I will now be bringing my new fancy pants Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 (once dad gets over the fun of voice command) to consultations to show off my portfolio of recent work. I figured it made sense seeing as I offer a digital format service rather than print.
Pros: It’s much lighter than the ugly album I used to carry. I can also now play Temple Run 2 whilst I wait for clients.
Cons: It’s super weird to hold and I’ve already dropped it twice in all of the 5 hours I’ve owned it, so who knows if it will survive to ever see the first consultation?!
In all seriousness, I had umm’d and err’d about this for a long time. I originally brought with me a very ugly looking album (which shall now be burned) with simple prints from Photobox. This was done on the premise that “hey look, this is the worst your photos will ever look printed!” However, once I started moving out of the budget client market, I realised people might actually want to see something nice, and I considered Folio albums for a while. The thing is, I still kind of hate providing an album service, I’m an impatient creature and I like to start and finish a project before I move onto the next one. So although one day I’m sure I will provide a professional album service (possibly outsourced to an army of hired rodents Ratatouille style), for my current package, it made more sense for me to demonstrate my work to new clients digitally.
Then came the hours of internet research dominated by ipad vs. everything else. I have used friends’ and family’s ipads before and I do think in terms of technology they are unparalleled… but in terms of money they lose big time. I just couldn’t fathom paying out £300+ for 16 measly GB of memory. I wanted to be able to load the tablet with say 5 or 6 different weddings at a time. I think 16GB would get me… two weddings and no Temple Run. Or any other apps for that matter.
Seeing as Temple Run was a no. 1 priority installment on the tablet, I looked to Samsung, because I hear they’re pretty similar *cough* court case worthy similar *cough* to the ipad. For £259 I could get effectively 48GB of memory, and although it wasn’t super fancy, it seemed smooth, it worked and the screen looked as good as the ipad 2. To put this in context, CEX sell the 1st generation 16GB ipad for £220 in ‘c’ condition, which for all I know could’ve meant the battery dies in 5 seconds, meaning an extremely low Temple Run score.
Well, as my first paragraph gave away, I invested in the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 Tab 2, a.k.a Tabitha (for those that don’t know me I name all my gear) and I’ve been pleased with the trusty sea wench so far (dropping in water not recommended). To sweeten the Ice Cream Sandwich (what’s with the hunger inducing OS names?), Android/Google Play also have an app called Fotolio, which allows you to show your portfolio in a more appealing user interface. You can select how many columns of photos you want, the layout, photo width, background style and colour, and even have your own logo on it. Sorted!
So to all new potential clients, meet Tabitha!
(Yes I know as a photographer I should be rocking some high quality photos but NO, you just get a 6 year old macbook’s webcam! Tough tabbies!)
