We believe in photography - but more than that, we believe in photographs. Printed photographs are tangible. We can hold on to them, pass them around, frame them and display them on our walls. We can make albums to be treasured and looked through by children for years to come.
We can't touch a file and the truth is, we don't know the longevity of a file or if we will even be able to find it someday. A digital file is a bit of a mystery - if it's lost, where did it go. If a drive is damaged what happens to the files? How many people truly back up all their images?
What happened to disc cameras, eight track tapes, Walkman's and other technology we thought would last forever? What will our children be looking at in 20 or 30 years? Photographs are special, files are not!
We believe in printing our images professionally. We believe our work is more than a screen saver or a mouse pad. Years of studying and perfecting our craft comes down to more than sending files via the internet.
The portraits we create for our clients are not only precious to our clients but they are precious to me. It is our work and our passion, a lifetime of work that deserves to be printed.
Photographs are passed on to children and grandchildren. Can you imagine a floppy disk, a DVD or a flash drive sitting in a frame, representing your family portraits?
Like many photographers, we have struggled with bending to the needs or wants of a client that is looking for digital files. But this is what we discovered over the last few years - it makes us uncomfortable in the center of our hearts to hand over digital files, no matter the price. Clients have told us that the flash drive they got from another photographer is still sitting in a desk drawer and that they should have purchased finished prints in the first place because they never have time to get to it.
We wonder about those files that were sold...How were they printed? Did the client crop it too tight? Is the color and density correct? Did they attempt to alter the image? It troubles us because we put so much of ourselves into our work. And, we have to wonder...are other photographers really professionals and serving their clients the best way they know how by simply selling intangible files that may never be printed?
For some, it's easy...take some photos, edit them, transfer them to a DVD or flash drive and make a few bucks. We don't and can't operate that way - We care too much about our work. Our clients and future generations that might have no photographs because we wanted to make we wanted to make fast and easy money selling files.
We have taken a stand! We are professional photographers! We are without a doubt, passionate about creating photographs - real portraits - printed on professional materials - and made into beautiful albums. We want your children, their children, our children and future grandchildren looking at and holding onto photographs not the latest greatest gadget.
It has taken deep soul searching, a lot of thought and time to define the value of our photography. We are taking a stand against selling files and taking a strong stand for printing our photographs.
If being a business owner and photographer today means the current market will force me to sell files not finished photographs and to compromise our work and our values - well then, we are out!
But, that won't happen! We know it won't because we know there are people and clients who value our work, understand and respect the value we have placed on our work and actually want to invest in finished portraits.
We are Sharon and Craig Brubaker, professional photographers - we believe in and value photography and the images we leave for our children. Our work and your portraits will be professionally printed to our high standards, they will be available to frame or to be finished in a beautiful album presentation.
The portraits we create for you will not become a part of your screen saver slide show. We have worked too hard and taken too much pride in our work for that to happen. We will not take the risk that in 20 or 30 years, we will be a generation of lost photographs.
THERE WE STAND!