[bhursey]

Originally Posted by TAGfan

Well if you do end up giving out digitals, and I have, its basically the customer buying the copyright - I wash my hands of those images. I guess I am confused how that 'kills the field'. The alternative is that your clients would have to come back to you in order to get reprints made if they wanted - and how often does that happen?

Maybe you are just referring to giving out the digitals for free?

The problem I have with digitals is that 100% of the money I make on photography is for prints right now. The problem is say I say you can download an image for say 20$ each. They then just download 1 and print 300 wallets for friends and families. Right there im screwed because I need at least 100$ for the amount of time I have invested in the shoot. Normally the averaged portrait session is around 50 final images. So I could go ahead and charge say 200$ for a shoot like that. No one now ants to pay 200$ up front and I will not get any business in this economy. They would rather pay a small fee up front and order what images they want when they can. The only problem is they some times wait to long to order so In January I am moving to a sitting fee of 50$ 20$ non refundable fee and 30 go towards a coupon to order prints. Coupon will last for 30 days.

Also if they end up not likening your photos they are not as mad at you because they lost 20$ instead of 200$ Then you are less likely to go to court and so on.


You also should never sell your copy right then you can not use them for your own portfolio. You need to include a use licenses with the cd listing out the terms of use. There are people out there that will take advantage of you.