bet­ter than the real thing.

It’s not all bad… What Snap­Box is fine for!

It wouldn’t be fair of me to pub­lish the research and press release with­out say­ing some­thing nice about Snap­Box so what I will say is that Snap­Box is prob­a­bly fine for get­ting a nice hol­i­day snap on a can­vas for your home. But for the sake of my poor bleed­ing eyes, don’t assume that if your mates pho­to­graph your wed­ding on their phones you’ll end up with high qual­ity can­vas prints!

* * *

Find out more — visit www.snapboxuk.com, upload a photo from your com­puter or mobile device, or select one from your Face­book albums. Alter­na­tively you can email an image from your device to snapbox@snapboxuk.com. You will receive a Snap­Box pre­view email back in a few min­utes. Choose your size and con­tinue. Easy.

* * *

Thoughts? Claire xxx