I recently received a phone call, the young mother wanted to take photographs of her baby girl who is turning one. She wanted to take pictures right on her birthday and have some photos ready by that weekend for her party. Even though I am not as fast as Cheap Studios because I don’t print photos at my place, I have to send them to professional printing lab. As the New Jersey Portrait Photographer, I don’t even bother to think about purchasing a printer only because I rather outsource as much of my work elsewhere, like editing photographs and printing portraits. It’s time-consuming and since I am the mother of 3 and a house full of children and two pets, I also want to spend time with my family. My kids have couple activities each and homework on top of it, in the evenings I have to drive them around and being a multitasker. Back to the story, I mentioned to her that she can purchase digital photographs even though I hate to do it to my clients but in such a short notice this is only one thing that I could provide for her.
I also suggested seeing if there are any photographer around us that maybe have a printer and can print the photographs for her. She mentioned to me a place which she used to go but it closed down.I heard about it, I used to work in a place like this, a long time ago, its a mini studio right in a Baby R US, called Kiddie Kandids which also closed down all the studios in New Jersey. Both of these places have few things in common: cheap price, trained teenager and a printer on the spot. Yet with everything that people want nowadays, those businesses still can’t survive. The companies just didn’t make enough money. The amount of money spent on keeping up a printer, lights, insurance, rent, and salaries, it just doesn’t cover. The flow of customers that want the photographs now at a very low price is also limited amount as much as customers that are willing to pay $12,000 for their photo session. The profit in those places is so limited that it doesn’t worth to keep that type of studio open.
After calling few people, she called me back and asked me to do a session with her sweet little girl. I did and less than one hour of a session with two changes of clothes, they picked few photographs for her birthday party. Even though I like portrait session that runs for couple hours and my makeup and hair artist is coming and we create magic, I also like to do the quick session for little girls, just please call me in advance like a week prior or two of the birthday parties so I can actually print you a nice photographs. 
