What is your approach to weather-affected shoots.

[mokka]

This is just something that popped into my head yesterday when the weather was bad. I'm currently setting up a commercial photography business and wondered what I would do about shoots where bad weather inevitably will mean bad photographs (from a marketing perspective).

I already have in my Ts&Cs a policy stating that if the shoot is postponed or cancelled by the client without adequate notice then I reserve the right to retain the deposit and in any case expenses already incurred are non-refundable.

But what I was thinking was, if I have a shoot booked for a certain date and I know the weather is forecasted to be poor on that day, and I know this will affect the quality of the photographs (for example a hotel will inevitably want photos of the exterior to be in nice weather, rain ain't gonna bring in the punters), I will call the client and offer to postpone the shoot to a date with better weather. I will probably call them twice, once when I see the forecast, and a second time the day before if the forecast is still bad. If they accept then I will happily postpone the shoot and retain the expenses and deposit for the next shoot, if they would rather cancel because for whatever reason this was the only possible day it could be done then I will refund the deposit and any unspent expenses.

However, if the client insist the shoot go ahead as planned and then either try to postpone the shoot once I get there, or try to claim a refund because of poor quality photographs which are due to the weather then I will retain the deposit and if appropriate also invoice them for the shoot.

What do other people do?

[NathanFranke]

Add something in your T&Cs to that effect. Hypothetically, if I were a hotel owner, I wouldn't want a picture of my hotel with thunderstorms in the background. If weather is bad, and you communicate with your clients, then they should have no problem with that.

[Hill Country Hack]

If this contingency is not included in your contract, I would be sure to have all correspondence via email. You will be better protected that way. If you inform the client of impending bad weather and reccomend postponing and the client responds to proceed as contracted, you will have a better legal leg to stand on if the client tries to not pay the balance due to not liking the work.

[John Hendry]

Originally Posted by NathanFranke

Add something in your T&Cs to that effect. Hypothetically, if I were a hotel owner, I wouldn't want a picture of my hotel with thunderstorms in the background. If weather is bad, and you communicate with your clients, then they should have no problem with that.

Got to agree Clients will usally understand as the weather can be a big factor when you are shooting on location.

all the best

[mokka]

Thanks, well my Ts&Cs already allow me to retain the deposit if a shoot is postponed, what the weather would be is a situation where at my discretion I may allow the client to have the deposit back (or at least let the deposit roll-over to the rearranged shoot).

The only thing this wouldn't cover and which I can add to my Ts&Cs is where the client is unhappy with the photos because of poor weather despite me having advised them to postpone.

It came to me yesterday because I was doing a shoot for a used car dealer, which is an occasional thing I do as an employed photographer, and the weather was forecast to be bad, despite it being sunny in the morning, when I called the dealer to ask if he'd rather I did the shoot the next day, as that was forecast to be nice he said he didn't think today would be too bad and he thought the next day would be worse. So I went along to do the shoot and the weather turned so it was in driving rain. It's no big deal as we have processors who cut out the cars so the background doesn't matter, but it got me thinking that if this was a hotel owner I would likely be getting a complaint that the photos weren't good enough.

[Jim Bryant]

Good deal! You have to put a clause into your contracts concerning postponements due to bad weather.