Annoyed at my mother

[NgaiHill]

Over the last few years I have gotten more serious about photography as a hobby and have done a fair bit to learn about the subject and improve my skills. These forums are great for this and even the local camera club has been helpful. So I am reasonably happy with the quality of my photography at the moment and am a becoming a little protective of the shots I take - I get rid of any that I don't like or certainly don't show them to anyone. Anyway a month or so ago my mother (who breeds and shows dogs) asked me to take some shots of her current pack, she wanted to show other dog friends and breeders. So with some of my new found knowledge I set out to take more than just snapshots. Of the five dogs I photographed three of them are black so not easy to get good photos showing their faces and personalities. Was shooting in late morning sunlight and was careful to get a part of Mum's yard with a background that was not too busy - iron fence. Took plenty of photos and after PP narrowed it down to just over 30 shots of the dogs. I was quite happy with them, got conformation and head shots and was happy with the composition, lighting & exposure, etc. I duly emailed them off to Mum for her dispersal to friends etc. A few days later when I called into to see her I asked what she'd thought of the photos I sent her, to which she replied "Oh they were all a bit dark so I lightened them!" Grrrr!! Now Mum has an old CRT monitor and I told her that there was nothing wrong with the photos it was her monitor that was the problem. I suggested that she email me a before and after shot so I could check. Sure enough the lightened shot looks awful.
What annoys me about this is that I spent some considerable time in PP getting all those photos just right, and she has just adjusted them all without talking to me about why all the photos are too dark. She has already sent them off to her friends and other breeders and there is really not much I can say to her that she would not take the wrong way. I just hope that she doesn't now give me credit for them and thankfully I hadn't watermarked them! The thing is too, when she is not doing her thing with the dogs Mum is a very experienced textile artist and I am sure she would not appreciate people making adjustments to her work after she has finished with it.
Not sure I'm really looking for advice in how to handle the situation because my way of handling it is to do & say nothing but be very cautious of getting into the same situation in the future, but just wanted to have a rant - and you are all such an understanding bunch here.

[Jim Bryant]

What can you say...........mums are mums. Don't loose any sleep over it.

[nickbedford]

Like Jim said, mum's are mums! I'm glad my mum doesn't know a thing about stuff like that and would just let me give her what I ended up with.

I wonder, is your monitor calibrated (brightness specifically)? If your monitor is more bright than it should be to be calibrated you will end up thinking photos are brighter than they are.

Also, make sure you look at your histogram. This is monitor independent.

[NicoleScraps]

Originally Posted by nickbedford

Like Jim said, mum's are mums! I'm glad my mum doesn't know a thing about stuff like that and would just let me give her what I ended up with.

Yeah, my mom doesn't even know how to attach a photo to an email, let alone edit a photo.

[deck]

My mom annoys me too, but I love her...

[Aegea]

I wish my mom was still around to annoy me ...

[Izzy]

In the future add "read only" attribute to the files. This will at least stop the casual "extra fixer upper"

Anyway moms are supposed to annoy us. Mine does and she still bought me a Canon T2i just last week, so I have little to complain about. And my mom barely knows how to turn on a computer much less use it. Some know just enough to get themselves in trouble.

I have to explain PP to her as "I put it in the computer"

[Chippee]

Originally Posted by Aegea

I wish my mom was still around to annoy me ...

Yeah, what Aegea said

[faeriegodess612]

If it annoys you that much, then maybe you could approach the subject lightly. Start off with: You know those pictures that I just did of the dogs? you remember how you said they were too dark, that got me to wondering. Well, I posted some of them on this forum that I'm a member of to check the brightness calibration of my screen. But the people there said that they looked fine to them. So, You think I could have a look see at your computer to check the calibration on the monitor? I'm concerned that if its just your computer that they might look overexposed to everyone else. And considering I'm trying to keep my reputation up ( or ,...trying to make a name for myself... whichever applies) something like that would be like a bad apple in the basket.

At least if it were my mom I'd be open and honest about it. But you might not have that tight of a relationship with yours. just my thoughts, you can take it or leave it, makes no difference to me.

[jamesev]

There seems to be a growing trend (or maybe just more highlighted) of occassions where family and photos have caused clashes. Is this more common in the run up to the holiday season?