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Pro Photographers that Will Sell the Copyright?
Shook asks: "Today, my fiancee and I talked to a wedding photographer known for being technologically savvy. (He uses fully digital equipment, the couple can make changes to the album online before printing, relatives can order prints of specific pictures online). I knew going into this that professional photographers generally retain the copyright to the images and all requests for reprints must go through the photographer. During our consultation, I asked him if it would be an option to obtain the copyright from him and get CDs of the original high-resolution images. He said that he has never sold a copyright, was not sure what he would want to charge, but he said it would 'be expensive.' In the end, the photographer is too expensive for our budget ($2000-$4500), so I didn't discuss it further. With the ongoing extension of copyright time limits, when does it even expire? What if my grandchildren want copies of my pictures? Do they need to track down his corporate (or actual) descendant and get permission? In addition, there is the classic issue, what if I can't find him in 20 years?"
"He did go into the artistic reasons why he retains copyrights. He said we may make reprints of the photos at a low-quality shop and tarnish his professional reputation. He did say he does provide 'middle resolution images' on CD or password-protected FTP free of charge.
All this seems backward to me. He wants us to pay several thousands of dollars for pictures of ourselves, and we don't get the copyright as part of our package? As we have heard endlessly on this site, record companies own the copyrights to the artists' works. As the paying party commissioning this artist's work, it would seem sensible to me that we also get rights to reproduction, publication, modification (even sale) of the work. Isn't our position similar to that of a record company?
I know that the photographer retaining copyright is standard business practice, so this is not a dealbreaker for me. Still, I'm interested in this issue. Has anyone found photographers that sell their copyrights? Has anyone been able to negotiate copyrights as part of a professional photography package?
On a related note, the photographer mentioned that before he was a photographer for weddings, he worked mostly for sports magazines and for a fast food chain. In the business world, does anyone know who keeps the copyright? Would go to Weightlifting Monthly and Burger Shack, or does Photo Joe keep the rights?"
All this seems backward to me. He wants us to pay several thousands of dollars for pictures of ourselves, and we don't get the copyright as part of our package? As we have heard endlessly on this site, record companies own the copyrights to the artists' works. As the paying party commissioning this artist's work, it would seem sensible to me that we also get rights to reproduction, publication, modification (even sale) of the work. Isn't our position similar to that of a record company?
I know that the photographer retaining copyright is standard business practice, so this is not a dealbreaker for me. Still, I'm interested in this issue. Has anyone found photographers that sell their copyrights? Has anyone been able to negotiate copyrights as part of a professional photography package?
On a related note, the photographer mentioned that before he was a photographer for weddings, he worked mostly for sports magazines and for a fast food chain. In the business world, does anyone know who keeps the copyright? Would go to Weightlifting Monthly and Burger Shack, or does Photo Joe keep the rights?"
Before we got married in 1997, I searched the web & Usenet for photogs and sent them emails asking for an estimate, explaining up front that
(a) I would own the negatives (so I could get whatever prints I wanted, whenever), but
(b) they could keep copies as examples to promote their work.
I found some that way, and also by posting to the *.photo.* groups on Usenet.
Did the same for our wedding videos, too.
A lot of them will turn you down. Just keep looking. Letting them keep the negatives is a sucker's racket. Don't say you weren't warned.
The copyright ownership depends on what the signed contract says. The photographer I have worked has done both. When he is hired to shot sporting events for different publications, he retains the copyright. When he is working for corporate America for PR purposes, the company usally will ask to retain copyrights.
You're paying for the photographer's services. If you don't like the terms he is offering, then find someone else. For the most part, photographers try to hook you in this way so that they can milk you for reprints down the road.
Don't go for it. Eventually you'll find a good photographer who will agree to your terms. Don't get frustrated with the assholes who try to belittle your requirements, just hang up on them.
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My wife & I just recently went through this except we went with film rather than digital. Luckily my wife's mother is the secretary of a large church and also coordinates weddings so all the local photographers were willing to give us great discounts.
Overall the photography costs came to about $2,300. Their general policy is that after about 3-5 years, they'll sell the originals for another $500 or so. That way they get the majority of the revenue from people who want copies, but eventually we get the negatives. Fortunately for us, about 3 months after our wedding the company relocated to another office. To save costs and hassle in moving, they offered all of their customers the negatives for only $300.
The photographs taken of you are of no use to the photographer without a release, I've done this with customers in exchange for a lower rate for the job.
The only thing the photographer can ever do with the pictures from your wedding legally without a release is to put them in his book. He cannot really even sell them to your relatives, although it is accepted practice.
Look for a photographer that will do the job as 'work for hire', he provides the equipment, skill and time to take the photographs, you provide the film or payment for film and you process the film and have pictures made.
With a traditional wedding photographer your paying for a lot more than simply someone who 'takes pictures', your paying for a variety of professional services (overhead, knowledge, poses, processing, album, packaging, and a lot more time than you realise).
Put an advert in the paper asking for a work for hire photographer and require samples.
Most wedding photographers a lot harder than slashdoters seem to think. They have big investments in gear and time. I have $10k in gear and I'd still want more before I took on the burden of shooting a wedding. If you think you can do the same thing with a Powershot or throw away cameras you are fooling yourselves. Great photos take solid gear AND experience AND talent.
WRT copyright - the creator owns the copyright unless there is an explicit agreement before the time of creation. Yup, that is how it works. It is very very uncommon for established, professional photgraphers to give away (or let go of cheaply) their IP.
Why should the photographer give up to you a potential revenue stream for cheap? His time, skill, equipment, (and business overhead and asprin for dealing with crazy mothers-in-law) produced that body of work. It is a very difficult line of work that involves a lot more than pushing a button on a camera. Check out some of the wedding photographer boards and you will find all sorts of horror stories about clients.
You clearly have never worked as a photographer. People have been known to download tiny web images and print them up to 8x10. Then they complain to the photographer that the prints are bad.
Yes, people will take the cheap way out.
People often decide on a photographer by looking at photos. You show some prints from a Canon 9000 that have faded out the Cyan so everything has an orange cast and YES people will think "Crappy photographer".
While the relative might not remember the photographer, they could point the interested party back to the bride who certainly knows who her photographer was.
I've taken some of my prints in to Staples to get them bound into a calendar and had the person behind the counter ask if I did weddings because my photos looked great. Word of mouth, and sample photos are crucial to photographers.
My sister just got married; she negotiated an agreement with the photographer to purchase the copyright for $100-$150 over and above the cost of having the photographs taken.
Admittedly, hers was a charmingly small and intimate wedding at a spa resort (look, I have to say this, my sister might read this post, and she was a radiant bride and my brother-in-law was a proud and loving groom), and my sister tells me the photographer explained that he's have charged more for the copyright, perhaps up to $600, had the wedding party been larger.
This, of course, is because the larger the wedding party, the more people who want to buy copies of the pictures, and by retaining copyright the photographer has a monopoly on those pictures. While he can't, simply for market reasons, charge outrageous prices, he can certainly make sure that he's the one paid for copyright, developing, printing, and mailing the pictures, and add all those fees to the final price.
That being said, my sister's wedding was held at an out of the way ("exclusive and secluded") resort, so the photographer's normal business includes stuff like local college and university publicity pictures, and -- according to his daughter, who was also taking pictures -- executive retreats. So basically he's selling the copyright to my sister for the price he'd charge business clients for copyright to their promotional pictures. (And speaking of local colleges, the excellent wedding violinist was a local college professor of music - and really good.) Prices might -- or might not -- differ in metropolitan areas, and no doubt vary from one photographer to another.
What this comes down to is negotiation: you're the one shelling out the major cash, and the photographer is the guy looking for a gig. Explain that you're shopping for his time and the copyright, and that you're willing to pay a bit more for it, as you understand the copyright has monetary value to him if he keeps it. But also explain that if he keeps it, it's speculative value, based on who may or may not purchase copies over the months and years ahead, whereas a fee is cash money is his pocket now. Google on "Time Value of Money", and see what I mean.
Finally, whenever I've been hired as a programmer, it's been taken for granted that I'm doing "work for hire", and my (copyrighted) source code belongs to the business hiring me for no additional consideration. Not only that, I'm expected to assign any patents I design on the job to the corporation hiring me.
While the case of a photographer is not entirely parallel -- he provides his own tools, and takes the risk of badly developed photos -- I'll maintain that the most important tool used to write code isn't a computer or a compiler, it's in the 1400 grams of brain I bring with me to the task. And if it's a question of creativity, I'll submit that a code writer -- any good code writer -- is as much an artist as any wedding photographer.
Your wedding photographer should be there to commemorate the day, not to cynically calculate how to separate you from your shekels by squeezing your sentimentality down through the years. Recognize that he's a professional, and let him know you're not a chump, and work out a price that is fair to him and gives you the rights to your own memorabilia.
PS: I've written a number of Slashdot comments, and I've gotten a decent amount of praise for them: a bunch of +5 mods, and even some encouraging replies ("occasionally, just occasionally... there should be a +6... to memorably mark such insightful posts.", "one of the greatest and most interesting posts I have ever read on Slashdot"), but I have to say I was absolutely blown away by the love letter my sister had written to her future husband, which she read to us at the wedding dinner. All my cleverness and ranting and fulminating, about Ashcroft and civil liberties and how to write code the right way, is so much ephemera next to my sister's amaranthine words of love.
Sis, I wish you and my brother-in-law -- and "Percy" -- the best for years and years to come.
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One of my clients will give you a CD and the copyrights.
I was just married about 2 weeks ago and my wife and I are extremely pleased with our photographer and the way that he handled the copyright issue (we interviewed several and this one was far and away the best). He shot everything with both film and digital cameras, first off. It turns out that though the digital has plenty of resolution to make large prints it doesn't capture as many levels of contrast as the film does, but it's easier to work with. So he shoots both.
On the digital, we have the copyright immediately. I already have a CD with all the images (hi-res), plus he puts up a site where anyone can look at the digital proofs and order high-quality prints. The photos on the site have a watermark-looking thing on them, but the ones on the CD are clean.
With the film, we get the negatives and the copyright one year after the wedding. The reason for this is that photographers are out to make a living too and they make a lot from relatives and such who want to order good quality prints (photo dye on 100-year archive paper as opposed to ink jet, for instance). After a year, we get the negatives and the copyright. This seemed quite reasonable to me. Also, the photographer retains the right to use the photos for publicity purposes, which also seemed reasonable.
And, yes, we do have a signed copyright release stating all this (the photographer actually told us that many photo labs will not make reprints without this, even if you do have the negatives, so be sure to get one when you find a photographer that's willing to give you copyright).
I'd suggest shopping until you find a similar deal. If enough people do this, it will put competitive pressure on other photographers to adopt similar measures.
If anyone's wondering, the photographer we used is Steve Wille. The samples and digital proofs are on the same site (yes, the photos are real, not using a backdrop or edited -- Colorado's a beautiful place). Unfortunately, I can't post the URL to the CD photos as my server couldn't handle the potential load.
I would highly recommend Steve to anyone getting married in Colorado.
- EOS 300D at ISO 50.
- EOS 300D at ISO 200.
- Pro 1 at ISO 50.
- Pro 1 at ISO 200.
The ISO 200 shot from the Pro 1 is actually noiser than the Rebel at ISO 1600! Are the extra couple of megapixels and the more flexible bundled lens worth that much noise, lower battery life, icky electronic viewfinder and poorer autofocus?Now, many wedding photographers make their real cash from the prints, and so will refuse to sell the negatives anyway (or only after a substantial period of time), but you have to ask in their language in order to get anywhere.
Additionally, if they are a pro that does journalism/advertising work as well as weddings, they're going to immediately wonder if you're trying to screw them. 99% of commercial clients who ask for all-rights contracts don't really need all the rights they ask for (a frank discussion of what the client actually wants to do will usually result in a more sane limited-rights contract being signed for less money), but requests like that can also be a red flag that the client doesn't really understand/care about copyright and is likely to play fast and loose with your images (omitting credit lines, retouching without offering first refusal, reselling the work as their own, never paying you, etc.)
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm a freelance illustrator who avoids all-rights/work-for-hire assignments whenever possible, and I bought the negatives from my wedding photographer last year.
You may have scared the photographer away by requesting their copyright. As an artist, their copyright means a lot to them. It means they can manage the distribution and production of images, re-use them for portfolios, artistic work, collages, commercial work or anything else that suits their fancy. It's what they earn on top of a fee, for having a ultimately unique talent and approach to their craft.
There's no need for you to strip that from them, which is what you are asking for when you ask for their 'copyright'. What you want is a license with reasonably loose restrictions.
It's true that many wedding photographers developed their craft in a day where production costs (for film) were relatively high and the fee they could charge for a wedding was comparatively low. Thus, they retained reprint rights so that they could recoup a better margin over time.
However, this is changing rapidly, largely because of the far lower production cost involved with digital photography, and the emergence of the photojournalistic style. More and more photographers, including my fiance, whom I'm shamelessly promoting, are more than happy to provide you with full resolution digital images for private printing. More often than not, clients who aren't tech savvy, or don't have cost-effective access to professional quality print labs, come back to the original photographer anyway. And even if they don't come back, releasing the images amounts to one less hassle for the photographer five years from now when your mom wants a few new prints.
However, they will usually try to retain copyright, though, since it's often far more valuable to them them than it would be to you.
In summary: don't worry. There are an increasing number of photographers out there who provide exactly what you need. Just keep looking, and good luck on your wedding!
Actually, I make my living as a wedding photographer. Well, I do other types of photography, too, but weddings are my favorite.
You can certainly find photographers who will either include reproduction rights with their packages, or who will sell them to you for an additional fee. Notice, I didn't say "copyright." No photographer will ever sell the copyright. See, there's two parts to copyright. First, you have the right to make any copies of the images you want. Second, you can prevent anyone else from making copies. Many photographers will let you make whatever copies you want, but no photographer is going to give up his right to make copies.
Essentially, it works like this. Let's say that for a particular package the photographer realizes that he needs to make $2,500 on the wedding in order to make it worth his time. That's a reasonable fee for a small package. Consider that we bring about $45,000 worth of photo equipment to a wedding, which all has to be paid for, maintained, insured, repaired, replaced, etc, and then use another $20,000 worth of computer equipment to edit, retouch, and archive...that adds up. Then there's business overhead from taxes, office supplies, advertising, etc, and on top of it we have to put food on the table and pay for health insurance and what not.
So, $2,500 in gross sales in the goal. We know from past experience that we can expect $500 in additional sales to friends and family after the wedding. So, the couple (or mom & dad) pay $2,000, and the other $500 comes from friends and family later. If you want to have the high-res digital files, that's fine! But it's going to cost $500, because then we know we're not going to get any reprints from friends and family.
Shop around...this is a completely free-market enterprise. There are NO requirements to be a wedding photographer. Any asshole with a camera can call himself a professional photographer, as no licensing or oversight is required...that's why there are so many bad photographers out there, and why a photography business it the most failure-prone business venture next to a restuarant. You can pay as much or as little as you want, but you get what you pay for. You can hire a student from the community college for $200 plus the cost of film and he'll hand you the rolls at the end of the night, but he's probably going to be using sub-standard equipment, and have very little knowledge of posing and lighting, and there will be no retouching, editing, or album design. Or, if you're interested, I know several fantastic photographers who will produce stunning works of art, but you're going to have to pay them $15,000. Shop around until you find the photographer who'll give you price you want and the quality of work you're willing to settle for. Good luck with your wedding!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Although that was important to us, it was much more important that he could straddle the line between artsy and archival. He took b&w as well as color photos and -- this was so cool -- he took some 3D photos that turned out to be the best shots of the church's grandeur. (Stanford Memorial Church)
I say, demand the negatives, but expect to make a reasonable concession. Make sure you get someone experienced with weddings since they are going to help you wrangle your family for the group shots, and that's hard. And hey! you only get one wedding. An idea-- ask someone from each side of the family beforehand to be designated wranglers. You'll probably need the extra help.
We had an unexpected use of our wedding photos: we gave a beautiful picture of my little sister to the surgeon to reference during her reconstructive surgery following an accident. (She's recovered- thanks.) We were really grateful to have the photo already digitized.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
Firstly, as far as creative control... You wouldn't realize how much of the quality of a print comes from the actual printing process. I maintain a full color and black and white darkroom as well as do digital work with labs I've used in the past. A great image needs careful printing to become a great print. Since most business is booked via word of mouth, you don't want someone showing some cheesy ink jet print off. Your paying for the time it takes to make that print, the test prints, the times i have to stop and just stare at it trying to decide what wil make it really sing. You're paying for an artist to capture the moments and present them as best they can. You can get all the same songs a dj will play and some stereo system to play it through but it won't be the same.
Secondly, you see these as photos of yourselves. I don't see it that way. I see it as my photo of you, or my photo that you happen to be in and sometimes even just my photo and you completely dissapear in it and all i see is my work. I guess it depends on the photographer. What I do is try and capture you as I see you. While I'm a fairly cynical and sarcastic jerk I do have a love of people and emotions and try and catch people through the rose colored glasses that sometimes fall on my head.
You're not buying a picture of yourself, you're buying how I saw you, wanted to see you for that moment. It takes a lot of time, effort and dedication to be able to do that in some cases though there are more standard type shooters. People sometimes ask me why I have so few photos of myself. The answer is, well i'm behind the camera :) But my private answer which I feel sounds too conceited is that I"m in every photo I take. I worked hard to take it, I worked hard to print it and it's very personal to me.
There are lots of people that will give you all the negatives, cd,s prints etc at the end of the session, some of these people are quite good, others are just your generic shooter trying to accomodate the new demand for such. Prices vary widely for each.
In addition to weddings, I also do a fair amount of intimate type portraiture. Same deal applies, copyright is mine and it's my work. I've photographed all kinds of women from really hot models to women you might not even give a second look at and they've always been very happy with the results, some brought to tears when they see the photos. Even women that have gone to other photographers. I guess there are photographic technicians and there are photographic artists. My desire is to be the latter. Just like there are system integrators and developers... some people have a passion to create not just replicate.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is find a photographer who you like and see what you can work out. Do you really need 1000 negs of your wedding? If so find someone that will give them to you. A lot of photographers will be somewhat accomodating.
The big issue isn't so much owning the copyrights but having the rights to reproduce. I would never give up my copyrights but I do sometimes make arrangements in regards to reproduction.
On another note, keep in mind, this person has to pay his expenses, (eqiupment, rent, insurance, assistants, accountants, lawers, etc.) There is a lot of work that goes into a wedding from the consultations to the shooting, to the final output. If you want someone to show up, get paid for the day, give you the film or cd at the end of the day and be done with you you can find those people as well.
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Proof, law, sources please?
Well I dug a little deeper in order to rise to your challenge. Here's a summary of what I found, model retains copyright is correct in the UK where I'm from, but not in the US. I'd assumed that because I found references for such forms in the US they were for the same purpose. They're not, the US releases pertain to privacy laws of which there are none in the UK. FWIW the difference seems to due to there being no "work for hire" provision in UK law. In the UK copyright transfer needs to be explicit.
Does that mean that National Geographic photo's are un-copyrightable
No, but who owns the copyright would be interpreted differently in different jurisdictions. Another example of how if copyright laws were actually rigidly enforced the whole system would collapse.
I don't think you understand how much professional camera equipment costs. A Canon 1D Mark II costs $4,500, just for the body. I have four of them (two for me, two for my wife). A lens costs $1,200 to $2,000 for fast Canon L glass. We have wides, mediums, longs, and specialties (like fisheye and macro). Then there's lights...professional quality portable studio strobes (I use Lumedynes) plus lightshapers will run you about $4,000 for a decent set to bring to a wedding, plus all the extras. Flash units, light meters, radio slaves, flash cards (about 20 $250 1GB Sandisk Ultra IIs. I know they only cost $200 now, but I've been buying them steadily over the past year), digital wallets, bags, stands, tripods, etc etc etc. It adds up. Do I need it? In order to produce the quality of work that people will pay $2,000 to $10,000 for, yes I need. If I were going to use 2nd-rate equipment, like a student might have (digital rebel, sigma EX glass, no lights), sure I could do an okay job, but the quality of the work would not be anywhere near as good.
The computer equipment is easy...try two G5s with artisan monitors, a linux server with a TB RAID 5 array, tape backup, external harddrives, and a 17" Powerbook. Plus scanners, printers, networking, etc etc etc.
Again, it's just a different level of service. Not even counting artistic ability, experience, and interpersonal skills (photographing a wedding is a lot like herding cats, and can easily overwhelm a shy person or a novice), the raw quality of the student's images are not going to be up to the standards of a professional.
For $500: Novice student, inexperienced, undeveloped style, no assistant, limited second-rate equipment, no retouching, no art effects (no black and white, no sepia, no hand-tinting, no vignettes, no diffusion filters, no watercolors, etc etc etc), no album
For $5,000: Experienced full-time professional, two photographers plus assistant, first-rate equipment, backup gear, lighting gear, digital retouching, art effects, and a custom designed flush-mount leather album. A flush mount album is one in which the entire page is a photo, flush to the edge, on a hard board, and bound like a coffee-table book. See here for one of our sample designs.
You can spend as much or as little as you want, but you get what you pay for. Some people are "picture people," and they want an extremely high level of service with regards to their wedding images, they're willing to pay for it, and that's the market I serve. That makes me happy because I like to try to produce the highest level of quality I can, but in order to do so I have to spend 40 hours or more on a wedding, and I can't do that part-time. Some people couldn't care less, and only hire a photographer because, "you're supposed to hire a photographer." Two different kinds of clientele, two different kinds of photographers. Pick the one that suits you...it's a free market.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The highest quality gear costs money, and I want to produce the best images I can...it's as simple as that. This is also a very competitive field. There are a lot of photographers, and every little edge helps. Instead of buying a 1DmkII for $4,500, I could have bought a 10D for $1,500, but having looked at thousands of 10D images, and thousands of mkII images, the mkII produces a cleaner image (less noise), with about an extra half a stop of shadow detail, with a greater dynamic range of colors. Then there's the increased shooting performance. The autofocus is so much faster and more accurate, so I'm less likely to miss shots. It's worth the extra money, so I can produce better images, so I can charge more for them.
Of course the computer equipment is a tax write-off, but it's also necessary. We're all digital, and a typical wedding produces about 2,500 8MP images. It takes a lot of redundant storage to store them and make sure we don't lose any, and then it takes a lot of horsepower to sort through and edit all those images. Designing the album pages is also a monster, as I'll frequently be working on several 500+ MB page spreads at the same time.
Retouching is entirely necessary. I'm not talking about painting eyes on people...no I've never done that. I just make sure people aren't blinking when I take the photo. Skin retouching means removing blemishes, bags under the eyes, shiny skin. The wedding I did last weekend was in a garden, in Florida, in July. It was about 95 degrees with about 80% humidity. Yes, it's a historical record, but how do you think the bride would rather see herself? With greasy, shiny, oily skin with tired bags under eyes, or fresh with clean skin? Tough call there...or not. Just because one photographer ruined an image, does not mean that all retouching done by all photographers ruins photos.
I'm not quite sure you understand what I mean by 'art effects.' I mean that we capture all of our images in color, and then can convert them to black and white, or sepia, or modify the contrast and tone curves to produce a more striking image. Or we can alter the saturation of the image, or darken some parts to bring emphasis to others. For instance, here is an image as it came out of the camera, and here is it after some work in photoshop. That's just one small example, and is entirely subjective. You may not like it at all, but there are others who like it very much, and those are my customers.
The flush-mount album is just one of the services we provide, and has a LOT to do with the actual shoot. We pretty much plan the album as we photograph. I look around for details I can drop in as inset photos, or take an wide shot and make sure I leave a clean area so I can place images in that area later. The album design is just part of the fee...if you don't want it, you don't have to get it. We have prints-only packages for a lot less money.
$10k is excessive, I agree, but there are people who want to spend that, and who am I to stop them? No one has ever actually purchased our $10k package and our average sale is a $3,500 30 page 10x10 leather flush-mount album with 8 hours coverage and two photographers. That's hardly excessive.
There's a difference between "shy" and "discrete." Our formal training in photography was in photojournalism, in which you are expected to stay out of the way and not interfere. That's absolutely the way I cover candid events. However, formal portraiture is required at a wedding. It may not be your cup of tea, but most people do want posed portraits of their friends and family on their wedding day. During this time, a shy or befuddled person is going to have a very difficult time, as family members tend to mill about and waste time during the limited window of time available to the couple between the wedding and the reception. If the photographer's shyness results in a) the bride not getting the photos she
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The way you print a negative will make a big difference when it comes to the final quality.
With machine printing, there are some things you can control. Primarily, overall density and color balance. With digital minilabs you have some control over contrast as well. In addition, the quality of the paper makes a big difference. Some types of film work better with certain types of paper. With most minilabs, you don't have too much control over cropping and rotation. The quality of the operator makes a difference as well.
With a custom color print I can match the paper with the negative I'm trying to print. I have the same controls over overall density and color balance. I have more control over cropping and rotating. Minilabs will generally pick a density and color balance setting based on the overall scene, I can more acurately fine tune that. Sometimes it might be better to have it a little darker or lighter. In addition, I can choose to manipulate the density locally by dodging and burning certain areas, making them lighter or darker in just certain areas of the print.
In black and white custom printing, you have the same controls as in custom color except you have more control over the contrast of the print. There are two main types of paper you can print on and the type many people find to be more aestetically pleasing doesn't work well in an automated feed system and needs to be tray processed, then archivally washed for a long time so that it can last.
Basically, there are a lot of things you can do in the printing stage that give a print more life. These are all subjective judgements and they take some experimentation before you can make the final print.
For a good idea of what it takes to make a fine art black and white print have a look at this page for an example.
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