Get this straight

[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.

[Photoboothguy]

I don't give away my rights...that's just silly I retain the rights to my photos to display for promotional purposes. They're on my website, business cards, etc.

I actually have agreements with some of my clients (usually maternity photos) that I can't display or use their images without their permission. Again, just giving them what they want.

[OsmosisStudios]

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?

I would never, ever, sell the copyrights to an image, let alone an entire shoot. Clients of mine may get a CD of images (usually more commercial: families go for prints) but even then, their use is limited and ownership is ultimately mine.

I dont see photography as a product-based business where the end result is prints or files, but as a service-based business, where the client pays for time and expertise.

By retaining copyright I reserve the right to do what I want with the images, though in certain circumstances even that is limited. At the base of it, however, I still retain the copyright for the work; not the client.

[PowerPix]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Clients of mine may get a CD of images

So, do you put low resolution photos on the CD to prevent unauthorized printing?

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by PowerPix

So, do you put low resolution photos on the CD to prevent unauthorized printing?

Read the rest of the sentence: their use is limited and the ownership remains mine. I make this explicitly clear. Often the contract will state that they can be used for certain print materials: postcard flyers, etc. This fetches an extra premium. For the most part, though, the images are going on facebook and websites, so theyre about 600px on the long side (which is low res).

[PowerPix]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Read the rest of the sentence: their use is limited and the ownership remains mine. I make this explicitly clear. Often the contract will state that they can be used for certain print materials: postcard flyers, etc. This fetches an extra premium. For the most part, though, the images are going on facebook and websites, so theyre about 600px on the long side (which is low res).

Ok, now THAT answers my question. Thanks.

[x_eternity_x]

First off, FB is amazing for promotion. I have a lot of friends, and when I log in, I'm always seeing my images everywhere. I don't have to worry about losing any money from this because FB has really crappy photo quality--you could never print from it and expect it to look good, even a 3.5x5. That being said, I give out the digitals to my clients most times if they ask--but that's something you should set up ahead of time. I like to factor it into the price--often people are willing to pay a little more for them. That being said, never give away the copyright--just give them a license for usage. The issue mostly gets sticky when you have people who want to print up your images on their own, which isn't a big deal to me in terms of money lost, but rather print quality. Images printed off the home printer, or over at Kinko's, will simply never compare to professionally done prints which I have set up, and I explain this to them.

I've found the key tends to be in offering the prints for relatively cheap. I break it out into two categories--prep work for a print, which is the photoshopping, resizing, color proofing, etc, and actual prints. The prep work tends to be flat rate (take your images well the first time and you won't have to worry about getting killed here--if they want fancy post, they have to set that up separately), and the prints I offer for 2-3 times cost, which most people still consider cheap. In all honesty, the real money comes from the sitting fee. Most of my work comes through referrals at the moment, and I've never had an unsatisfied customer (I do portraits and personal work primarily).

A good number of my clients don't want their work displayed or used for advertising, so for that kind of work I make a separate agreement and usually charge extra. This isn't giving away the copyright, but rather an agreement for which they have paid an extra fee. As far as images on a CD, for this kind of work you should never give away print-ready images--lower res (screen quality) will work fine, and you can let them know that's what they have. Who's going to use a 3k+ pixel image on their computer anyway? A lot of people do want to use them for wallpapers or facebook, though, so giving the digitals is very important if you want to continue getting this kind of work. It's not going to kill the business, but you might have to revise your business template. People still know quality when they see it, and if you provide that at a good value for them, you will get plenty of business.

[allyanderson]

I will give my clients a "Facebook" collection of their photos.....all low-rez (appropriate for uploading but not printing) and always include a smaller version of my watermark for the online copies. That way you can still get some publicity out of the photos. I tell my clients the watermark needs to be on the online photos because they will be on public domain and it protects the photos from being copied by someone other than themselves. I don't know if that is true....just a little white lie.

I have found that most people I work with do not want to print photos -- everything goes straight to FB. I myself don't even want to print photos anymore...namely because I have no wall space at home.

[PowerPix]

@ x_eternity_x,

It sounds like you have a pretty good system setup. So, it seems to be working nicely??

[daddyoproductions]

From a hobbyist perspective: I agree on the "people aren't printing photos anymore" because even when I take a gorgeous shot of one of the kids and say, we've got to print and display that, we rarely do because the next day we took another one!

I agree that is where the business is going, because people are taking their photos with them on phones and posting them all over the net. I know when I got married 8 years ago I didn't want a package, I wanted the negatives so I could print photos later if I wanted (we moved a lot at the time and I couldn't see printing photos to display). I found someone who agreed to shoot several rolls for me and negatives included and I did end up ordering a few prints too, mostly for the parents; they didn't get an album, cause honestly what are they gonna do with it? I never even look at mine Now what I do regret is not having a pro shoot done of the twins as newborns...but I certainly would have preferred to have digital images of that too

Quite a few people in local advertisements here take money up front and then all you get is the dvd with printable digital images, but the package includes some retouching and then away they go. I assume these photogs are retaining rights to use the photos for their portfolio and advertising, etc. The family certainly isn't going to be selling the photos, just copying it for family and friends, and if they have a scanner that's what they're doing anyway.

It may not be the way we'd like things to go, but as someone mentioned I'm sure the record industry people didn't want that to happen to their industry either. I agree you've got to roll with the punches if you want to stay relevant. Whether bad or good, times they are a changin' and they always will.