The File is Not a Photograph
Every portrait session I deliver includes digital files. That is not the question.
The question is what role those files play, and whether the file is the point or the object is the point. In my work the answer has always been the same. The object is the point. The file follows it.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
What you receive
Every product you purchase comes with a high resolution file of that image and a social media sized version ready to share. That is included, always, without question. You have commissioned a portrait, you have invested in something made specifically for you, and a digital record of that image belongs with you.
What I do not do is deliver a folder full of files as the primary product and call that photography. But that is a different conversation.
What the file actually is
The file is the record of the object. It confirms ownership. It lets you share the work with people who cannot see the wall it hangs on. It is genuinely useful and I am glad to provide it.
But a file on a hard drive, however high the resolution, does not do what a print on a wall does. It does not stop you in a corridor at eleven o'clock at night. It does not get handed to someone who was not there when it was made. It does not accumulate meaning the longer it exists. It sits in a folder alongside everything else and waits for someone to go looking for it.
Most of the time nobody does.
What the photograph actually is
The photograph is the object. The print that hangs on your wall and stops people when they walk past it. The album that sits on the coffee table and gets picked up. The portfolio box that outlasts the hard drive it might otherwise have lived on.
These are the things I make in my studio in Glenmore Park, for clients across Penrith and Western Sydney who have decided that this moment in their life deserves more than a file in a folder. A considered fine art portrait, produced to archival standard, built to last and made to be displayed.
The file comes with it. It follows the work. That is the right order of things.
If this sounds like what you are looking for
Then it probably is.