rehess wrote:
I'm not sure that we are actually talking about the same thing here. Frankly, I am bored by posed pictures .... they are the things in wedding albums that I have to nod and say nice things about while wondering how long this will go on; however, if you are enough of a presence, I may take a picture of you taking or posing a picture, because you have become a major aspect of the wedding. I almost never take posed pictures myself ... when I point a camera at someone and they start to pose, I ask them to return to normal behavior. Just now, I looked through 11 folders of pictures from weddings I've attended; I found 8 pictures taken during the actual ceremony (most showing the back of the head of some person ahead of me, because I remain seated and I don't use flash in church) and 0 posed pictures. I found roughly 11 pictures of reception lines, always with the person greeting the bridal couple partially blocking my view of them. I have several pictures of couples running through a shower of rice or birdseed. I have a few pictures of couples cutting the cake; I assume those weren't posed, because if they don't already know how to cut a cake, then their life together could have all kinds of issues ahead ... and besides this is a time when some will engage in unplanned (except possibly by them) horseplay. Most of the pictures, though, are of people having fun at the reception, with or without the bridal couple (sometimes the bridal couple misses the fun part because they're posing endlessly for The Pro).
More importantly, you can put whatever clause you want in a contract, but these days actually enforcing it will be hopeless. Recently, my twenty-something daughter spent the day driving my eighty-something mother around town to run errands. Every so often my cell phone would tell me that I had a message from her - it would be a picture of my mother at the current errand - so we had a running account of her day. When I told her that most banks don't allow photography (one picture was my mother standing in line at the credit union), she shrugged her shoulders and said that she'd just been checking her phone and a picture happened. That is the way most people her age act. She may take more pictures in a day than I take in a month. There is a reason why Apple at one time was advertising something like "people take more pictures with an iPhone than with cameras from any other camera company" (I guess that title may have passed to Samsung now). Maybe some of these will try to "horn in on" your posed pictures, but I kind of doubt it. Most of the time they will be taking their own unposed pictures which may or may not have anything to do with the pictures you're so carefully planning. But they will happen.
I'm not sure that we are actually talking about th... (
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If during a session a client or someone with them whips out a camera or their cell phone and tries to take a picture, I simply turn and ask them to leave (it's my studio) or if we are on location I just start packing up my equipment. That's one of the great things about being a professional who works for myself, I get to call the shots. :)
Before I start a session, we go over the no camera or cell phone rule as well as some other clauses I have as well as copyright rules. I also go over the copyright rules during our ordering session and when I deliver the final prints. :)