Michael Warshall, the founder of Nulab Group, has created a new wedding photography business some 11 months after his semi-retirement in late 2017.
Emotion Wedding Photography connects photographers with couples, working at a flat fee, offering to turn around digital files within 24 hours of the big day. Warshall describes it as being like Uber for wedding photography. The company stores digital files on its servers forever, which can be downloaded in high-resolution by the customer whenever they choose.
Warshall explains, “The front end is Emotion Wedding Photography, and then there is Nuovo Albums, in which we sell photo albums to photographers to resell, and Luxe Albums in which we print the photo books for the consumer directly.
“We charge the same price to both photographers and the brides.
“The printing industry is challenged, but there are pockets that are still doing exceptionally well. We want to find out what they are and service them.
“For me, if it is not printed, it is not real. So we needed to work out how to provide a product that the current bride will invest in. I am after the 100,000 brides getting married every year, plus the 600,000 that have digital files that they do not know what to do with.”
Warshall still has his photo album making equipment from Nulab and has purchased a Ricoh 9200 to print the photos, set to arrive tomorrow, selecting it for its long sheet size.
He says, “New photographers want to buy an album for $500 and sell it for $3000, so couples generally do not buy any albums now.
“Before I sold Nulab, we tested the market, and the average professional photographer spends $500 on an album. We then did a bit of advertising, designed some albums for interested parties, and they seemed prepared to pay up to $900.
“People that have been married for up to seven years have all these digital files that they do not know what to do with.
“They submit them to us, then we use software to automatically select and touch up the best images. We can automate the process and quickly put them together.
“So we have learned how to put together a high-quality product, quickly, and cheaply.
“Professional photographers have been disrupted in the wedding business, there are less and less. The next generation of photographers are part-time and work on weekends, with decent paying jobs throughout the week.
“There is still a small group of vintage photographers, who are very skilled people. They insist on only selling the highest-end products. Not everyone wants a Lamborghini though, some just want to buy a car.
“Lamborghini make two and half thousand cars a year globally, while Volkswagen and Toyota make a million every year and sell them, we are going after that market.”
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