Why Camera Stores And Other Related Businesses Hate Digital Photography
Remember when there were FotoMats? Well I just gave away the fact that I am older than many of you. They have all been replaced by Espresso stands! You used to pull up to this little yellow hut in the grocery store parking lot, hand the cute little girl who worked there a roll of film, get your receipt and drive up a few days later to claim your prints.
You could always count on having to give a polite honk of your horn to the person in front of you because instead of driving away, they'd park in front of the booth looking at their pictures.
And that excitement of seeing the pictures for the first time used to be controlled by FotoMat, or by the camera store, or by the mini-lab, or the drugstore. And now, YOU control the moment when the pictures are first revealed. And that's the crux of why the photography business, and many related businesses are in trouble. There's been a paradigm shift.
Retailers no longer control the exciting moment of seeing the pictures first. Digital cameras have taken the excitement from film processing.
And remember double prints? You'd get a second set of prints with your roll of film so that you can share them with friends and family. But once again, the retailers are no longer required to make that happen. The moment of sharing pictures probably happened as soon as they were downloaded to the computer. They might have been e-mailed, or uploaded to an online site, where a link was sent to friends and relatives for viewing.
So camera stores and mini-labs, they aren't jumping up and down for the digital revolution. In fact, their big PR firms are often the shills behind anti-digital articles on the web and in print. They take the film side in the film v. digital debate for a simple reason, digital is killing their business.
But I have an idea. Instead of sticking their heads in the sand, these businesses should look for new opportunities. And here are two. Archiving and storage. I have nearly a quarter million photos. If someone could come up for an affordable and easy solution for me, I'd be interested in paying them to backup my files. This could be the job that mini-labs do instead of processing film. Any sort of archive service could be valuable to all sorts of photographers. And there are other opportunities for people who used to be in the processing business. And some of those opportunities were in fact made into businesses. Enter companies like Shutterfly or Apple with iPhoto.
If traditional camera stores and other related businesses don't figure this out. They are going to be disintermediated.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott Bourne is the author of "88 Secrets to Selling & Publishing Your Photography" and "88 Secrets to Photoshop for Photographers." Both are available from Olympic Mountain School Press, http://www.mountainschoolpress.com His work has also appeared in books, magazines, galleries, calendars, on greeting cards, web sites and on posters.
Scott is a professional photographer, author, teacher and pioneer in the digital imaging field. His career started in the early 70s as a stringer covering motor sports for Associated Press in Indiana. Since then, he has shot commercial, portrait, wedding, magazine and fine art assignments. His new passion is wildlife photography.
Scott regularly lectures on a variety of photo and media-related subjects. He's appeared on national television and radio programs and has written columns for several national magazines. He is the publisher of Photofocus.com, an online magazine for serious photographers and also serves as the executive director of the Olympic Mountain School of Photography in Gig Harbor, WA.