DefinitelyDressage.com

If you lost your pet/heart horse, what would you rather receive as a gift? Two 11x14 canvas prints from competitions or a box of 5x7 photos of all the competition photos I have taken of you.

One of my clients has lost her heart horse and I want to send something to her. She normally purchases photoshoots from me for her kids, so I do not have any portraits of her and her horse, but I have about 5 shows worth of competition photos of them together and of him with her daughter. I had originally planned on doing the box of 5x7s, but then one of my vendors ran a special on canvases and I could do those at a similar price.

Help me choose so I can get something ordered today please!!

Yikes, tough choice.
I would love either myself.
But maybe the box of 5x7s so that then *I* can choose which one to do a larger canvas of? Assuming she hasn't seen all the 5x7s or doesn't already have them**?

**do you know she doesn't already have the 5x7s, or at least the ones she wants?

I would prefer the canvas.

Angfreda wrote:Yikes, tough choice.
I would love either myself.
But maybe the box of 5x7s so that then *I* can choose which one to do a larger canvas of? Assuming she hasn't seen all the 5x7s or doesn't already have them**?

**do you know she doesn't already have the 5x7s, or at least the ones she wants?

I do know which photos she has already since she would have ordered them through me. She typically only buys photos of her kids, so she has very few of herself with this horse, which is why I had originally thought of doing the keepsake box with prints.

If I did the canvases for her, I would have one of her barrel racing friends pick out the best 2 photos of them together to print. I am friends with one of her best friends, so that wouldn't be an issue at all.

The only reason the canvas idea came on my radar is 1) I was e-mailed the promotion from my vendor and 2) when they previously lost a horse, we had had a photos session just days before. The weather was horrible so we tried to salvage what time we could by taking some photos of the kids in the barn, and pulled some of the horses out of their stalls to use as well. It just so happened that the horse that died was one we pulled out of the stall, even though it wasn't a horse they were competing at the time and it normally wouldn't have been used for photos. They contacted me to ask if they could pay me for every photo we had taken of that horse, blurry, bad lighting, whatever. I edited all of the photos and sent them over, for free. They ended up ordering a huge canvas, through me, from those photos. It hangs over the fireplace in their house.

Thanks!

As a gift, the canvas, however, if you have the negatives, the box of smaller ones, then when she's ready she could purchase a canvas with HER favourite image. I think that would be a little easier than her having to think about asking you whether you have any other images she could look at.

This ^^^ My thoughts are the photos are more, and more quantitative, and hanging of a canvas at this time could prove problematic.

Ok thanks guys! I think that's what I'll do. I'll send the prints and, maybe, a gift cert for a medium sized canvas of her choosing.

Thanks!

I like that last choice... the box of prints would be lovely to be able to sit down and look through as her heart heals. The canvas print she can hang when she's ready.

I know for my mare I had very few photos of her. At our first/last/only show, the freakin' photographer completely missed our ride (dressage) . After my test, she came up to me to tell me and ended up taking a few more candid shots of my girl all neatly braided with me sitting on her in my fancy (not really but at least black) jacket. I got my favorite enlarged and framed and it hangs in my office.

As I'm typing this, maybe instead of the canvas just a nice photo enlargement and framed (I got mine framed at a Michaels or Hobby Lobby (forget which) and they did a nice job with frame selection and matting). I like the canvas but sometimes I think the framed print just looks nicer.

You obviously know the client well, but for me personally I’m not one for photos of myself around the place. I would want to see all the pics of my horse if he died though! I like the idea of sending the prints and an option to pick a canvas.

Very thoughtful of you

I also like the idea of a box with all the pictures. What a lovely gift!

I would want the box of pictures.

Thanks guys for the help!

I have decided that I want to try to be as anonymous as possible with the gift, so I will ship it out on Monday. I had previously intended to bring it to the client this weekend, but I think getting a surprise gift in the mail would be more special. Maybe that sounds silly, idk, but that's what I'm thinking.

It will be a lovely surprise