Of course I understand that the sentence “Regular photography business is dying” in this article title is too strong. The most talented photographers will be in business forever. I used it just to grab your attention to the problem that regular photography business got recently after starting a digital era.
Nowadays photo companies like Canon, Nikon and others are making simple to operate yet more and more advanced photo cameras and lenses, adding more new and useful features to the cameras, improving quality, sensitivity, noise reduction while at the same time cutting the price. Now everybody can buy a Digital SLR photo camera, read a photography book and take pretty good quality photos. Now we have more very affordable ink jet photo printers available in the market that can produce decent prints. There are many powerful photo editing programs for improving the images and making nice looking collages. The entire process of making nice pictures today is not difficult compared to the same process 10 years ago and much less expensive. That is good for the consumer but has put a great pressure on the professional photography business. Today anyone can buy computer, DSLR camera, ink jet photo printer and call themselves a professional photographer.
Today many people prefer to invite a friend to take their wedding photographs rather than use a professional wedding photographer. Those that do use a professional are expecting lower expenses as there are many standard photographers to choose from.Now many people prefer to make the photos by themselves without going to professional photographers and photo studios. That is why we can say that regular photography business is under huge pressure.
Over the years digital photography has become common place and technology has simplified and improved the resulting pictures to the point where even large companies in the photo processing industry are closing down outlets. Those that remain are trying to regain business by offering large format prints or prints on canvas, things the general public cannot produce. Many large stores which do not offer those services do not have photo departments anymore where previously they had big profitable photo departments.
But there is a new way for photo business, the business that is not easy to repeat by everybody and with very attractive product for customers! I am talking about 3D photography business.
3D Photography Business
There are several ways for taking 3D pictures and for most of them the viewer needs some special glasses for seeing 3D effect. That is not convenient for customers and not good for business. However there is one technology that does not need any kind of glasses. That is 3D lenticular technology.
3D lenticular technology is the most suitable for customers because people can hold the picture in the hands and see 3D, without crazy “crossing eyes” or having the special glasses. 3D lenticular pictures have the regular colors like regular photos; they can be in any sizes from small wallet size to big size for putting on a wall, they look like the regular photos just more alive because of the depth. That is why regular people prefer 3D lenticular images compare to other types of 3D pictures.
One of the main problems of making 3D lenticular images is a difficulty of taking the pictures and a very long and labour-consuming process of creating the pictures. For example,even couple years ago we spent at least 2-3 hours before getting an image, because almost all stages of process of creating 3D picture were manual.Of course, it is not acceptable for business because the price of each picture was very high. But luckily now, with modern 3D lenticular technology we can receive 3D lenticular picture in just 10 minutes and even less and most of this time is spending on printing because almost all steps of lenticular technology are automated now, for example, process could be so automated that period of time between triggering 3D camera and starting printing could be as low as 40 seconds. This In-Depth Image System was developed for covering all technology steps in process of producing of 3D lenticular pictures from taking the frames to creating 3D image. This system is easy to operate, for example, we can teach the people how to work with In-Depth Image System and produce 3D lenticular images during 3-4 hours and people do not have to be the experts in photography or in computer.
In-Depth Image System can be successfully used in many different photo market niches. There are:
Portrait photography;
School and graduation photography;
Event photography;
Pets photography;
Advertisement photography and so on.
In-Depth Image System could be used for establishing of 3D photo business because:
In-Depth Image System produces High Quality 3D Lenticular pictures in different sizes;
This system is simple to operate;
In-Depth Image technology of producing 3D lenticular images is easy and rapid;
There is no necessity to have very experienced staff;
The prices on 3D pictures are very competitive with the prices that ask regular photo studios for regular flat pictures;
It is almost impossible to repeat this process by customers themselves, so you will be the only expert in making 3D lenticular pictures in your area;
It is profitable.
Please, look at the real sample picture that were made by In-Depth Image System below. Unfortunately that is impossible to show the depth on that picture because computer monitor can show the flat images only. That is why I created animation GIF file from the frames taken by our system. Originally we shot 12 – 18 frames, so 3D lenticular pictures are much smoother and without any rough jumping like on animation pictures.