Photo Gifts

One thing I've done for my inlaws (at their request) for several years now is give them scrapbook pages for their birthdays and Christmas. I get doubles of all my prints, and make a duplicate set of pages. It doesn't take much more time to assemble two copies of the same page, once you decide on a layout. I don't do the fancier (and pricier) 12"x12" scrapbook format. I use 8.5x11 paper and I try to put as many pictures as possible on the page without sacrificing content. I give them just the pages, and they slip them into page protectors and put them in their photo album. It's worked out quite well, as my inlaws are the type who are otherwise rather impossible to shop for.

Other fun photo-related gifts:

1. Calendars. I take photos from throughout the year and make a calendar for the coming year. Again, a perfect gift for the grandparent-who-has-everything. In the past I have used snapfish.com to create this digitally. Most of the online photo processing places offer calendars (and all sorts of gift options), and I can usually find a coupon or a sale. This year, I may try doing it scrapbook-style, using prints and the scrapbook-style calendars that you can find at scrapbooking and craft stores.
2. Photo Cubes. One year, I got a great deal on clear acrylic photo cubes at Michael's. I bought out all they had, and have used them for gifts throughout the years. Just trim 5 (or 6, if you want a photo on the bottom) fun photos to fit the cube, and there you go!
3. Framed photos. I have given school pictures in frames to grandparents (and great-grandparents), and one year my son (who was about 9 at the time) took a really gorgeous picture at Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas. We made 5x7 prints, my son signed them in gold ink at the bottom, and we framed them to give to family.

Just picture all the possibilities for fun-and-frugal photo gifts. Send me your best ideas!

Price vs. Value

There are many times when price alone should not be the driving factor, but value. You might spend hundreds of dollars on something that you value and treasure that someone else might consider a waste of money. As the daughter of a professional photographer, my article about school photos was, quite frankly, thoughtless. As my dad commented:

I hate to say it, but the high school guy, while embracing "new" and "modern" business methods is a perfect example of why making a living as a photographer is getting more impossible.

Many areas of photography are engaged in a "race for the bottom" to see who can do something the cheapest. Stock photography which used to provide us with a good living is basically a skeleton of what it was. Images available on-line for a dime or less. The multi thousand dollar sales I used to have regularly are now few and far between.

I've seen my dad reinvent his career many, many times in my lifetime. But at no time have I ever seen him up against the types of business challenges he faces now. His work is--and always has been--stunning. He truly has a gift. What he offers definitely has value far beyond the price. Art--and I definitely include photography--is one category that value is much more than what you paid.

Back to the topic of school pictures for a bit. I hope that the $20 CD I bought was as good a value for the photographer as it was for me. I hope that his markup was higher on the CD than on the prints I didn't buy. When shopping for a photographer for my son's senior pictures, if I can't talk my dad into driving 1,000+ miles with all his photographic equipment to do the job, I hope to find a talented photographer trying to break into the field who might be willing to work out a deal with us in exchange for effusive word-of-mouth advertising and recommendations.

I hope that none of us are so fixated on the bottom line, and getting something for as little as possible, that we overlook those areas in our lives where value is more important than price. My great-aunt is a wonderful example of that. She used to shop at Deseret Industries (like Goodwill) and was incredibly frugal in her household expenditures so that she could afford season tickets to the ballet and the Utah Symphony. She truly understood the concept of value.

A New Way to Order School Pictures

I love school pictures! They are a great way to document your child's growing-up years. I have always bought a large enough package so that I can share them with family and friends. Over the years, though, school pictures have become pricier and pricier. I was spending between $50 and $60 per kid to get all the pictures I wanted.

This year, I spent more than $60 on the picture package for my 8th grader. That's ridiculous. I also don't like the fact that I had to buy lots of sizes I didn't want in order to get enough of the sizes I did want. Expensive AND wasteful. However, the high school photographer offered the image on CD with a full copyright release for $20. I jumped at the chance, thinking that I could surely get prints made far cheaper. I was right. I spent $6.94 at winkflash.com to get all the sizes I wanted, from 8x10s down to wallets. I got only the sizes I needed. The prints were every bit as good as the ones from the middle school photographer that I paid THREE TIMES as much for (also counting the price of the CD).

Next year you can bet that I will be ordering the CD again for my then-to-be 9th grader. But, I'll also have to deal with senior pictures for my oldest. I'm already looking for frugal options.