In house vs Out sourcing

In college, I spent hours, days, and weeks, in the dark room and print lab working my photo projects. I loved the feeling of working the medium and producing the perfect print. The longer it took me the more enduring the final print became. I enjoyed working the chemicals and experimenting with alternative printing process both in the dark room and in the print lab. Theses process and experimentation can only happen in an in studio print lab. My hands produced art, my heart felt, even when I switched entirely over to digital Photography and did much of my work on the computer, but controlled and worked the print.

Now, I out source all my print work to a print lab. The reason for the switch is an economical one. Unfortunately, I cannot afford my own state-of-the-art print lab, nor is it plausible to spend hours perfecting each print. A print lab has everything already configured and many more supplies than I have access too. Just for a basic print lab with just an Epson Stylus pro 9880 printer initial cost would be about $5,461 and to keep using it would coast $1,132 in paper and ink. At the moment, my studio is not large enough to hold the equipment and my cliental have not grown enough to support the financial investment.

Out sourcing has allowed me to print on many different mediums I would otherwise not have tried, such as metallic prints that have and in-depth chemical process and metal prints with is printed directly on aluminum. I also have the ability to have prints printed on stretched canvas and are ready to hang on the wall. With out sourcing I have the freedom to use my energy to prefect my images and let those who have already perfected the art of printing print my work saving energy, time, and money. To produce my 1^st 60 out sourced 8X10’s it coasted me about $186 to produce giving me $1,614 in profit. The 1^st 60 in house would still leave me approximately $3,661 in dept.

Economically speaking out sourcing to print labs is definitely more profitable, but for the love of art, I still want my print lab.

Prices were taken from B& H Photo-Video-Pro Audio http://www.bhphotovideo.com/

Reputable Print Labs

Apollo Imagizing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin http://www.apollo-imagizing.com

BayPhoto.com in Santa Cruz, California http://www.bayphoto.com

Iprintfromhome.com in Buffalo, New York http://iprintfromhome.com/

Written by: Mandy Chenoweth, BFA

owner of Focal Point Imaging http://focalpointimaging.org and member of the Professional Photographers of America http://www.ppa.com