1. What is digital imaging... ?
2. Why is digital imaging better than traditional film photography ... ?
3. Why should I hire a professional... ?
4. When should I hire a professional ... ?
5. Where can I find printing services... ?
6. I am using a Videographer, why would I need a photographer too... ?
7. How do digital photographers price their services... ?
8. I would like several size pictures and a montage, can you provide this... ?

A digital camera uses light sensitive electronics to take a picture. A film camera uses a light sensitive layer on cellulose film to do the same thing.

Digital photography is done just like traditional photography. You have a camera with a lens, apature, shutter and all the other equipment a camera has. A digital camera just does not have a single use film.

If you take film based pictures you get one chance. You can not see the results until the film is developed. This give many places for failure. When the picture is taken, when the film is developed, and when the film and prints are transported.

A digital image is stored on a memory card. You can see the result immediatly. You don't have to trust your memory card to others, so others can not damage it.

A digital image goes straight from the cameras memory card to the photographers computer. The professional makes a backup before doing anything to the images. Very little chance of losing your precious memories.

Both digital photography and film photography have advantages. They both also have disadvantages. Digital photography has several advantages that are especially important in this digital age.

Today, it is often not enough to have a few albums, a bunch of wallet sized pictures, and a few 8x10's. Today we want electronic slide shows. We want to put our pictures on the Internet for all to see. Today we want to e-mail pictures to all our friends and family.

We can get that from film photography but at a cost. Why not skip the cost and problems of dealing with film when we do not have to.

Like Polaroid film, with digital photography, we can see each image immediatly after we take it. This gives us the opportunity to take important pictures over again while we can.

Unlike a Polaroid, we can get many prints from each digital image. Unlike a Polaroid, we can get images in sizes ranging from wallet size up to 8x10. Of course, no professional would ever consider using a Polariod camera for an important event.

A digital image is flexible. We can crop it, we can adjust color, hue, contrast, even light levels. In short, it is possible to take a so-so digital image an mke it good.

A digital image is forever! Film and photographic paper break down over time. We can preserve the image by digitizing it, but again, why should you pay the additional expense for the film and prints that you don't need!

Film is expensive, processing is expensive, producing prints is expensive. Taking a digital photograph costs almost nothing.

A wedding photographer usually has between 200 and 250 exposures available. A digital photographer can often take 500 or more images.

A film photographer is limited by the film he brings. A digital photographer is only limited by how many pictures he can take in the given time. A digital photographer usually takes three images for each frame a film photographer will take.

We all have our strong suits, things we do well. We also have our weak suits, things we do not do well or are not trained to do. If you need medical care you go to a doctor a person trained to provide medical care.

Similarly, when you need your car fixed you go to a mechanic. Well, when you want your memories of a special event preserved for the future, hire someone who is trained to do that.

Professional photographers have a solid understanding of their equipment. They understand composition, lighting, and all other aspects of taking a great picture.

Photography, like medicine and mechanics, requires specialized knowledge and training. They know how to get the best picture given the environment, as well as, what pictures to take to ensure a complete record of the event.

Hire a professional for those events that are too important to leave to chance!

Weddings, birthday parties, graduations, first communion, any event that you really want to preserve. Any event to special to leave to chance.

Since a digital photographer can record your event at a lower cost than film photographers, you will find many more events where you can afford a professional.

Film is expensive, processing is expensive, producing prints is expensive. Taking a digital photograph costs almost nothing.

A wedding photographer usually has between 200 and 250 exposures available. A digital photographer can often take 500 or more images.

A film photographer is limited by the film he brings. A digital photographer is only limited by how many pictures he can take in the given time. A digital photographer usually takes three images for each frame a film photographer will take.

Lots of places offer printing services. Wal-mart, Target, and many other discount stores provide it. Walgreen's, Rite Aid, CVS, and many other drug stores offer it.

You can buy a photo quality printer for under $200.00 and print your own. All you need is a professional to provide you with a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM containing the professional images she took and corrected.

The role of the professional is to take the pictures, getting the right lighting and composition to properly record your special event. Then digitally adjust those images—correcting color, hue, balance, contrast, brightness, cropping as needed and desired&mdahs;and providing you with a disk.

Once you have the digital images, you can pretty do as much as you please with them.

Note: Professional digital photographers often provide the client with much more than just the digital images. Film photographers rarely provide the client with the negatives.

Video is designed to be shown on a television. Televisions actually have a lower resolution than most computer monitors. Consequently video cameras do not bother with higher resolution.

You can, of course, pull still pictures from your digital video but they will be low resolution prints. Digital Imagination Design uses at least 3 million pixels and usually 6 millon pixels or more. This provides good performance in that images can be saved quickly so lots of images can be captured. It also provides good quality prints.

Digital Video Cameras and the older VHS recorders usually have less than 1 million pixels. Normal computer resolution is 800x600 or less than 0.5 million pixels and standard television resolution is 320x240 or less than 0.1 million pixels.

Unlike film photographers we do not have a set fee. Do the the extreme flexibility of digital photography we can be much more flexible in our pricing. Our basic charge is $25.00 per hour from when we leave for your site until we are finished capturing images. For a small additional charge we will burn the result onto a CD-ROM. Beyond that we charge specific fees for prints based on the print size (see the page on photography for our fees). We can produce odd size images, pretty much anything up to 11x17.

If you want an album or montage we charge $40.00 for set up plus the actual cost of the component pictures, albums, frames, etc.

Altering, cropping, and other manipulations of images costs $25.00 for each hour or part of an hour.

A typical event can cost as little as $100.00 and as much as you can afford to spend.

Digital Imagination Design can provide pictures from wallet size up to 11x17. We can create ID cards and provide pictures for a passport. There are places that can make prints even larger than 11x17. The size is only limited be the resolution of the original and how sharp the image needs to be.

On of the real advantages of digital images is the ability to create all kinds of montages. As you may know, if you use the Internet, you can easily take elements from one picture and insert them into a second. This can result in some amazing pictures. Would you like your wedding portrait to put you on a cloud? We can do that!