nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

I too am a wedding photographer - it is part of our business. I do not provide my digital files to anyone as a rule - I have had some exceptions. The biggest reasons from my perspective is, (1) I don't want anyone to see an image from E & M Photography that has been reduced in size significantly. (2) I don't want SAMS or Walmart printing my images - the ink and paper used are not up to our standards......and if you are on the tail end of their inks, you may get pics that are hued in one direction or the other - it's always the photographers fault. (3) Unless I compress the files, our full resolution images after photoshopping may be 250 mg in size. That being said, you can only get a handful on a CD or DVD. ....and I am not interested in handing a bride 50 CDs' of their wedding.

I explain this to the bride and mother in our first interview - as the question almost always comes up today "Can I get a CD of my wedding?"

We are proud of our work and each image has gone through processing. This takes time. So our policy is this, if you want digital files, the cost is $3.00 each plus $100.00. The $100.00 is my cost for going to Best Buy and picking up an external Hard Drive. If I have taken 2,000 images then the price is 6100 for the files and they have unlimited rights to do with them as they see fit. But the files are TIFF, full resolution, prepared to print and in my opinion quality images. I also encourage them to use a professional lab for printing and caution against the great breaks they get at the drugstores.

With our wedding packages, they also get a choice of Albums, 3 , 1 12 x 2, and 2 5 x 7.

I have only had two brides buy the digital images. I have also had the question, can we just buy 50 or so images and our policy is all our nothing....as I really want to discourage this.

nikon_jon Loc: Northeast Arkansas

The copyright issue can be a slippery slope. If you are taking weddings and portraits in a local market, do you want to alienate your clientele with issues of copyright? I shot weddings for several years and found that the reprint market was negligible, meaning that the client seldom came in and ordered extra prints from the wedding. I chose not to make an issue of it if I learned that someone went to the local drugstore, or some other place with a print from their wedding and had it copied, because many of the people we shot weddings for were from plain 'working Joe' families and didn't have a lot of money to spare for my reprints which were going to be more expensive than copies from some other source. I think we made more from earning a reputation as being reasonable people to deal with, and good word-of-mouth advertising brought us more business than we would have made by demanding copyright on our work.

It was not uncommon when I was in the business for photographers to insist that nobody else take any pics at the wedding. The idea being, of course, that the photog would have the corner market on whatever pics were taken. That might seem like a viable idea, except when the hired photog's equipment takes a 'poop' just when he needs it most and he winds up with no pics. Now the couple and the families are angry and the fall-out from that can affect future business from the community. The lesson from that? Do your best to get good pics, be reasonable with your clients, and don't get greedy.

If you are selling your shots to a magazine or other publisher, it is another story indeed. They are not unaware of copyright issues. They will have a cow if someone copies some of their work, and sue until the cows come home, but they will take every advantage of the photographer that they can possibly do. So my input would be that if you are in a situation of selling to mags or ad agencies, protect yourself to the limit and don't hesitate to bring action if your rights are trampled on.

Another issue can be photo contests. Read the fine print. Often the sponser of the contest will claim exclusive rights to the winning photo. Don't be so eager to get published that you allow your work to be stolen. They will pay you whatever prize they are offering, take possesion of your photo, profit handsomely from it in other ways, and leave you out in the cold. So if contest rules say that you give up all rights to your photo, file it in that little round can at the end of your desk.

Toby

I agree with captainC, either you price it in the CD or don't give them one.Thinking you can control what someone does with your photos is silly. Is it morally wrong for them to copy, you bet, is it practical to sue everyone who does, absolutely not. If you try, the only person who makes money is an attorney. Even if you use small claims court it will take considerable time that you could be using to develop other customers.

If you feel guilty, give them a CD a year later after they have purchased most of the photos they want. If they are still married it should make them happy and get you some good publicity.

As for facebook and other sites that use your photos, don't be so anal. Consider the free advertising. I shoot thousands of HS sports. The other day and athlete was showing his friend one of my photos on his cell phone. The photo even had my watermark on it. He had went to the site on his computer, enlarged the image and then photographed the screen. I could have told him what he did was not legal but do you think that would stop it? I told him if he sent me an e-mail I would send him, one file of his choice, without the watermark on it. Hopefully his parents and friends will see it, go to my site and decide they want to buy some. In either case I prefer to move forward not look back.

billybob40

WHY would someone pay you to take there picture, which they pay you to do so, and you own the picture????????????
I've designed 100s of logos for advertising and got pay for them, when I get that first dollar they own that logo. See a lawer. What we tell you here will not fly in court, see a lawer.

Dave Chinn

I only offer pictures on a CD if the client purchases a photo package. If they have a picture CD then they can go get as many prints they want. How are you to know? I have also found out that after the excitement is over and pictures ordered you hardly ever hear from them again. Also found that you should GET YOUR MONEY up front before the wedding day.

Elle Loc: Long Island, NY

Not a legal stand but my opinion is that anyone who is inclined to reprint a wedding photo, they are going to do so anyway...even if it is a photocopy, contract notwithstanding. If someone wants a disk, reduce the resolution and size on the photos, they will still show up well on screens. Label each with your logo and change the disk to read only so they can't alter the files. Charge them accordingly. All photos should be watermarked, even if invisible to the naked eye..a reputable print house won't print them.

As far as social networks go, it's whistling in the dark to think they won't be shown. A better solution would be to have them posted on your own website where you can get some free advertising.

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

I too share your opinion but have one thought. I really like to see my photos going up on the social networks....they are watermarked with our logo and to print these low res files is a waste of their ink. I look at it as advertising. I take a lot of sports photos and they all go online, even though protected they know how to snatch and link to their facebooks. I love it.

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

This has been mentioned before in a previous thread, but suing for copyright infringement is a federal matter. So there is no small claims court, no local court at all. In fact, to get any lawyer to take the case, the image must have been registered with the federal government. Failure to register means you can only sue for MAYBE what you wold have been paid - NOT for punitive damages.

So suing a customer for copying your image(s) makes no sense at all. Getting al layer to write a letter asking for payment is another issue and possibly worthwhile, but bringing suit is a BIG deal.

Of course if you can sue General Motors, or Exxon, THAT is a different story!

Wheezie

also on your contract, put a clause that if they do buy the full res CD of the images and go out and print them on their own, that you will be ""held harmless" from defects, color discrepancies,& poor quality printing. Highlite this clause...

Some of my clients shudder when i point this out on my release and I get some of that reprint business back. Some people will care and some will not!!! But protect yourself from the get-go and really have them understand that you guarantee YOUR prints and not prints from walmart.....

jolly1

All you good, but greedy, folks are missing the point. Once you sell someone a photo of themselves, in a wedding, in an accident, in jail, they can take that twenty-five dollar print right down to their local UPS Store and have fifty or a hundred copies run off at about seventy-five cents a copy. They they can give, or send them, to their relatives and friends all over the country, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. They can have it published, as long as they give you photo credit.
You made your twenty-five dollars off of the photo. No matter how many other copies are then being made, if you don't know about it, you're not out a nickle
I've had my photos pirated on numerous occasions, but not before I had made my living from them. My motto has always been, "Don't sweat what you can't control."
You really think that spending five hundred dollars in lawyers fees is worth the twenty-five bucks you didn't get on a dumb wedding photo?

CaptainC Loc: Colorado, south of Denver

I would agree with your post except for that statement. While suing would be silly, giving credit does not circumvent the copyright laws.

ShelterCove Loc: Nowhere, CA

Speaking NOT from a legal perspective: It seems a lot of worry and angst to try to control what people are doing with images they have purchased from you. It reminds me of the disclaimer at the beginning of each movie video. Private use only - subject to fines up to something like $250,000. Wonder how many times a violator was caught and prosecuted? You may have the right, the copyright, but you have to let go sometimes and be realistic about what you can and can't control. I gave up expectations that no one would ever "borrow" or alter one of my marked images. Pardon if this does not fit in with your legal rights. To me it seems more a matter of the feasibility of "enforcing" them. And is it worth it. Good luck.

RTR Loc: West Central Alabama

Obviously I do not make any money from photography but I do want to put my 2 cents worth in from a potential customer's viewpoint.

First, I don't think I would ever hire a photographer that had in their contract that I could only buy prints from them and no price was quoted in the contract. What if I went back to him 6 months later to buy an 8 x 10 reprint and he told me it would cost $1,000.00 ?

More importantly, I think of a wedding photo shoot as a collaborative partnership. It takes both the participants of the wedding providing a subject, and the photographer providing the skill, to create every wedding photograph. The photographer should be paid for his part of this partnership which is to create the image(s).

If part of the partnership, the wedding party participants, want physical prints of the images then that has nothing to do with the photographer. If the wedding party participants want to post the images on a social website that also has nothing to do with the photographer. However, if the wedding party participants benefit materially in any way from the use of the images then that DOES concern the photographer and he should share in the benefit.

Likewise if the photographer benefits materially in any way (including advertising, portfolios etc.) from the use of the images, that concerns the wedding party participants and they should also beneift from that.

So instead of all of this wrangling you could simplify things and just go with a contract that essentially says the photographer will create images of the subject for x dollars and the subject and photographer can use the unaltered images in any non commercial manner they desire. Altering the images is obviously creating a derived work from the images produced by the partnership and should not be done.

Again, I am trying to look at this from the standpoint of doing the right thing. As stated earlier in this post, a wedding shoot is a partnership. Without either half of the partnership no images will be obtainable.

jolly1

I've known enough "Weddding Photographers" to know that those who do only weddings, couldn't make a nickle in any other form of photography. So they have to grasp for every penny they can bleed out of some poor love struck couple.

As far as I am concerned, when someone asks me to take pictures of them, and pays me what I ask for them, the pictures belong to them and they can do anything they want to with them because I have been paid what I thought the original work involved was worth it.

Case in point: I once went to an upper class fine art show, and finding a photograph of a certain scenic view that I had often visited, I purchased it for eleven hundred dollars. Two years later, while entertaining clients in my home, one of them expressed, to me, their desire to purchase the photograph from me. After much discussion, mostly about how much I loved the photo, we settled on a price of two thousand dollars.

Now the question raises it's ugly head, did I do anything wrong?
Do I owe the original photographer any credit or finicial gain?

The answer, NO! Absolutely Not! I saw his photograph. I paid what we both thought was a fair price, and it came into my possession. The photo became mine, nobody else's. I was free to do whatever I damn well choose to do with it. I could even have told the gentleman who wanted to give me two thousand dollars for the painting, "no, I'll give it to you, free."
That would have made just about as much sense as those here who claim that "all rights, for ever more" are theirs, no matter how much they are paid for their work.

The creating photographer retained the negative, or disk, and was free to create as many more of them as he chose, to sell, or give away. No business of mine. And he had sure better not complain about what I do with MY copy of his work

jolly1

And why doesn't it? Giving you photo credit for any photos published retains ownership in your name. It's perfectly legal and great publicity for you. Rule of life: "Don't bite the hand that feeds you!"
As long as it's your name being given credit, no copyright laws have been, or are being broken.