Professional Photography

[patooyee]

I want to see if I am way off base here.

My wife has professional pics done of my daughter a few times/yr. I love them, they turn out great, she uses 2 different photographers. But the way the pics are sold I feel like is borderline illegal. Here's the way it works:

- You pay hundreds of dollars for a photo session.
- Photographer takes 100+ pics.
- A few weeks after the session the photographer gives you a pw to a website where all the pics are posted with watermarks over them for preview.
- You get to pick 5 - 20 that they will give you un-watermarked digital copies of. If you want more than that you have to pay like $20/pic. You don't get them all. The ones you don't take just sit on the photographer's hard drive until they feel like formatting it someday.
- You are not allowed to post the pics your purchase on social media. If you do the photographer asks you to kindly remove them or face a lawsuit.
- If you DO want to post anything on social media you can ask for versions with the photographer's logo on them. But you don't get unlimited requests for these, just as many as the photographer feels like giving or not giving to you.
- Photographer plasters photos of my daughter across ALL of her social media sites to promote her company.

Reasons I feel like this is BS:
- I pay hundreds of dollars for a photo session and get a measly 5-20 pics out of it.
- OK, so the point above sucks, but you would think those pics are mine to do with as I please. IE, share via G+ with my family. How does the photographer maintain any rights to items that I purchase? That's like McDonalds maintaining the right to ask for my burger back at any time!
- By the photographer plastering all the pics all over her social media I am basically paying for her advertisement.
- Not to mention, don't I retain the rights to my daughter's likeness? Especially since she is a minor? I mean, you can't just go on the net, download some pics of Michael Jordan and use them to promote your business. MJ would sue the pants off of you if you did.

This whole situation is ****ing backwards to me. To me it is the photographer that should have to ask me for permission to post, not the other way around. Maybe Ricky B can make me understand this ...

I told my wife we're never using these two photographers again, find one that hands over all pics to us when we're done. She says none of them do that, they're all like these two.

 

[Elliott]

Our photographer in Tn does the same thing, you can buy the rights to photographs and due with them as you wish tho, and I agree that it is a racket.

 

[Joc]

Welcome to america :****:

I feel the same way. If I pay for something its mine. If they are using you daughters pix w/o your permission I'd probably tell them to take them down or pay you for permission. Its probably not that easy though. If you are paying top dollar and they know your a returning customer threaten to use someone else if they give you ****.

We had our first kid last thursday. Tuesday we took her for newborn pics. She had maybe 3 "poses" with nearly 100 photos (rapid fire) and about 1hr time frame. Pretty sure it was over 150 buck plus what we decide to buy and to top it off i think my wife did a "package" where we go back ever few months and keep paying installments on a big lump sum of a price. I dont like it but I gotta keep momma happy and at the same time its something to look at years from now and bring back memories of that time.....kinda priceless.

 

[patooyee]

I LOVE the pics, they are the most beautiful photos of any human I have ever seen. In fact this last set of pics almost brings tears to my eyes they are so beautiful My beef is with the money / ownership of product side of things. I would post some of the pics but I'm not allowed to and I sure as hell ain't going to post the watermarked ones to do some more free advertising for her.

 

[paradisepwoffrd]

Re:

Do you sign a contract when you get the pics done?

Not all photographers are like that, but it seems to be a racket for the best ones.

What are they claiming when threatening a lawsuit? All the ones I've worked with simply ask that you include their name if posting online.

 

[lowbudgetjunk]

Re:

Find a photographer that will let you buy all the rights and put them on a disc. I've got some $300 CDs, but we print off of them and send them wherever we want. My wife spends more on pictures than I want to know....her deal is that she gets every picture though.

Kel Lawrence

 

[patooyee]

Re:

Do you sign a contract when you get the pics done?

My wife does. I'm going to look more closely at it if she ever uses these two photographers again.

Find a photographer that will let you buy all the rights and put them on a disc. I've got some $300 CDs, but we print off of them and send them wherever we want. My wife spends more on pictures than I want to know....her deal is that she gets every picture though.

This is how our wedding photographer did it and how I feel it should be done. But that was in another city and 5 years ago. Apparently that's antiquated now.

 

[paradisepwoffrd]

Re: Re:

Find a photographer that will let you buy all the rights and put them on a disc. I've got some $300 CDs, but we print off of them and send them wherever we want. My wife spends more on pictures than I want to know....her deal is that she gets every picture though.

Kel Lawrence

That's how most around here do it. The rest sell prints but give you options to buy a disc.

Maybe RickyB will comment. He might be the resident expert on what all rights photographers have/don't have.

 

[TacomaJD]

I say fawk em and call Scott Prince! :****:

 

[sledneck]

Not sure about your area but there are some many photographers around here that you can just pick and choose what and who you want. Find someone that's not a "professional" and use them. Every ass with a iPhone thinks there a photographer now days so it shouldn't be hard to track down someone good in your area.

 

[Humpy]

Our wedding photographer gave us 2 cd's with over 650 pictures... Did a great job and was more affordable than the ones who only letvu select pics... We paid $1000 for 6 hours of her being at our wedding... She then edited them to her liking and and turned thrm over to U.S. copyright released... So basically wd bought her out of copyright

 

[Scarecrow]

For the first 4 years after my daughter was born we used Portrait Innovations in Columbus, Ga. and at the time I thought it was crazy expensive until I read your post. You start off there with a basic $20-30 session package that includes one photo in an 8x10, they shoot 60+ photos of probably 10-12 set ups/ poses and then you choose which ones you like according to what package/ number of poses you want to buy. There were several packages which vary on price and photos/prints you receive. They did retain the rights unless you wanted to buy them. They would ask your permission to use the images for advertising but we always declined. They would always give you a disk with all the photos that were taken but only the shots purchased would be saved in a high resolution format, the others would generally be about 150kb size. We never had any issue with posting to social media but to be honest we don't post much (got burned by a business in Opelika who lifted two of my photos I took at the GAP and used them for advertising their product) and ours are all private unless you are one of our few friends. I think you have to have additional prints printed at their store even if you have the disk. We usually spent around $130 per session and would get 30+ prints. I would shop around. I have several former students who do photo shoots as a side job and are usually very good. One only charges for the photo shoot and editing and gives you a disk with all the pictures and you print as many as you want. I've been impressed with how well they've done even shooting senior portraits and weddings, usually for less than half what professional photographers ask and the work is almost as good. Or you can always buy a good quality camera, study up on lighting, composition and photo shop and give it a go.