Slashdot Mirror
Your Digital Photos Are Too Professional
ScentCone writes "AP's technology writer Brian Bergstein reports that your 8 megapixel camera, and lukewarm+ lens/Photoshop skills may keep you from getting over the counter image printing services. Professional photographers have successfully sued processors (like Wal-Mart) for reproducing their digital works without permission. Clerks are now being told to deny print orders for some work that looks too good. Talented amateurs are having to jump through hoops, present documents, and otherwise cajole teenage cashiers into taking their orders. No doubt one successful suit costs more than a thousand denied amateurs' orders, but sheesh. On the other hand, pro wedding photographers depend mightily on the income derived from reproducing their work, and it will take time for things to evolve to the point where clients are willing to pay a lot more up front in exchange for wider image rights after the fact. There's no well-supported digital equivalent to a negative (as reasonable proof of ownership), so retailers are defensively resorting to near paranoia to stay out of court."
I don't know what all of the fuss is about.... I've been having my pictures printed at WalMart for years, and never had any problems....
..., ahem, ...., uh, ...., never mind.
I always cringe when I read something like this. To anyone who is planning a wedding out there: Don't be fooled into this!
It's a little off-topic, but I want to point out that this practice - once "just the way it was" when it came to wedding photography - is becoming less and less common. When we got married (a year ago next Sunday), the #1 thing we looked for was a photographer who wouldn't insist on maintaining the copyrights to the photos.
This turned out not to be a problem; the few photographers we looked at who still wanted to maintain copyrights were all old-school (in a negative sense) in other ways, too. One guy even wanted to tell us that our relatives wouldn't be allowed to take pictures at our own fucking wedding! I can't imagine how someone would hire this guy; what kind of asshole is actually going to tell their guests they can't take pictures?
Anyhow, the photographer we ended up with used film rather than digital. I actually looked for this; it added a little bit of work on our part on the back end of the wedding, but as a hobbyist myself I feel there's a real advantage to film specifically in terms of the quality of black and white photos. She did a great job, too.
Once the pictures were developed, we got all the negatives. We scanned the pictures using a kick-ass negative scanner from Nikon that we bought refurbed (and then sold on eBay for a profit) and stuck the pictures out on Ofoto so our friends and relatives could order right from there. Compare this to my Best Man's wedding a year earlier where he went with a "traditional" photog who kept the copyrights from the photos and wanted to charge us $20 per shot... Well, let's just say I don't have any of the pro shots from that wedding.
Now, back on topic: If your photos look too good, why hassle with the local Walmart just to get yourself what's going to be, at best, an 'okay' print? Unless you need the prints Right Now, go online! When I'm trying to get my own "good" photos printed, I've had great luck with Adorama's printing service. Plus, they're used to seeing shots that are far better than what I can produce. Ofoto (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) generally kicks out satisfactory results as well.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Adding insult to injury, the photofinishers refuse to give explicit guidelines as to what qualifies as "professional-looking" (in all likelihood there are no guidelines, of course). But an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune on this topic shows one customer's example of a photo rejected by Wal-Mart, alongside an equally good-looking photo that Wal-Mart, in its infinite wisdom, deemed amateurish enough to print.
A search of my comment history will show I am very anti-piracy. But stuff like this makes me feel lke telling everyone to go download every freaking copyrighted photo on the net and send to all your friends.
Big brother ridiculous.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
"Professional photographers have successfully sued processors"
I sincerely hope that these greedy bastards lose business because of this. Retailers should take an educational stance instead of a paranoid one!
The paranoia only worsens after the wedding
If the wedding photographer is giving out the 8 megapixel versions of the images on CD, then they're just stupid. If a person has a CD that has 8 megapixel pictures on it, chances are good that they took them themselves.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
"Your Digital Photos Are Too Professional"
Yes, I know. Thank you.
Dashboard Widgets
So are we trying to squash small business here or what? if you are a professional and dont digitally sign your photos then that is your fault.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
All the Walmarts I've been to denied the pictures from my honeymoon. I guess they must be some really good professional pictures.
But... but... what does TripMasterMonkey have to say about this?
I'M DYING TO KNOW!
They said it might be a trap.
..and yet you can still buy knives, hammers, pillows and other dangerous object that could be used to KILL someone. I guess full and complete protection of 'intellectual property' is more important than full and complete protection of human life.
Or maybe, just maybe we dont need everything to be protected?
Starsucks
Does anyone here know what a Digital Watermark is, and why they exist? Now the other issue we need to resolve is the "work for hire" issue.
My wife claims there is a stipulation that if the photographer is out of business the copyright is public domain or whatever.
Anyone know if this is true/partially true?
"Fat people are harder to kidnap."
If I sign something claiming ownership of the image, why are they liable? They have no way of actually knowing, and couldn't reasonbly be expected to do so. To expect the printer to be the enforcer is only creating a point of friction between the printer and their customers. This just seems so black and white obvious to me.
I'm getting married in 2 month, and the professional Photographer I've hired uses a digital camera and photoshop to accentuate colors and things like that.
The only difference is that a professionnal photographer, unlike me, knows how to take good poses, good angles, and knows what to do in photoshop to make the picture a lifetime souvenir
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
Between photo quality ink jet and dye sub printers to serve immediate printing needs and online photo finishers like shutterfly to print on the cheap... I thought only people taking snapshots went to Walmart and the like. There's no chance of someone mistaking your snapshots of Timmy's birthday party as professional work.
If you can't reproduce digital prints at the store, invest in a sweet printer/scanner combo. Problem solved.
Hmm, I feel an entrepreneurial urge coming on. . .
With so many ppl on
I'd suggest using online services, which probably do not have as many confused humans in the loop.
Also, self-service kiosks. Also, there are many home printers which produce better results than the processors...
Include a hash or digital signature in the image file, something not readily detechtable to the naked eye but machine decernable (like a flipped bit or pixel every 100 pixels). Not completely foolproof, but could serve as a way verify origin of the photo.
nothing like a the threat of "i'm going to sue you" to keep the masses in line
Any photographer worth his salt would have long since brought control back into his hands by obtaining a good quality photo printer.
What are they, $200 nowadays?
Sheesh.
D
My brother does wedding photos http://www.bairphoto.com/ and gives the "digital negatives" to the people - he just charges for time. He sent me this link yesterday, he said now he knows why more and more of his clients are asking for print release forms. He is starting to include a stack with the CD when he gives it to people.
... to the invention of the photocopier.
Remember when you went to a Staples or Kinkos and they wouldn't let you photocopy lots of things because they *might* be copyrighted works? Remember when you had to jump through hoops to prove that you were photocopying a book segment for a school book report?
Fast forward to today. No problem anymore. They just refer you to the Self Serve copiers with the "Don't Copy Illegally" signs and look the other way while you make your own Oxford Englsh Dictionary at 5 cents a page.
This will be a ridiculously short-lived phenomenon for two single word reasons:
* Kiosks
* O-foto (that's not really a word...)
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
My wife, as a amateur photographer, has experienced this several times. At first she was delighted that someone thought her photos looked professional, now it has become a nuisance for her. She has turned to having the pictures done online and sent to her. They are better quality and cheaper.
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
RE:"There's no well-supported digital equivalent to a negative"
While it's not absolute proof of ownership, most digital formats these days include a specification called EXIF. (Google for "EXIF" or see http://www.exif.org/ for more info).
The extraneous information in a digital photo containg EXIF data includes such information as Make & model of camera, etc. While such information is not absolute, it can, in a pinch, providde reasonable proof of ownership, as long as you can show you own the equipment specified, and that all the images point to your equipment.
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
...though it was actually a professionally-taken picture. My brother died, and my mom wanted to get an 8x10 enlargement of a graduation photo. The studio that took the image no longer had the negative, and would charge a rather large fee to take the existing photo and blow it up. She then took it to Wal-Mart, where they refused to take it because of the studio's name on the bottom of the portrait, even when my mother explained the situation.
She finally carefully cut off the very bottom of the picture (it was background anyway) and told them it was a personal picture that she took. They didn't question it, and my mom got the picture she wanted.
and I've never ran into this problem, but I only use Walgreens since their photo lab is open 24/7. It's better to use a smaller shop like Walgreens so the people there will recognize you, thus avoiding this problem more often than not. And on a side note, screw Wal-Mart.
Does anyone know of any affordable online print companies that'll print up posters for you with your prints?
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I can't wait till they start DRM'ing film. You have developed this film more than one time. Please call this activation hotline you god damn pirate. Thank you
I seriously doubt that the average minimum wage retail worker is going to deal with the extra hassle of refusing people's print jobs. Even if the higher ups mandate checking the prints first, the judgement call will still likely be in the clerk's hands.
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.
Maybe it's time to start up a photo business that doesn't care about copyrights.
Honestly, why would a photographer want copyrights on Ma & Pa Kettle's wedding photos? Is there a release form the couple has to sign off to the photographer for all images of THEM?
Maybe the photographer should be paying them for modeling, with a clause that they(wedding couple) get a copy for framing.
Or pony up the $ and just do it all yourself, have a neighbor kid take the photos and pay them an agreed-upon fee.
I've got a suggestion.
It's an amazing one.
Don't go to Wal-Mart to have pictures developed.
Support your local businesses, you insensitive clod.
Our wedding photographer will be giving us film and digital files for us to print ourselves (that's why he's so cheap, he doesn't do any photo processing himself) but if *this* is the kind of crap we're going to run into ... yikes.
my geeklog
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If I pay someone to take a picture of my family, is it not a contract and I am the rightful owner of the picture?
I would be more understanding if the photographers took the pictures for free.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Professional photographers are gonna have to face reality on this one. I remember interviewing a bunch for my wedding. I was shocked to learn that they would be retaining the negatives so that if ever in my life I wanted more pictures, I would be paying them an astronomical markup to print them for me. Almost every one of them had this policy. Sorta like razors and razor blades, except the razor itself cost $1000+.
Fast forward a decade. The means for reproduction are in our hands. They will have to change their pricing model so that more of their profit comes from the initial fee and less from the duplicates that a smaller and smaller percentage of their clientele will come to them for.
Same thing with other Wal-mart products, I'm afraid... I can't be sure that they're not violating the trademark protections of Coca-cola by packaging a knockoff as The Real Thing (tm).
Pictures that I have taken that I have found to be 'good', at least in my non-professional opinion, I will often reduce the megapixels before giving them to anyone. This way, I figure, if there is ever any kind of legal dispute (I'm not that great so not really worried) I can always say "I have the originals, compare the pixels."
A few years ago, I tried to get Kinkos to make a bound copy of a working draft of a lengthy academic paper, and they wouldn't have anything to do with it. Even though the manuscript consisted of photocopied pages in a 3-ring binder, and was not very professional looking at all, the clerk insisted "it's a book".
Of course, Kinkos is happy to copy and bind all sorts of material, as long as it is not "a book" in the view of the morons working there.
When I write software as part of my job, whether as employee or contractor, my work-product is generally considered as work-for-hire. I.e. I don't own it because *they* paid me to produce it.
Why doesn't that work for Wedding photos?
and grammer too. Time to hire a proof-reader.
...And in the land of foolish people, the King decried that ideas and virtual objects could be owned and controlled even though they never "really" existed in the first place. All sorts of confusion over this silly law broke out through the land, till the King of all idiots decided that no one but he should rule all things not physical.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Insert picture of large-testicled squirrel with hand in economy-sized mustard jar here.
This makes me glad that I have a printer and paper good enough to print photos at the same quality I could get at Wal-Mart or CVS. Not that I ever really need it, but it's there on the odd ocassion I do.
Bungo!
If they want documentation...give it to them.
Personally, I'd like to see the look on the person's face when they read Samuel L. Jackson's name on the release.
There are several out there.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Steve Noble, who oversees regulatory affairs at the Photo Marketers Association, believes the situation will remain hazy unless copyright laws that were written in a different technological era are altered to reflect the possibilities of digital dissemination.
:(
Great, a call for more copyright laws!
They'll probably want to mandate an expensive DRM scheme by which you can prove an image came from your camera. Or maybe they'll require that you be a card-carrying member of a photo association in order to print your "professional" image.
Except in extreme circumstances, digital is going to kill off a lot of "professional" picture takers.
With more and more megapixels, you can take bad pictures, incredibly off-center, etc.. crop, and voila, the subject is now perfect center(you can even measure it with photoshop to be sure!).
Sure, there'll always be call for professionals, but it's getting to where you can have just about anyone with a 45-minute course and a big-megapixel camera can do some pretty good shots.
My favorite is my cheap kodak digital can take pictures from far away, with its little bit of zoom, and I can get home, zoom in on the picture in photoshop(reduces maximize size of final print though, not that I really print much) and it looks like I either had a very professional camera with a huge zoom, or I was much closer when I took my picture, even if that isn't a possibility.
You're a behemoth corporation with more money than I can imagine. Why don't you throw some of that weight and money around and take a stand against these bullshit laws? Fight the lawsuits in court to establsh a set of sane legal precidents, and promote a new "common-carrier printer status" law.
Not only because it's the right thing to do, but because by being sissies, you're undercutting your future sales.
Signed,
Everybody
That is a very good point. If you want to deny someone reproduction rights you will not give them an 8 MB image. Of course they could have scanned a photo...
From what I've learned about weddings (from working as a holiday inn Chef) they seem be a the eternal hotbed of scams. Everything from when they sell you a small rock for thousands of dollars on down to the throwing of bouquet is a scam of some sort and everybody wants a piece of the pie. Ernest young lovers ready to through as much of their parents money away as possible are hard to resist. But keeping the copyright to the wedding photos? That is truly ridiculous. At our wedding (which didn't cost a dime btw) we had three photographers, all amature. I did a compilation of photos for everybody afterwards and burned them to cheap CD's.
My question is this; who is printing their digital photos at Walmart anyhow? With ink jet printers being the cheapest they've ever been (and with the average consumer knowing little about fading inks and the like)wouldn't a printer purchase quickly pay for itself?
only one everything
If the photo looks too professional, they should ask the client to give some ID, so if the owner then claims copyright violations, we know who to blame.
Ta-da, problem solved.
Seriously!
I'm an "semi-profesional" photographer in my part time, and I bounce back and forth between printing my own on my home printer and using a service like Shutterfly.
I can't imagine ever using a retail service like Walmart. Good quality photo printers are just too innexpensive to justify using a retail service. This is hardly limited to "profesionals" either.
Print your prints at home! Everyone! Yes, I mean you!
Geeks have a great opportunity to take ownership of thier prints by printing themselves. Printers are cheap, paper and ink is cheap, and it's not much work at all. A decent photo printer can be had for under a hundred bucks.
Back when developing prints meant expensive equipment and dangerous chemicals we had a ton of excuses to outsource developing, but those days are long gone.
On another note, now speaking as a profesional, clients order prints from Shutterfly directly and never see high quality JPG's. If I ever release JPG's to clients they get branded with "COPYRIGHT" watermarks accross the center of the image.
Rights to digital photos are incredibly simple to protect as long as you never release high quality digital prints.
To all these Profesional photographers sueing Walmart, I really have to ask what in hell they're doing releasing high-rez digital files in the first place. What the hell do they expect? I guard my digital files as I would negatives.
I've never seen a high quality scan that looked remotely like the original, so someone scanning a print and then printing it themselves is not a big concern of mine. Quite frankly if someone is willing to go to all that work for a shitty print, all the power to them. I only ask that they leave my signature off.
_Am
http://www.mpix.com/
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Just use a linux-based 16MP camera, spiff it up with Gimp, and save a whole lot while not giving archaic professions any money!
Transcend Humanity. Please.
That's a bad precedent. Service vendors should not be put in the position of monitoring content or judging it, any more than an ISP should monitor its customers' activity (except in a general way). Whether a customer has copyright or permission on a file or photo is not their call, unless they see something obviously illegal happening.
This isn't Big Brother, really, it's worse: enforced imitation bureaucracy.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
It shouldn't be Walmart's job to police for copyright violations; that's the FBI's job. The real problem here is that government keeps drafting private individuals and companies to work for them as unpaid law enforcement. And I thought there was a constitutional amendment, passed just after the War of Secession, outlawing involuntary servitude...
So photographers now have to make money off their service rather than their image bank.
Is anyone here crying them a river?
If Wal-mart decides to be assholes about this, we could go the legal route (sue them), or make a big fuss at the counter. We could also go to shops that have more reasonnable rules.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Ok, I have a metric assload of problems with this whole concept.
First and foremost, photographers are paid to take really good pictures, and maybe do some prints. I still think the digital version belongs to the person who's wedding/whatever it is. Yes, the photographer needs to be paid, but he gets paid. And quite well too. What is it, a grand or two for a days work?
Second, if there are legitimately copywrited photos printed by someone who doesn't own them, it's the person who had them printed who is liable. Not the printer. Otherwise it's like suing maytag because someone washed your dry-clean only sweater.
It seems legal battles are now just big finger pointing contests, and copyright is about who you can sue. I think the whole process needs a reality check, because the spirit of copyright and other laws has been completely lost.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Sheesh make eveyone sign a declaration that they have permission from the owner of the copyright to make duplicates of the prints.
As long as there is no clear watermark or sign that it isn't the customers property they can claim it wasn't willful and they took reasonable means to prevent such a problem.
Secondly it doesn't need to be any good or even a professional photograph to be illegal to duplicate.
If you download my vacation photos you'd still be violating copyright to print them out... Even the blurry ones.
Adobe is proposing a digital negative format: http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/main.html
Now photo finishers can do the same thing they've always done: if you have the negative, you are authorized.
I alway shoot in Raw (NEF) which can be converted to DNG. My only concerns is that since there is no encryption on DNG files, can you prevent people from turning JPGs into DNG files?
We need more competition?
Transcend Humanity. Please.
If a person has a CD that has 8 megapixel pictures on it, chances are good that they took them themselves.
How would they know it's not an unauthorized 8 Mpixel scan of a copyrighted photo? Let's see... (touches buttons on wristwatch calculator) a scan of a 4x6 print at 600 dpi will be about 8 Mpixels.
I wonder where Kodak stand on all of this.
Over here we have Kodak photo kiosks - you insert, a variety of different memory sticks, a CD-ROM or even infra red pictures from your cell, and you can do basic editing and print out your pictures - on kodak paper, as if they'd been processed. You can even take home a Kodak Photo-CD of your images!
I wonder what would stop me upping a bunch of copyrighted material onto a memory stick and then getting prints? Kodak could be in for a STACK of lawsuits if this is upheld.
(The bigger issue is, when did this copyright paranoia appear? I rememer taking an old cartridge loading point n click camera to an art museum on school trips and photographing tons of copyrighted material - I don't remember being denied processing on all that!)
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
I made it a point to get in touch with the photographer to ask her if she's mind my shooting at all. She thanked me for contacting her, and basically said that as long as it wasn't one of the carefully composed shots (like the ones after the wedding with the whole wedding party, though that would be a hell of trick because I'm IN the wedding party), she didn't have a problem with me shooting whatever I wanted. Oh, yeah, and asked me keep an eye on her so we didn't screw each other's shots up with the flash (yes, I've had this happen).
This lesson was learned after a wedding last year, when I showed up with my camera in hand was taking shots of the general goings-on of the wedding. After no more than about 20 minutes of this, the groom politely came up to me ask asked me to put away my camera. Apparently, I pissed off the photographer because I was "stealing" his shots.
My point in mentioning this: if you're advanced enough of an amateur that you think you might make the real photographer sweat, contact them beforehand. Talk with them. They're professionals, and will (sometimes) act that way, too. I know it has little to do with TFA, but...
Chris Knight is my hero.
It's quite simple, photofinishing labs should not print photos they know for a fact the customer does not hold the copyright.
All other photos should be printed if the customer is willing to sign a statement that they own the copyright or have the permission of the copyright owner to make copies of the photos.
If the "Professionals" have a problem with the photos being copied, they should go after the customer that commissioned the work and leave the Photofinishing labs alone.
Send it out to the national folks who print more than a million prints a day. Do you think they have time for this sort of rediculousness?
If you can take nice photos, great, but don't expect to get rich doing it. When the technology was new and the expense of equipment and processing was prohibitive then very few people could afford to take nice pictures. With today's digital tools, even a hack like me can get some really nice shots. When you take 1000 digital pictures at zero cost then the law of averages means you'll get a few good ones, and even the not so good ones can be post processed to make acceptable prints.
I know this is not exactly on topic, but I have attended events where cameras were permitted but not "professional" cameras. I've got an Olympus C-730. Not a "cheap" camera, but not what I'd call professional either. In any case, I have had to talk people into allowing me to bring my camera. Ridiculous.
Okay, so technology in the hands of the average/casual user is getting better and better. The results from these devices are better and better. That's what people want. Now we can't use them for fear of being sued? It's getting ridiculous.
I haven't run into that problem yet but then again, I don't see the point in getting pictures printed anyway... and if I did, it would give me the perfect reason to go out and buy me that awesome dyesub printer or really nice color laser printer. (Inkjet just sucks and as often as I print color things, I'm lucky to get a few pages printed before the ink goes bad.)
I recall a run-in I had with a wedding photographer... he did everything he could to get in my way. Those attitudes are definitely out of control as well. It was good to read that these professionals are gradually shifting to getting paid by the time spent taking the pictures rather than by the print.
And finally, this "PPA" group? I think they need an extra "A" in there to be the PPAA. Then it'd fit in nicely with all the other **AA groups that we can collectively hate for stifling our freedoms.
You have to remember: these rules like so many exist to somehow make people feel like the problem is being addressed without actually addressing it.
The employees have been told they need a copyright release form, but obviously wouldn't know a legitimate release from their own ass.
If they're your photos, find out what a copyright release form looks like, make one and sign it. Make sure it is signed and printed with a different name from your own as that is probably the spectacularly brilliant method of determining legitimacy. So make up a pseudonym for your photo work and make your own release form.
Remember - these are your photos, you are doing nothing wrong. You are just giving retail employees what they want.
I fail to see the problem, here...
Print yourself out a release form before going, sign it (might want to make up a name different than your own, in case you get a (rare) particularly observant salesdrone), and if the "Associate" gives you even the slightest hassle, whip out said form.
I don't like lying, either, but the war against fair use claimed "personal integrity" as one of its first victims. If filing meaningless paperwork in triplicate will get the job done, they can have a ball filling their filing cabinets with fiction.
Has anyone considered if the technolohy hasn't made professional wedding photographers obsolete? Wouldn't be the first time advances in technology made a privilidged class of craftsmen superfluous. This is like saying blacksmiths making horseshoes could have kept auto mechanics out of business.
If WalMart refuses to accept your personally made photos because they believe they are too good for you to have actually taken them, then they are accusing you of theft. Threaten to sue them for libel. Maybe that will get them to reconsider their fascist ways.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Next week we are probably going to hear that kinkos wont make copies of term papers, thesis or dissertations because the people aren't professional writers.
Honestly this is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What makes a photographer a photographer? Their camera. What makes them a professional? The fact that people pay them.
I would expect these photo counters to get sued for not printing the amature photographers pictures due to the discriminatory nature of this practice. Afterall who are they to say who is a professional and who isn't?
Rather than steganography, just embed a copyright in the relevant part of the file itself. I know that GIF has a place for that; I assume JPEG does.
When the Wal-Mart clerk checks the files, they should say, "This belongs to So-and-So; check ID". If the customer is savvy enough to work around that, it really is the customer's fault, not Wal-Mart's. Deliberate fraud by the customer is a whole new category.
It does seem ludicrous that a $5.25 an hour clerk is asked to make artistic judgments, but then, we regularly expect clerks to be handwriting analysis experts who check signatures on credit cards and checks. That's weird, and probably accounts for far more fraud than printing copyrighted photos.
A thousand monkeys, typing on a thousand typewriters will eventually type the entire works of William Shakespeare. As such most of us arent frugal with our flash memory, we take tons of pictures and as such we are occasionally going to produce an Ansel Adams quality pic. This copyright crap has got to end soon.
Sick of stupidity? http://www.patentlystupid.com
At the big boxes (Wal-Mart and drug stores) I've dealt with, the (or at least one) litmus test for portraiture is simple: does the background resemble background paper? If yes, they'll refuse it. A Walgreens employee told me this outright when refusing to print something of mine I wanted a quick copy of.
Nevermind the fact anyone can go buy a roll of seamless background paper for $30 or that many portrait photographers also do outdoor poses.
Then again, given the "quality" of some "professional" portrait photographers' work (I just got a flyer in the mail from one yesterday... yikes!), I suppose they can't really judge based on the quality of the image itself.
All this can be avoided with these three sentences: DONE! That's it. DONE. But instead bureaucracy gets in the way of good judgement. Again.
Running 'Nix is like owning a Lightsaber. It's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time."
The printer should not be liable for copyright infringement unless they knew or should have known that the work was under copyright.
Having the client sign a paper stating that they have the right to reproduce the product in question should be enough.
This is just absurd.
Grammar.
My brother-in-law had this very problem recently at Costco. After arguing with the person, he eventually had to fill out all sorts of silly paperwork to get them to let him print his own damn work. Just because he's got a good eye and a decent camera (Digital Rebel rocks with the kit lens, folks) they told him the images must have been done by a professional. A compliment of sorts, but quite an annoying one.
Like others have said, PRINT ONLINE. There are some great services out there, and if you know exactly what you're looking for you can get a good deal. My favorite for amateur photos is currently Mpix.com. They have a great turnaround time, but more importantly, they have metallic paper. If any of you have noticed those crazy cool silver gelatin prints in museums, this gives that same sort of effect. Looks great for black and whites, but especially amazing with reds, blues, and yellows. They also have this cool continuous tone black and white paper (regular digital prints won't give this). Their prices are good, too.
If you're looking to do real work somewhere in the semi-pro realm, there's really only one choice: White House Custom Color. This place is for real. You don't just open up an account and upload photos. This place has you fill out a client questionnaire and then they send you samples of their stuff. The coolest thing they have, which I've not seen anywhere else, is linen textured paper (you'll have to read through one of the PDF's).
If you need something local and same day, Walgreens is great. They almost always have some sort of a special each week, and I ended up paying $.19 for each 4x6 the last time I was there. The color might not be spot on, but it is same day service. Shipping and tax end up balancing out in the end. Not bad at all.
Isn't it possible to watermark one's digital picture with something to show copyright ownership? Or is this type of idea flawed?
I have flirted with watermarking the images with a copyright notice, but I think it looks bad.
I've kind of just come to expect this as a part of doing business, with the resigned idea that people who want quality will pay for the quality prints from me, but I can't say I'm happy with that as a solution.
I'd love to hear what others are doing if your out there.
San Francisco Photographers
I'm glad that the big box store photo labs question certain photos.
:)
A while back, I needed some quick proofs of a portrait shoot I had done for a client. Went to the local Walgreens for the 1 hour prints. They said "these look professional, we can't print them". I said "Thank you, they are". Then handed them by business card, business license and sales tax resellers permit. No problems, they know me now.
I often use Costco for quick 12x18 and 11x14 display prints for events we're about to do with http://www.actionathletics.com/. They're cheaper than my pro lab, faster and the quality is pretty good, not as good, but good enough. They did question me at first, but I showed them the docs and luckily I have a business account there as well.
As far as wedding photographers giving up copyrights... You're way off base here. If I'm doing an editorial shoot and the client wants copyright transfer, they're paying 10X my normal price.
Protecting copyright is not "old-school" thinking. We live in an IP intense age. The US doesn't produce widgets anymore, it's all intellectual property. There's nothing wrong with protecting your rights, in fact you're a moron NOT to. Apply the same logic to programming and see if you have the same response.
You can still get the "digital negatives" from a shoot. The photographer can license you the right to make prints from those images. You cannot sell them, you cannot publish them, but you can make as many prints as you would like. What's wrong with that?
Going back to the programming example. Say I need you to write an accounting app. You're an independent(not my employee). You write the code, I pay you $XXX. Do I have the right to turn around and claim that it's mine? Depends on the contract. By default, you own the rights to everything you produce unless you explicitly grant those rights to someone or you're an employee. Same thing with photography. It's all about the rights
Pass another stupid law that says the bridge & groom always *always* own the copyright regardless of circumstance.
Photographers will adjust. F*ck them if they don't.
Oh, and I called it stupid, because copyright law is becoming increasingly stupid and should be ignored when its stupid. Which means most of them time these days.
There may be a nice small business near you with owners who would love to earn your business and offer potentially comparable prices. Walmart is the king of cheap, so expect to pay higher prices elsewhere, occasionally. However, when cheap no longer works for you, guess what the next step is?
And spelling too, time to hire another proof-reader to correct the grammar.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
They are suing the wrong people (Wal-Mart). Tell them to sue the jerks who decided to go to Wal-Mart and reproduce their photos. This way Wal-Mart can reproduce whatever, and the people who deserve to get in trouble, get in trouble. If I go to a library and photocopy a whole book, teh publisher doesn't sue the library do they? They (should) sue me.
Why not fork?
The irony is, consumer printing services, like WalMart, dont process camera RAW files. I took a handfull of NEF files on a CF card to Walmart and the machine wouldn't recognize them.
Wal-Mart has the worst prints of any of
the mass-market photo printers that I have
tried. The Kodak kiosks they have are
good, and don't have a person filtering
them. Or go to CVS... not only are they
much better quality than wal-mart, but they
accept web submissions.
who cares about ANY of this? why not just send your digital photos to an online printing service?
In college, I used to work at a photofinishing store, and we constantly had people coming in to get their wedding photos printed. We couldn't print them unless they had a copyright release signed by the photographer. In that case, the responsibilty to not infringe copyright was entirely with the customer. Are there problems with this? Most probably, but I can't recall it being actually challenged. ... And if you go to a decent lab, one that deals with pros and advanced amateurs all the time, you'll not have this issue. Personally, I would find the "that looks too good to be something you produced" attitude to be insulting.
I'm a semi-pro. If I photograph a person or event for someone and they pay me for it, I will generally give them the option to purchase the originals for a price and print as many as they like, or for me to have them printed to my specs for a price per photo.
We have plenty of pro photographers use our services for both proofs and a few for their final products. Others just get us to make a CD from their film. We also have a number of amateurs that use us. (and for those of you snickering at the idea of pros using Wally World, we have Fuji Frontiers, look them up, and I at least know how to use it)
;)
:)
All I have to do to determine the authenticity is have a look at their source. After a little practice you can determine most scanned images from an original digital file. There's also EXIF in the originals. Most pros and amateurs just bring in their CF card and most of the happy snappy crowd doesn't know how to use a card reader. And if you are a pro and give your customers non-watermarked hi-res CDs I take that to mean you give them full release. Many photographers do just that.
Sorry for the rather disjointed comment, I'm home on lunch and time is limited!
If you're in Taylors SC and need inexpensive quality prints, just come see William.
-= I can't think of anything witty, creative, or insightful for my sig, so deal with this. =-
Keep in mind this is the same WalMart that you can time and time again walk into with old VHS tapes (as long as the box looks okay) and say "I bought this as a gift for someone, and they already had it, can I get store credit for the return?" and will be met with smiles and money every time. I have little doubt that the stoned kid at the photo desk is going to remember yesterday, let alone a new rule saying "watch out for good photos."
Sorry, but I can't disagree more. Genuine professional photographers do far, far, FAR more than point-and-click. True professionals will take lighting, position, angle, lens type, white balance, and a number of other factors into account before ever looking through the view finder. These are the professionals who look at the meaning behind the image that they're about to take and find out the best way to make that meaning come through the image.
The only people that will be killed because of digital as you suggest are the wanna-be professionals who look at photography more as a hobby that can make money because the customers can (or won't) do it themselves. The people with a real eye for photography will be just fine. Yes, Photoshop is good, but I don't think that any graphical package will ever be able to make up for true talent.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
All big-box stores have ethical issues -- it's the nature of the business. But Walmart seems just incapable of admitting it, no matter how blatently they're caught with their pants down. They spend a small fortune on TV commercials trying to convince people that they're good citizens -- with little effect. It would be a lot more productive to put that money into improving their labor practices. I mean, all those Walmart employees on food stamps, and going to emergency rooms because they can't afford health insurance is really bad for their image. But that would mean admiting another ethical failure. Never!
You can buy a photo quality printer for $50, and print your own all day. If you need to copy from hardcopy, get a photo scanner for $50. Problem solved.
If they know you're a serious amateur and they know you they will be happy to print your work. Get to know the people on other shifts too and you'll have no problems. It's just a simple matter of being a little outgoing and starting the conversation while you fill out your order form.
Or check out Mpix - they're all I use anymore. You can read why on my web site, here.
Now get out there and use your social skills and get your pictures printed!
With those photo-paper printers now, DIY. I mean, if you're a "serious amateur" and have a 8MP camera, get a good printer to go with it. The old analogy would have been that you developed film yourself, too.
Yes, we understand these tags always apply: fud, dupe, typo, slashdotted, topic name
There are some liabilities that you can't disclaim. It also gets a little fuzzy when you're dealing with liability toward a third party that is not a party to the contract.
What?
Being a serious ameture/semi professional photographer and photography student, I tend to be above average on the picture taking side. Of the many Walmarts within a short drive of my location, there is one that generally refused to release my work to me, even when provided with a copyright release for printing. Simple solution, I don't go there anymore.
Why would a person want to print at Walmart? Simple, convienient, quick turnaround on the cheap.
There are many times that I've done an assignment where I need to provide 4x6 prints for review in class, and Walmart is good enough for that usually. If I need quality, I go elsewhere.
Simply buying a photo printer is not always good enough. Yes, they are incredible compared to what could be done just a few years ago, but they still lack the perminance that a lab print has.
And yes, there are many photographers that will not release the negatives or copyright to a client, which is done simply to try to get more money from the shoot at a later date.
Copyright law gives copyright to the photographer automatically unless there is a contract making it a work for hire, or stating otherwise. I do not see a problem with that, as the photographer IS the artist that is producing the work. If I have a client that wants the negatives, I allow that, but I charge for it. When it comes to wedding work, my most common contract allows the client to reproduce the work, be it at Walmart or where ever, and comes with a copyright release to that effect. I however still retain copyright and just grant use to the client. There's nothing wrong with that, allows them to make copies whereever they want, if they want, but still allows me to use the work for my portfolio, etc. And yes, I charge more for that than I would if I retain all copyright rights.
The funny thing, is that most of them still come back to me for reprints. Mainly because the quality I can give them is beyond when Walmart can produce. Yes, if they really wanted to they could do their homework and have them printed at the same pro-lab I use, and get the same results I would give them. But they usually don't do that.
Traditionally photographers for weddings have retained all copyright, requiring the client to come back to them for reprints. That is a business model that is dying, but still very much alive. If you don't like it, go to a photographer that gives you the option. There is NOTHING that requires you to use a photographer that won't release copyright in any way. It's your choice.
But don't bitch if a photographer that will release copyright wants more money than the one that won't, that's the whole reason they charge less, they expect to make more money later off the client.
As to getting Walmart to print an individuals good quality work, be it ameteur or professional, either have a copyright release handy (you can snag 'em from that newfangled thing called the internet for nothing after all), or DON'T GO TO WALMART. One of the reasones the small photo shop is going under is because of places like Walmart. If you want to be treated nicely, try a smaller shop, you might be suprised that they actually listen to you when you say it's your shot...
Now this is something new to the US...
Frivolous suits should be a crime and the punishment should be the death penalty.
A few months ago, the local Staples - their self-serve machines were all down - refused to copy a *tele-facsimile* of a *copy* of a property record of my house from our local town hall. "It's a legal document. We can't copy it." I had them produce their printed rules on this. While lots of other things were mentioned, "legal documents" were not blanket excluded. They still refused. Ditto the manager, and it was leave or they would call the police.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I have used http://www.bonusprint.com/ for a few times and I'm very happy with the quality, the options and the promptness of the service. They also ship worlwide for very reasonable fees, IMO.
Doing some research I'm sure one can find similar, cheaper and/or better alternatives out there.
futher more copyright was created to encourage creativity not to stop distributing pieces of art.
http://arl.cni.org/scomm/copyright/principles.htm
Technically, if I change even one bit in the image the work is my own even if it is not discernable by human eye and sounds more stupid than the action taken by wal-mart and the like.
it would be morally wrong if the credit is not given to the original creator. We have to learn that everything is not strictly enforceable or verifiable. many things in this world depend on trust and trust alone.
I pay the extra charge to use the stand-alone self-serve photo kiosks which stand right beside the cheaper 1-hour kiosks at Wal-Mart. The cheaper kiosk is handled by the minimum-wage goons behind the desk and is subject to review as mentioned by TFA; the instant kiosk, while more expensive, delivers perfect photos (I suspect it's using a dye-sub printer under there, I'm sure one of you know for sure) without any of your photos being peer-reviewed. I printed out a large number of my photos from my trip to Japan in April which a few could easily be construed as professional or maybe semi-professional. Being an introverted geek, I'll pay extra any day if it means not having to speak to someone, anyway.
what we need is a broadcast flag, so photo developers can tell if its copyrighted ;)
if you are a professional and dont digitally sign your photos then that is your fault.
Can't a digital signature (e.g. BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE) be circumvented by changing one pixel? Or are you talking about durable steganography? In the latter case, what prevents one from violating 17 USC 1202 by applying steganography containing a false attribution?
Photo printers.
? jumpid=ex_hphqglobal_wwcorp2H05sem/printing
i nters/Direct_Photo/index.asp
c t_Listing_Inkjets_Photo.htm
HP:
http://h10030.www1.hp.com/you/uk/en/printers.html
(Now, isn't that a *stupid* URL?)
Canon:
http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Pr
Epson:
http://www.epson.co.uk/products/product_hub/Produ
etc etc.
Deleted
... and lots of folks tell me to sell my pictures. Never had a problem with this. Let's hope the silly stuff stops before it infects everyone!
I'm going through a very good professional photographer: http://www.tyingtheknot.net
We are paying a fair sum, but we get all the digital negatives to reproduce. As far as he's concerned, he's finished with us when he's given us our proof album.
Conventional photographers hose people to develop prints. they can charge up to $20 for an 8x10 that you can develop in a store for $5...
I like that we can produce as many prints as we like royalty-free. As long as we don't seek to profit off our pictures. If we do, we need to let him know. IMO that's VERY reasonable, and I feel it would be only fair to compensate him.
Our photographer btw, has been featured in many wedding magazines. He's a classy photographer who has no need to hose his customers.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"Talented amateurs are having to jump through hoops, present documents, and otherwise cajole teenage cashiers into taking their orders."
C'mon, you want me to believe that a significant percentage of these "talented amateurs" are taking their photos to Walmart and Costco to be printed and/or developed?
Go to a real camera store, find the "old guy" who's worked there for 20 years because he's a photo nut - don't waste time talking to the kids manning the cash register - and ask him where you SHOULD be having your digital photos printed (or your film developed).
#DeleteChrome
The article mentions a "professional" being denied service at Wal-Mart. A real pro uses a real lab and maintains a working relationship with them because they can't afford not to. The price difference is negligible. I've only had the best of service from professional labs such as West Coast Imaging (not affiliated, but a happy customer).
Just make up a business card syaing that you are a professional photographer. Might want to throw in a bullshit model release form as well.
My wife is taking photography classes, and she is quite good at it. As part of an assignment she took pictures of my sister and her fiance' as "engagement pictures". My sister took them to Walmart to have a few dups made to send out to family to announce the wedding. The clerk said they couldn't do it without the photographers permission, so my wife had to go in with her... I understand personally. Professionals don't allow dups unless they do it and over charge you to do it. That's how they make their living. But, it isn't judged by being "too good" of a pic, it's often judged by if there is a professional backdrop, professional props in the pic or such things that are considered a giveaway that the pic was done in a studio... Or, that's what I got out of the experience.
dB Masters
I seriously can't believe that the slashherd is railing on wal-mart for this. I used to work at a wal-mart photo center and people would come in all the time, with prints, or digital photos that were obviously professional, and probably copyrighted.
;D
Most of the time they were on CDs that had the name of a business or professional, and sometimes a warning about copying them, and other times people would just be dumb enough to bring in original professional prints for scanning.
Even if it wasn't obvious by the packaging, you could usually tell by the guilt they wore on their faces, how they acted, how they would generally avoid you, and use the self serve kiosk. At that point if you asked them if they were professional, %80 of the time they would admit that they were, and try to get you to copy them anyway. If they insisted that they weren't, and it was an ambiguous case, then you could have them sign a _very_ small form, and wal-mart would print them anyway.
In this case, wal-mart is not acting as the copyright police, they are acting as a business who could probably be held liable for assisting people violate copyright law, and they have a right, and some people would say a responsibility to shareholders, to refuse your business.
Furthermore, the copyrights that wal-mart is helping to protect are very often owned by individuals or small business, that is normal people like you and me. People who depend on that protection to make a living, and not in a culturally exploitative kind of way.
Oh, and just so you know I am with you guys on one sentiment. Wal-Mart Sux!
if walborg is so concerned about this, they should have people provide their camera serial number, and if a suspicious image pops up, they can check the proprietary EXIF MakerNotes data for a corresponding serial number to that which was provided by the customer. Not all manufacturers use the Maker Notes to include serial numbers, as Maker Notes data isn't in the EXIF spec, but most of the big manufacturers do, and include a serial number field. It's not hackproof, but most people won't be hacking their exif makernotes data, and if their is legal action concerning a copyrighted work, walborg can say they logged the serial numbers from the exif maker notes data.
Why would a talented photographer even bother to go to Walgreens for print processing? Is sounds like an oxymoron. If you are talented enough photographer you know where to go for quality digital processing and it aint Walgreens.
This means I wont be able to order prints of the goatse.cx picture anymore ? Or only if I prove to the clerk beeing the model ?
MOD THE CHILD UP!
I can print the same quality prints that wal-mart does off of an $80 printer from the same wal-mart.
Solution 1 - For every location or event that I shoot, I purposefully take a few very poorly framed shots. Then I upload a few crappy shots along with the ones I want, and the clerk just prints them - end of story.
Solution 2 - place your your initials (very small) down in the corner of all your images (this looks pretty cool anyway), then print yourself out a quick "business card" with the initials, and your name. Then they will certainly tell you to screw off, but then you show them the card, and they probably call their manager, and you complain loudly, and you demand your pics for free, etc, and the manager finally says "just print them" and the clerk remembers you forever, and lets you print whatever you want, or face your wrath.
(extra points: write a script to do your initials in a batch)(double extra points: send me a copy of said script)
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" -Jesus (John 14:6)
This story about photo copyright problems http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=528&e=1& u=/ap/20050617/ap_on_hi_te/photo_printing_frustrat ion has a link on the upper left to view the photo in question. Once you are viewing the photo, there on the right is a another link that asks, "print this photo?"
You are totally getting what you deserve in terms of service and quality. Wal-Mart processing (or, really, any non-dedicated film lab) is garbage and you should expect only to have negatives ruined (if printing from negs), prints of awful quality or suspect coloration, etc.
Spend the couple bucks more and get your photos professionally handled... you'll be pleasantly surprised.
I own everything I create (including my wedding, which I pay for and participate it, and create). The photographer does not 'own' the broadcast of this product (because he has not paid for its rights). I am paying him to document it, but it's not his creation.
It's not his creation, but if you sign a contract that says so, he does in fact own the "broadcast rights".
In the absence of a contract, the photographer could take pictures of the wedding party as they came into public space outside the church, but could not then make commercial use of those images (without seeking permission to do so). On the other hand, neither can you stop him photographing you, nor stop him from making noncommercial use of the photos. (The rules change a bit for "public figures", who have less control over their images. See "paparazzi".)
However, once you sign a contract that explicitly gives the photographer exclusive rights to commercially create and sell reproductions of your image as captured by him, your own right to do so is gone forever, unless and until you get him to give you back those rights , unless your locality has an unprecedented law to the contrary. In the US, at least, you do not have a Constitutional right to be protected from your own bad judgement in signing away your commercial rights (there are certain rights that are not legally recognized as subject to contract law, such as the right to the franchise).
Copyright of a photograph initially vests in the photographer, and has done for years and years and years. Rights to an image of a person initially vest in the person. Before a photo can be commercially copied, both those rights have to align.
-- Old Man Kensey
This is yet another business model rendered obsolete by improving technology.
When technology gets good enough and cheap enough that an amateur can do as well as a professional, guess what? You don't need professionals anymore. A bunch of them are going to have to find other work now. Not everyone is going to go out of business, and there will always be some work where a professionally trained expert is crucial, but not everyone who has professional training is going to be guaranteed a job until such time as they decide to retire. Tough shit to those who can't find work. Retrain yourself and figure something else out to do.
Wedding photography... WTF? It's my face, don't I own the copyright to my own image? This has always been bullshit. I should be able to commission the photography as a "work for hire" and retain all copyright to the images. The photographer can be paid for his time and sent on a walk as soon as I have the negatives. Any other business arrangement is bullshit.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You DO get the negatives when shooting digital... with a DSLR. Shoot RAW; keep *these* as negative. You will have to export them as JPEG anyway to get them to any customer of yours, or even get them printed at the local shop.
But you can still prove fairly easily that you have the RAW files... Just put them on the same CD/CF that you bring at the shop should work...
The Walmart photo Nazi's don't deserve anyone's busness when they have an guilty until proven innocent attitude.
No pictures for you!
Support your local stores, not the big conglomerates.
While its clearly not foolproof, it would seem that demonstrating you have the equipment indicated in the EXIF header, provided your camera writes it, should be sufficient enough to conveince them it is unlikely you are trying to perform copyright infringement.
It's coming down to evolve or die.
Many photogs will die. Many have evolved. A lot of photographers have gone one of two ways:
1. Release the originals after a set date. Most prints from a wedding are going to be sold in the first 6 months to a year, so the photographer retains the originals and the rights for this period. Once it lapses, he forks over the stuff so you can do it yourself.
2. Charge for time and release the originals immediately. Don't expect to sell prints, jack up prices accordingly, voila.
Photographers who are still back on the old model are going to be screwed in the very near future. Once in a while I consider getting into wedding photography, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the codger hoarding your negatives until the hereafter while everyone around me is evolving with the market.
My Dad, brother in law, and I are all hoby photographers, as are a few other friends of mine. After lots of search for a film photographer that would let us have the neg's and not charge an arm, leg, and first born child we decided it would be best to do photography our selves. My wife and I purchased a case of profisional film and gave every one a bunch. The photos came out great, lots of diffrent ideas, and some very fun stuff. Now when ever a close friend gets maried we normaly do swarm photogrophy.
We are the Borg...
So yeah, Walmart are being a very responsible corporation and they are looking out for their pals, other corporations. You don't think they give a shit about you, the individual, do you?
I've had two incidents of reproduction negatives *lost*, forever condemning the print to obscurity. Unless, what I've come to the conclusion, the quality shots are being pilphered for gain.
One was truly, once-in-a-lifetime, moment in Mexico with the flight of a seagull motion-blurred which gave the print a living moment quality.
I never print anywhere but a professional house, ever since.
What about watermarking the version you give to WalMart? What about cropping it a little bit? That way when they reproduce it and use your image, you can break out the bigger or unwatermarked version.
Jeez, think for 2 seconds before you post...
I did the linked portrait session at home with some alien bee strobes & a collapsable background.
I imported them into iPhoto, and used their photo service to order 4x6s, 5x7s, and 8x10s.
I got a nice email about how it looked like I was reproducing a pro's prints, to which I was amused because I thought they didn't look that amazing but I digress.
I had to sign a simple release form, fax it in, and I got my prints.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I had been boycotting WM for years, but I was in a pinch to print out a few photos and my sister had convinced me that WM made good prints cheap. I decided to give it a whirl. First, I stood around like an idiot for 10 minutes for my 5 prints (5 different pics) while the machine said "Processing". After I finally complained and the clerk noticed that it was out of paper. Mind you, if the fscking machine had told me that it was out of paper I could have done something about it.
When I finally get the prints they need to be cut (they printed with about a 1.5" margin). I hand them to the clerk to cut them and he then asks me if I own the copyright to these pics.
I give a surprised, "Yes."
Clerk: Can you prove that you own the copyright.
Me: No. (Looking at him as though he'd asked me for an aardvark)
Clerk: Then I can't sell this pictures to you.
Me: Look, I took the pictures, I have the files. I own the copyright. How could I possible "prove" to you that the copyright is mine?
Clerk: I can't sell you the pics unless you can prove that you have the copyright.
Me: (very annoyed rant about asking for something I can't possibly provide) You know what, piss off! I want to see you shread the whole lot.
I went and complained to the manager who offered to get me my prints, but I told her that I didn't want to do anymore business with them.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
As a professional photographer, it astounds me that we go on-site, set up props, lighting, and pose the person/place/thing and everyone asks if they can step in behind us and take pictures with their point-and-shoot or camera phone.
We always say yes, but I suppose this means that some of those people won't be able to print the pictures that they took using our set-up.
Not that it matters to me, because if I'm shooting a picture, I'm paid before I ever click the shutter.
Reprint revenue is nice, but it has started to become a trend where we release the negative/raw files to the customer after one year of holding reprint rights, because that also releases us from storage liability. Now it looks like they won't even be able to print the released images at walamat.
HAHA!
Costco is more than happy to take your semi-pro or pro shots and print them. In fact, they specifically do things to cater to pro-sumers and independent professional photographers: each and every one of Costco's digital printers are profiled every six months. The profiles are made available on the web at Dry Creek Photo so you can have a completely colour-managed workflow.
The best part is the price :) Costco's largest size, 12"x18", is only $2.99 a copy, and they look stunning. I have six hanging in my office right now and people are shocked when I tell them where they were printed.
Neil
Our wedding photog had a similar arrangement as above. He shot the pictures, if there were some he really liked, he wanted copies for his display stuff, but the negatives were ours. His paperwork was very thorough including receipt of payment, copyright release, and contact information to reach him. The copyright info even says in big letters "POSSESOR HAS ALL COPYRIGHT TO THESE PHOTOS!" Seems he's been through this before.
Apparently, the teenage clerk at Walgreens is not only illiterate, but a little power hungry. My wife dropped off our negative to get copies made. A ton of them. The first printing for all of our friends and family. She spoke with an older clerk when she dropped them off. Yeah no problem we'll take extra special care of them.
Fast forward 7 hours. She goes to pick up the pictures. A whole box of stuff. This pinhead twit teenager sees the word "COPYRIGHT" on the paperwork, tells my wife not only can she not have the pictures (about 100 pics printed), but has the gall to say "You can't have the negatives back either. We can only release them to the owner. These are stolen as far as we know."
Only after getting the manager of the store involved did she get the negatives back, with 50% off her photos, and we never did see the snotty little brat in there again.
Point being, some people in the world need to exercise power in their own little corner of humanity. It makes them feel good. That's essentially what the young clerk did. Now she can exercise her power at the McDonalds drive thru instead.
Put yourself in their shoes. You've just taken an amazing picture, and you want to make copies to put in an album, on your wall, etc. You go to WalMart (first mistake, but I digress) to get your pictures printed. They tell you they won't print them, because it looks too good. You stand there and argue with them for a minute or two, and if they still refuse, what do you do?
Do you:
A) Spend over an hour running home and finding and filling out a generic copyright release online (or finding other proof), then head back to WalMart to give them your business?
-or-
B) Take your business elsewhere, like a rational human being would.
If you're like all but one of the people mentioned in these articles (one lady went home and printed it out on her home printer instead), you probably picked option A, like an idiot. If you had half a brain, you picked option B. Taking your business elsewhere doesn't necessarily mean going to another WalMart location, or a Target or some other megachain. It could also mean going online and getting a better print for less money.
Does anybody have a spine anymore? Why don't people stand up to companies who treat them like second class citizens and take their business elsewhere?
When I read this article the 2 main things that jumped out at me.
Copyright law requires photo labs to be on the lookout for portraits and other professional work that should not be duplicated without a photographer's permission.
"We've got a law written back in the 1970s and we're trying to apply 2005 conditions to it,"
Doesn't this same like the same hackneyed argument of the RIAA? Thing is in this case, you have *WALMART* employees (and the like) being the copyright police. I certainly do not trust your local "fill the machine with the stuff from the big plastic jug" photo printer store to have *any* training on how to determine the origin of *any* picture professional, amateur, or one taken by scruffy the dog.
Secondly, the guy quoted seems to imply there should be some change to the law. Exactly what does he think should be made? That all personal picture should look like crap? So we can have the "professional photographers lifetime employment act"? Perhaps High quality cameras should have a mandatory training and licensing test before you can use them safely, like guns do... oh wait guns dont have that..... Perhaps they should stop giving out digital files? Perhaps photoshop should be illegal.
If these photographers can sue a 3rd party for making prints,
who else could they sue? The kid pressing the buttons and filling the machine? The guys that make the machines right? They facilitating copyright violation. Do you recall some of the rhetoric out of the RIAA during piracy busts? 'high speed burners are the equivalent of 40 regular cd burners!'
What will happen walmart is sued for denying making prints to a copyright holder.
Hey heres a great idea! Lets stop splatter-kicking ppl who aren't at fault. Go after the ppl who do the solicitation of copyright violation.
lol..my point exactlee
There's no well-supported digital equivalent to a negative (as reasonable proof of ownership), so retailers are defensively resorting to near paranoia to stay out of court."
Actually there IS a way.
1: camera makers burn a unique serial number at least 1024 bits long into the camera's firmware.
2: camera writes this serial number into each image file as a tag field.
3: Bring your camera along with your files, camera has a menu on the lcd to display the serial number.
4: if the number on the camera matches the number in the tag field on the file, then it must be your camera that took the pictures.
5: Bring the original camera media NOT a CD
6: media also would have a serial number and the camera would record this number into an eeprom. Camera would keep track of last 'n' media serial numbers used.
7: second proof is now the camera showing that the media in question was actually in the camera.
OK existing hw doesn't comply. Also it isn't foolproof (can be faked) but would be beyond the average camera user's ability to hack.
Also the store could have the user sign a legal document which would make the customer legally responsible for any copyright violation. IANAL, but surly a good shyster could write an iron-clad countract that would hold up in a court of law.
Just refuse to show any ID. Always.
Only go to Wall Mart to print pictures if your friends and family are really ugly.
the concept of a 'prefessional' photographer is a joke anyway. GET A REAL JOB
Then again.
Suppose I take a picture and send it to Wal-Mart (or wherever) to get it developed.
A few days later I walk in and they have the picture there, but won't give it to me.
That seems like a HUGE vulnerability to lawsuit there.
They have MY picture there, and won't give it to me?
There's got to be some greedy lawyer that could make a bundle from that kind of situation.
Even suppose that they say that it isn't mine, 'cause they won't sell it to me.
Then they've made an unauthorized copy of my photo, since I didn't authorize them to make any copies that weren't for me.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
They aren't suing Wal-Mart to protect their copyright, they're suing Wal-Mart because it has deep pockets.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
When I visit the Wal*Mart in Amherst, New Hampshire, or the one near Troy, New York, I can print my data files without supervision. I feed my CD-R or SD card to a magic box, interact with it through its screen, and in a few minutes I have 4 by 6 or 8 by 10 prints. No Wal*Mart employee has an opportunity to reject my pictures because they are "too good."
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
And once again I have to say that only the professional wanna-bes in these areas will be killed off. Those with true talent and are good at what they do will still be around for a long, long time.
Printing photographs onto Tshirts, once a screen printing domain of professionals, now anybody can do that too.
The average T-shirt making material is crap, that's why the general public can affort it. Ten sheets for $15 from an ink-jet? Yeah, that's real quality. (Not.) Silk-screening, embroidering, and so forth is still not in the realm of the normal consumer or hobbyist.
You argument focuses too much on the mechanisms. That's not where the talent of professional photographers lies. I don't care how technology advances or how easy it is to do certain things. Technology will NEVER be able to replace the intuition and the talent that genuine photographers have. So the wanna-bes have two choices: find another line of work or improve themselves so that they're better than the average, at-home crowd. If they do niether, then my only response when they die off is "Good!"
By your line of thinking, anyone with a PC and Maya will create an incredible, virtual world that will make everyone "ooh" and "aah"; anyone with a PC and a DVD authoring package will make Hollywood-quality DVDs; anyone with a PC and Cakewalk will be the next DJ phenom. None of these can ever be if the person doesn't have the talent, intuition, and desire to use those tools effectively. And, no, cropping and red-eye reduction do not qualify as "talent", "intuition", or "desire".
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I typically take a bunch of pictures at weddings -- and I have taken to putting them onto a CD and giving them to the happy couple after the event. This is a real treat for them as they get the pictures to do with what they want. In one case of a coworker, he uses one of my images as his desktop background. It gives me a kick every time I see it.
My advice is to do this for your friends as well. They will thank you for it (especially if their photographer is old-school).
- pay $600+ for the photo shoot (about 200-300 pictures)
- if you purchase $1500 total merchandise (including photo shoot) you can purchase the digital originals on CD for $200 - hi and low res
So he still makes his money to live off of, but you're not required to purchase all your prints from him. He also retains the right to use the photos in other advertising and stuff, but on the CDs themselves the label has a release printed on it that states the CD owner has permission to make unlimited prints.Then again, he said even he was having Wal-Mart and the like turning him away even though he WAS the copyright holder!
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
How the HELL is that possibly FLAMEBAIT?! What did the parent do? Piss someone off who thinks that he's awesome because he can snap-and-print? Whoever modded that as "flamebait" needs to be modded as "-5 fscking clueless." Go ahead! Mod this down! It will only prove that I and the parent are right! Slashdot needs to stop giving mod points to clueless, arrogant egomaniacs.
I put as solid an end to that nonsense as I could, saying, "Tracing pictures is a great way to learn how to draw, so do it whenever you feel like it and don't worry about it. Nobody with a clean brain is going to care if you hang a drawing of Sponge Bob on your fridge, and if they do, it's their problem. Geez."
Then I gave a speech about how fear and over-control are the death of creativity, and that the world is currently insane, and not to fall for other people's psychological issues. Draw whatever you want. Sheesh.
The thing that really stood out was how the moronic laws and idiot debates are actually taken to heart by children and burned into their brains as Right and Wrong in the same way that "Looking Both Ways Before You Cross The Street" is burned in. Or, "Obey Authority Even If It's Totally, Obviously Insane".
Bavarian Fire Drills are for chumps.
-FL
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
How about a photo contest, using Wal-Mart (or pick your own local bone-headed photo printer) as the unwitting judge. Everybody submits a set of photos, and the winner is the one with the most rejects "for professionalism".
:-)
Beauty of it is - winner pays the least (ideally, nothing). If they don't give you the prints, they'll have to eat the cost of the printing.
Now, the snot-nosed clerks at the store aren't going to be the best judges of artistic merit in the world. But if you send the same sets to several different outfits, you'll probably get a good average weighting. So the winner is the one with the lowest number of successful prints across several *Marts...
See... any instance of corporate stupidity may be turned into a fun social activity, with a little thought
The studios I've seen pay the photographers up to $9.something an hour. These people have no contracts and no copyrights to the product.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
If we give a customer .jpg's of the images they may do what they want with them. That is giving them the rights, full rights if though they try to take a print and scan it then is usually when clerks will stop people. If you have the digital neg (the file) or the film neg then you can do what you like. And if you scan it at home and print at the store, the clerk should not do anything to stop you from printing.
Who the fuck does Walmart think they are? Someone needs to start killing Walmart decision makers.
I have a photo printer at home, and as they get more powerful and cheaper, I see this as becoming more and more of the norm. This would circumvent this draconian kind of big brother style of business. How can someone making >15k$ (an avg 'full-time' yearly wage at Wal-mart) be expected to police customers snapshots?
bo
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
I have a box which will expose film from digital images. Made by Matrix, it cost me $50 on eBay and works off a $29 National Instruments GPIB board. Does over 12 megapixels natively. Show up with an undeveloped roll of film, ask them to develop and print one set, then when you pick it up order enlargements and I'll bet you never run into any problems whatsoever. I haven't.
How long until we have mag-strip backed prints with the digital version encoded in the mag-strip?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Maybe it's time to spilt the job up into, consultation fees, charging for taking photographs, and touching the photos up..
This sound almost exactly the same as the story that MP/RIAA come up with when their talking about p2p networks and DRM.
Don't forget, there are lots of other events that don't happen on a Sunday but people want professional pictures of, e.g. school photos, sports teams, parties, bar mitzvah, christenings.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The $190 HP photo-printer that I just got mom, makes prints *almost* indistingishable from the photos we've got from Wal-Mart, CVS etc. The same prints are much better that then prints from her Polaroid.
Just make sure you don't use the HP paper, we had much better luck with Canon.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Why would a photo developer be held responsible for what their customers are getting prints of? Unless the employees are knowingly violating copyright (IE - they 100% know that the photo is not yours), what do they have to fear?
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
1. Get a decent Inkjet printer with some high-quality glossy paper. 2. Scan. 3. Print. 4. Give the proverbial finger to the people who are trying to own or restrict the documentation of a part of YOUR life.
in the US.
The nede to prove your innocent. SOmething that is often impossible to do.
If a photographer finds someone has reprinted a work they own the copyright, they nede to go after the person who did it, not the place it happened at.
Certian;y they would use the store documentds as EVIDENCE of copyright infringement, but it is not the stores fault.
So now people have to prove there are innocent to some store clerk. Great.
OAN, when you get photos taken, do not agree to release the copyright. Make it so you own it. If the photographer want to pay a dollar to show copies for their book for a year. Fine let them.
There are photographers that will do that., and more people need to start demanding that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The only problem with EXIF is that touching up the photo in photoshop will remove it.
However the original unedited photo could still be shown as "proof" that you hold the copyright.
the cost of the policy is not small. .
it cost them oney everytimne a clerk has to take time to devide if it is copyrighted. It cost money when people leave the store, it costs money due to loss of sales, etc . .
Bed decision not to fight this.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"when you get photos taken, do not agree to release the copyright"
I think you mean the other way around. Unless otherwise specified, the photographer has the rights to his work. You can though demand that as part of the deal, you get the rights to the work. Be default, it's theirs.
be careful! you're going to get modded as "flamebait" for saying exactly what a previous poster said earlier in this thread! here's hoping that you don't bruise the ego of some talentless mod!
So the store tells you they won't print your photos, even suggesting (not in so many words) that their reason is that you might be a thief.
If they think this is okay, where does it stop? Will they refuse to change your watch battery unless you can prove you didn't steal it? Or repair the clasp on your necklace? Or change the oil in your car?
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
Wow, thanks for pointing out that Adorama has a print service. It looks like a bargain. 8x10s are 1/4 the price of my local camera shop and 1/2 the price of my local discount/drug stores. The web interface shows you how the pictures will be auto-cropped, and lets the customer override. And it understands .tif files! Outstanding. I placed an order just now. Even including the shipping, two 8x10s and two 5x7s are under US$10, less than a pair of 5x7s alone at my local camera shop.
Now I am a tiny bit torn, because I do think it's important to support local businesses and the personal, expert service they can provide. But the guys at the local camera shop aren't expert enough to justify that kind of price hike.
The problem isn't who retains copyright: under the law, the PHOTOGRAPHER owns the copyright UNLESS they are a bona-fide employee ("work made for hire" does not apply to contractors) OR you make them sign a contract that transfers copyright to you. This is also true of other creative works made by contractors, such as software.
This is the law, and as a part-time professional photographer (and a full-time software developer), I have no problem with it.
The problem is that most pro photographers are so entrenched in the old business model of cheap fees + expensive prints that they are having to play "copyright cop" to make money.
Those of us with a little sense, however, have a different business model: you pay for the time, I retain copyright, but you get the originals on CD *and* a printed release to make as many prints as you wish (I also include a shorter release in the EXIF copyright).
I see this as a *value-added* service. For about the same total price as a traditional pro, my customers get CD/DVD with final JPEGs cropped for various print sizes and even versions specifically created for online use (email, web upload, wallpaper, IM icons, etc.). I include every good shot taken, they don't have to pick and choose which ones they want to keep.
This resizing/cropping work is 90% batch-scripted on my side, but it ensures that every digital copy that they share or print has the best possible quality and is a free advertisement for me.
This business model works for family photography much better than it would for, say, music or movies because the audience for any *particular* photograph is generally limited to the family/friends of the photographed subjects, and yet the chance of any of that limited audience actually ordering prints is relatively small.
I'm interested in doing something similar.
Do tell!
Regards,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Hi -
This issue is not a big deal - simply don't go to Wal-Mart.
What's the big deal? Just go to their electronics section and pick up one of those fancy photo printers and a pack of paper. They probably even have the kind that don't need a computer, if you're the stupid/old sort who can't handle complex technology. Either way, they get your money and you get your pictures. It doesn't really make a difference.
Firstly, professional photographers don't release full-resolution versions of their photographs unless they want their clients to be able to make prints from them. Or they include watermarks. Generally, you do a gig, you offer proofs, and you sell the prints. If you transfer the rights, you offer full-resolution digital images. But you're transferring the rights.
Secondly, there is such thing as a digital negative. Professional photographers (at least, any who are worth a damn, which is included in my definition of "professional") generally shoot in raw format, which virtually all "pro" cameras support these days, and what they wind up with is an uninterpolated image of the CCD, which they _never_ give out to anyone. It's the source. It's the digital negative. Sure, you could try reversing the process, but you most likely won't get the same original image, and it would be a difficult process to perform (i don't believe any software exists for it today). Honestly, there isn't a lot of difference with film, either, since one can create a negative from a print. Or a print from a print. And you don't see studios getting sued because they copied and retouched mom's 30-year-old wedding photo. It's like suing plextor for creating a dvd burner that some random joe uses to pirate movies.
I'm not saying that shops aren't getting sued by prick photographers who feel that maybe they can make a buck this way, since talent isn't working out for them, but frankly, i'm appalled that these deep-pocketed companies aren't putting up more of a fight.
but Ofoto/KEG will delete your pictures unless you order once every six months, or maybe its once a year.
Sure, one $0.29 print is cheap, but what if you forget?
Shutterfly, on the other hand, doesn't have such requirements, and won't delete your pictures.
.. not good for deed recoreds and such.
i already have all that stuff.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
But then again, I'm a graphic designer and I use MS Paint.
Nice. Look at the other responses in this thread that support the position of the parent. They get insightful; yet the parent gets modded down as flamebait. Unbelievable. Then again, this is Slashdot. I guess that it is believable. Putting a camera in your hands does not mean that you'll automatically be able to convey emotion or meaning out of whatever you're pointing the camera at. The mod with the flamebait is a clueless moron.
Firstly, it's your decision whether you sign the agreement with the photog that states that they hold the copyright. If you disagree with their terms, find a different photog.
Typically you should see the price per photo vary depending on several factors, including whether or not the photog retains the rights. If the photog doesn't retain rights, you'll probably pay a big sitting fee (or you'll be required to buy X$ of photos).
If there's no minimum purchase and the sitting fee is small, then chances are good the photog will retain the rights.
Some photogs will sell you a CD of the images for a price (sometimes small $, sometimes large$ ).
As for dealing with WalMart and Sams, just go present reasonable proof to them that you're a professional photographer and they'll put you in a file so you don't have to fight them next time.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
...where we have a whole array of prosumer digital cameras with which you'll be able to shoot professional looking pictures!
Although, if you ever want us to print your pictures, you'll probably want to buy this shitty 2M camera here we keep behind the counter...
My wife is a professional photographer doing mostly weddings. Now that she is digital, she always provides the full resolution images to her clients. Before that, she always provided the negatives to her clients.
Her reasoning is that she enjoys photography and is paid well to make the photos as a service. Besides, she cannot bring herself to gouge people for what is one of the most important days of their life.
Being nice and reasonable is not stupid.
I see 57005 people
... for the lovely how-do-you-do.
it was a manager, not a clerk, just stand your ground with them, keep your voice low and tell them they have no legal grounds and they play the law card
so why do you equate "physisican" and "ML asshole"?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Most places have the equivalent of Wolf Camera or some local store. If Wal*Mart wants to be a pain about this, then don't use their service.
If the savings is worth the hassle, don't complain.
To paraphrase a sign I saw the other day: The lingering bitter taste of poor quality should outlast the momentary sweetness of a lower price.
Bear in mind that the photographer doesn't own all rights to the photos. The models and others appearing in the photos retain the rights over their own images. That's why photographers demand model releases before shooting. One thing I tend to do is make sure (by modifying it if neccesary) that the release specifies that my likeness can only be used for specific purposes. I figure fair's fair, if the photographer demands that I pay him for reproductions of his shots beyond what I originally paid for, I'm entitled to demand that he pay me for reproductions of my likeness outside what I originally contracted for. This bothers a suprising number of them, but if they don't want a fair deal I'll cheerfully take my business elsewhere.
I am one of those "hold outs" who still actively uses the wet darkroom. I shoot large format, sheet film. There's still a lot of us out there, in fact, 4x5 and larger sheet film seems to be undergoing a bit of a revivial, and grows stronger everyday the more people go digital. I suppose that's another subject.
:)
I use digital too, but my point is I have taken a lot of "attitude" over the past few years from people who have left film and gone totally digital. Talking to some digital photographers is a bit like talking to a convert to a new religion - in thier opinion, everyone should convert over to the "new god" or be left behind.
As I use both, I really don't care either way what other people use. Does that make me a "photographic agnostic" ?
For what it is worth, it's easier for me to buy parts for my 30 year old enlarger than it is to find memory cards for my 4 year old digital camera. Considering that most photo quality printers grow obsolete within 3-4 years, at least for professional & commercial use (I do desktop publishing too, so experience speaking here), maybe that is why people are having thier images printed instead of doing it themselves - it's cheaper in the long run. Back in the "old days" when somebody bought an enalrger & darkroom equipment, barring accident, fire or negligent use, darkroom gear would last you nearly a lifetime. You could afford top of the line pro gear becasue you could recover your cost over a 10 or even a 20 or 30 year period. With digital, you have to recover your equipment costs in 3-4 years on average.
So it's cheaper for many people to have prints done somewhere like Wal-Mart. At least, I look long and hard at the cost of operating my 4 HP laserjets (both color & B&W printers), and it's starting to look that way to me some days. Ergo, the problem we see.
Anyhow, my point is, I think about all those people over the past few years who seem to have enjoyed just a little too much expounding the virtues of digital over film, belittling my use of film, then I read this story.
Maybe it's a bit of Karma come back to haunt some people for past attitude. At least in my darkroom, I have freedom to do my own thing.
OK, you're speaking from ignorance, so I'll go easy on you. Ignorance is curable.
No one should expect to hire anyone to do a job then force that person to work in conditions that will cause the final product to be sub-standard. This is especially true when that final product will be seen by other potential customers and will directly influence the continuation of business.
A professional photographer produces photos for you that you show your friends. If they're good, you're excited and brag on the photog. The friends are impressed. The photog gets more bookings and makes more money. If the photos are bad, you tell all your friends the photog is no good and no word-of-mouth referrals happen. In fact, just the opposite happens. One pissed-off bride in a medium-size town can literally put a wedding photographer out of business if she works very hard at telling everyone she comes in contact with that the photogs work is crap. The continued livelihood of photographers rests directly on their ability to put out on the street only the very best work they can possibly do.
In that light, understand the photographers position. The photographer sets up lights, sets up poses, talks you into proper facial expressions, and eventually produces that perfect moment to capture. As he's pressing the shutter release, your new father-in-law jumps in front of him and snaps five quick ones with his new whizbang point-n-shoot, then starts ordering people into different poses. The photographer will do what he can to set it back up, but a moment lost is just lost. The quality of the final product will suffer.
Consider, too, the "altar return," that time when the wedding party goes back to the church, between the ceremony and the reception, to take pictures. A good pro, doing his job, can get it over with in 15 minutes. Toss in a bunch of relatives crying "Can I get a shot of that?" or just jumping in and what do you have? An altar return that lasts an hour, pissing off all your guests waiting at the reception and resulting in substandard photos, to boot.
When I was a professional wedding photographer, I learned these lessons fast, fast, fast. It took just two weddings for me to establish my rules. You want good photos? Then you have to allow me to work in an environment that doesn't ensure I fail. Specifically, I provided nicely printed cards for people to enclose with their invitations that tactfully told people they were not allowed to bring cameras to the wedding. I also had a deal with the couple - they got one warning. If someone took a photo, I would find the enforcer (often the father of the bride who was paying for everything and therefore had a vested interest in making sure no one screwed with the photographer) who had been designated beforehand by the happy couple and report the problem. If another photo was taken, I walked out. They lost their deposit. No third strike allowed. By adopting these rules, I was able to get into each little scenario, quickly do my job, and then instantly melt into the background until I was needed again. I was able to turn out primo work quickly and unobtrusively without (I can't emphasize enough the importance of this) creating the impression among all the guests that I was trying to control the proceedings. It was simply the case that no "situations" ever arose that I had to control since I wasn't competing for position and time with a bunch of snapshooters. My clients were all pleased as punch.
(Have you ever attended a wedding where it seemed the photographer thought the definition of "wedding" was "a gathering for the purpose of taking pictures"? I am convinced those guys are so obnoxious because they can't bring themselves to force the B&G to let them work in reasonable conditions. And some, well, are just primadonnas, but that's a whole 'no
Are bloggers journalists? Are websites really "news"? Are actors politicians? With cheap mobile multimedia "phones", and cheap multimedia workstations, anyone can get quality and distribution that competes with the "professionals". And with online payments among emerging business infrastructures, even getting paid is no longer unique to "professionals". We see it in every aspect of our mediasphere.
When the printing press became a cheap commodity, along with widespread literacy and global shipping, mass media consumption transformed an unexpecting world. Now, mobile multimedia production, decentralized distribution, and global infotainvert markets transform an unexpecting world with mass media production. These "professionals" have been getting too much authority for a long time, with only superior technology and privileged distribution to their credit. Let the good times roll!
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson
--
make install -not war
I've been considering investing in a decent digital camera and some backdrops so I can take pictures of my kids and do what I want with them (reprint, put online, email to grandma, etc.) without having to pay ruinous fees. I'm sure the professional photographers couldn't care less that their abuse of the law prevents would-be photographers from finding an alternative to their services. (Why not just avoid taking pictures altogether? Ask my wife. ;)
With excellent quality inkjet printers selling for $100-200 perhaps those affected should do it themselves. The time it takes is not that great and there is lots of advise available for beginners online. (I've even got a few tips on my web site - end plug)
-- Robert D Feinman Landscapes, Panoramas, Photoshop Tips and Musings on Society
At one point in time, I was an avid amateur photographer- as in attempting to do the artistic style of photography. Saying no monochrome printing is a crock of crap- I would have a problem printing anything artistic that I'd tried with a pro-grade camera. So would my wife, who currently DOES do all kinds of shots and regularly gets spectacular shots with her measly 4Mp camera. I can't imagine what they'd do to the both of us with 8Mp prints.
Even in a case-by-case basis, it's an issue.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'm always a bit confused by this sort of sentiment.
My local walmart (though i've never had digital prints done there) has new fuji equipment and uses fuji xtal archive paper. Virtually the same set up that most pro places have, yet at 1/4 of the price.
If things aren't urgent you can use walmart and try again if the results are poor. Nowadays i've found the standard of digital prints to be excellent no matter where you go.
Every photo is automatically copyrighted to the photographer, and the Copyrights can be transferred only in writing. Stating this simple fact makes the issue much clearer.
If someone takes a photo and gives you a copy, you can legally reproduce it only if they also give you written permission (with a few exceptions, such as very old photos). Whether the photo was taken by a professional or amateur does not matter. When you are the photographer or have written permission, a vendor can legally do anything you ask them to do with the photo. Vendors can cover themselves legally by having you sign a form stating that you are the photographer or have written permission. They also need to avoid being negligent, such as reproducing something marked "Copyright 2005 XYZ Studios", for example, without some sort of documentation.
The photo store were I worked briefly (Ritz), doing photo restorations and prints, required customers to sign such a form. We only questioned photos that clearly appeared not to be taken by the customer (like school photos or photos with "XYZ Studios" printed on them), where we would expect to see written permission from the photographer or studio. Some studios will provide customers written permission at no charge when asked.
Even with a clear and sensible policy, Copyright issues will confuse people. A stupid non-policy like "We can't print photos that look too good", is guaranteed to cause lots of confusion and frustration.
Did anyone really need another reason not to patronize Wal-mart?
I did.... sure, mostly 4 x 6,but you can get the 8 x 11 version also.... (HI-TI ?). it's been great, I dont rely on Wal-mart anymore... (but they were decent prints...)
....
.02 worth....
Also, I don't like the online folks that say by using their service, they can use the photo's how they wish and without compensation
And yes, I have scanned old photo's and printed them... At home.
Just my
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Still, it was better than having to tell some big-ego'ed sales ass that they would have to wait an extra two days for their precious business cards.
//Currently trying to convince management in my company to drop $200 on a 4x6 dye-sub photo printer for just such occasions...
You can get a subscription to deviantart and then upload your images and buy high quality prints from the print service (If your photos are really that good other people may want them as well; ie. be willing to pay for them).
This is a problem that my mom's been freaking out over the past few years. Granted, I don't consider Kmart to be the best place to have professional pictures of your kids made, but the fact that they retain the copyrights to the images is absurd. I'm 30 - do the negatives for the poor quality prints we have still even exist?! My Photoshop abilities are probably in the intermediate-advanced range and I haven't been able to fix the images to my liking. Even if I could, wouldn't it technically be illegal for me to send them to Ofoto for more prints? I think we ought to start a campaign against Kmart to try to get *our* negatives back! If anyone has looked into this, I'd be interested in hearing about your success or failure. Hey. Kmart headquarters are only 20 minutes from me and they didn't take my keys when I was doing contract work for them a while back. Let's just go get 'em! :o) jk
One thing I'd like to know - is the yellowing and general discoloration of the prints we have a result of the printing process or the media it's printed on? In other words, would the negatives be in any better shape that what we have?
Thanks.
Aaron
I was in Wal*Mart in Northwest Oklahoma City. I had my memory stick in my hand and had already printed a few photos on the Kodak express print system they had when the lady, nicely, told me "These photos look like professional Photos. I'll need a release before you can purchase them."
The photos in question where 100+ years old. Old family photos that I had carefully copied with my digital camera.
I told the lady what they where and she insisted I would need a release. I ask "How can I get a release from a photographer that is dead for photos that the copyright ran out on years ago?"
She then told me I could get a release from a local professional photographer. I ask her why a they would do that if they are not their photos?
She then said "You need a release." I replied "How exactly do I do that? Do you have a form?"
"Yes" she replied "or you can get it on letterhead".
What the lady didn't know was I was a professional Photographer for many years. So I ask here for her form. She have me a nice pamphlet and I started filling it out. She said "You can't fill that out, a proffessional need to fill it out."
I then informed her I was a Professional Photographer. She smiled and said "I can't take your order."
I then ask for the store manager. It took some time but he did show and I she and I both told him the storie.
He told here to take my order and I finished filling out the form.
The only thing required on the form was my name and a signture. They did not verify it.
I printed my pictures.
My wife was very upset with me for doing this. However my father (an lawer) laffed.
Have someone give you a buck for a photo. You too are then a profossional photographer.
mark
There are 10 type of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
If Wallmart doesn't want your business, tell them to fuck off and die. There are plenty of other places perfectly willing to provide you the prints you want. And most of them probably spend more time and money maintaining and calibratin gthe machines. Find your local mom and pop photoprinter and ask them to do the prints, as long as you state that you have the rights, they will print, provided there is no clear indication of some professional photographer possesing the rights. At least that's the way I always handled it. I've worked at two, and they both competed on quality, because they couldn't compete on price. The photo techs would QC each and every photo, making sure that the color and density were as good as they could be. You don't find that kind of service at Wallmart where good enough gets a dollar.
As for those two slashdotters who are getting married in the near future, buy the negatives (or digital images)from the photographer. Write your own contract and make him or her sign it. You'll probably have to pay more, but thems the brakes.
Nice Marmot
we paid a bit extra to get the release from the photographer for our pictures. We have a letter that we keep in the safe in case anyone gives us grief. Funny thing is that I could just as easily type up a fake release and take it with me.
It's just like checking signatures on the back of credit cards. It's a CYA thing for the vendor.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
The pictures I usually want to print look good, good lighting, composition, etc. In other words, they look professional. If they're crummy, why bother printing them?
To make matters worse, you don't need a license to buy genuine professional camera gear. All you need is money. My fanciest digital is a prosumer job (Canon Digital Rebel), while I own two old but genuine honest-to-goodness professional film cameras (Pentax 67, 4x5 Crown Graphic). If I use them amateurishly I get amateurish pictures. If I use them like a pro I get professional-looking pictures. Fortunately, I print them myself.
...laura who is routinely mistaken for a pro when she lugs a hefty tripod and Pelican case around
>>Professional photographers have successfully sued processors (like Wal-Mart) for reproducing their digital works without permission. And that practice of photographers owning a copyright on our pictures that WE PAID them to take should never have been allowed in the first place! We pay them for the professional ability to take a picture and (at one time) their equipment to develop the photos. It's damn time we insist that we are owners of said product that we paid for and not freaking renters!
Why are you shopping Wal-Mart if you don't want to get treated like shit?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
[Troll alert!]
All copies of all wedding photos should be free, just like all music and all movies, over any and all P2P networks. Screw the professional wedding photographers!
The guy we used his little company is called wink weddings, he used medium format (real film), and was happy to give us the negitives. His candids were awsoem, but his formals leave something to be desired. He was expensive, but his results were worth it. He took 17 rolls and and provided prints of all of them. But Aak about the negitives early and if they won't give them don't work that person. There are dozens of photographers and you will find one that will give the negitives, he may cost more up front but it will be worth it in the end
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Hving attended a couple weddings in the recent past, neither of which had such a draconian restriction, where the only thing said about other people weilding cameras was that they were not allowed to take pictures of the posed shots ... everything went really well, and really fast. The posed shots, obviously, are a problem.
But keeping all other cameras out of the wedding? Great, that makes your job a little easier, but guess what? The wedding's not about you, or your portfolio. It's about the bride and groom. They are the ones who miss out on the candids and unplanned photos, given that it is unlikely that you will have a dozen assistants getting reaction shots and moment shots of everyone present at the ceremony.
Personally, I'd walk away from any contract that says no one can bring a camera to the ceremony. It's not about you, not at all.
I will say that your post, and others like it do serve one purpose, and one that this forum badly needs. A dose of reality. The people who actually run businesses, instead of just talking about them. The people who actually practice law, instead of pretending they understand the law. The people who are the center of what this forum discusses daily need to start speaking out. Silence only propogates ignorance. Anyway thanks for your post. Bring your friends. Shine a light under this bushel basket.
Buy this and put them out of business.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I think some of the problem is that previously they didn't ask every person for a waiver when they came in to have their prints developed. If you think about it - regardless of who took the shots, when you take your photos to get devloped you are asking for a reproduction of a copyrighted work.
I agree that flat refusal is stupid, but I don't think that you should be able to get just anything printed, for the same reason my local print shop won't let me photocopy an entire book without providing some sort of proof that I'm allowed.
It's an invalid copyright premise I don't recognize. Assuming the photographer is not God, my image is not their intellectual property.
I just read a
The way my brain works is that everything I have paid for, I own. The automatic assignment of copyright for only particular acts of creation, as in photography, is protectionism.
Someone at McDonalds has labored night and day to create for me the Big Mac. It's a creation of immense intellect. But, after I've paid for it, I'll be damned if I need their permission to eat it.
If you look around the room you're sitting in, everything reflecting light is a product of someone's intellect. How often to you ask permission from the Standard company to take a dump? What do you mean it's "your" toilet? When was the last time you asked your automobile "creator" if you could fill your tank with petrol? Or the drywall creator if it was okay to put a nail in "his" drywall so you can hang a picture in your own home?
I'm not going to respect any law that says a photographer still owns an image that I've paid them to record. I'm Sorry. If they want to try and water mark it, I'll PhotoShop it out. If Walmart won't print it, I'll go somewhere else.
Maybe this is starting to sound trollish. But I'm starting to get sick and tired of this copyright protectionism and people claiming they still own something after I have paid them for it.
I understand photographers think that all I have paid for is one piece of paper when I pay them to record an image. Respectfully, I disagree. When I pay a photographer to record an image, I own the product I've paid for, the image I have paid them to record.
Just because that's how I think, doesn't necessarily make it right. But, because it's the way I think, I'll ignore any pseudo claim photographers make on a product they want me to pay for yet they still want to own.
I wish I could get away with that. I sell my car in the Autotrader and I'm paid $5000.00 but I still own it. I think the photographers should go for it so long as they can get away with it. But I think they're seeing that technology is making their antiquated business model, well... antiquated.
I recently got my photographs taken at Walmart. To my surprise on the corner was the copyright statement. I was surprised its my face, I am paying for it and now it is someones eleses property. What a retarded policy. I am glad back home we still have the system where a negative is handed over once business is done. What a shame, in the name of protecting IP this is the lowest point one can go.
Try this place instead:
http://www.mpix.com/
What if you could get something like a write-once memory stick with a few Kb of space on it that would hold something like a public or private key.. My thought was you get a key signed by a signer that timestamps the key and what not, and then you stick that key in the camera and it is somehow used to watermark/sign the images generated by the camera. Therefore having the key would be at least as much proof of ownership as having a negative. Perhaps chains like walmart could offer their own key signing kiosk, and if you lost your key you could get them replaced by showing your id or something.
;o)
Seems like that's the only way we'll get around this.. at least then if someone went through all the technical trouble (if possible) and faked a key or something theyd be the ones at risk for the lawsuit, not the store.
FWIW, I used to have problems with film cameras at stores when I tried to get prints even from negatives. Ultimately I had to make up a foobar letterhead for a fake studio and 'forge' our my own credentials for a fictitious company. Same thing works for getting copies of business keys made
This part illustrates your central problem. You assume that the conditions are because the photographer is just a dick who can't see that the bride and groom's special day is oh-so-much more important than the photographer's ability to make a living. That is, you're saying something like this: "I don't care if you can't make ends meet otherwise, you ought to do what I want because we're getting married!"
The fact that the bride and groom are getting married does not exempt them from having to deal professionally with the people they hire for the ceremony.
They are the ones who miss out on the candids and unplanned photos, given that it is unlikely that you will have a dozen assistants getting reaction shots and moment shots of everyone present at the ceremony.
But will those photos taken by relatives actually be good? Unlikely, really. Not that you may not like them, and even prefer them; people in general like to collect bad snapshots of themselves and their friends and relatives. If that's all you really want, well, don't hire a professional photographer, because that's not what they do. Even the documentary-style ones aim to take good pictures, using skills, techniques and equipment that few of your guests will have.
None of that justifies having the photographer own the copyright. Hiring an extremly skilled photographer should mean a higher bill, nothing more.
I used to work for a photography studio that dealt with a lot of these problems. The way that they got through all of this was by adding a sort of watermark to their photos. Each hard copy that was printed used a type of paper that had very soft yellow dots embeded in the picture. When the photo was copied or scanned those dots would overwhelm the photo. I wonder if that is possible with a digital medium.
No big problem, you can extract the info from the original to a text or xml file, and then merge it back after doing the edits. This can be automated, just needs a commandline utility capable of extracting the EXIF data to an external file, and then merging them back.
This can also be used for easy faking that the pics are from your camera.
"You're a behemoth corporation with more money than I can imagine."
To quote Han Solo, "I dunno... I can imagine an awful lot."
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
If they refuse to develop your photos , why not give them goatse to develop , as a punishment .
;-)
Next time you want to get something developed , you can just say , "Remember last time ? Now , my photos or your eyes !" .
If Walmart and other photo printers instituted this policy because of lawsuits from their printing professional looking prints perhaps a few suits for printing unprofessional looking copyrighted photos might make them re-evaluate their policy. If they have to fear a lawsuit for any photo they print, whether it "looks professional" or not, they may change the criteria for acceptable photos.
cuts both ways...
My wife and I have been digital shooters since 1998. We have thousands of pictures on CDs, DVDs, and hard drives. When we want a print, we print it on our own equipment. If you're smart enough to have jumped onto the digital photography bus, you might as take along a printer!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
LOL, the last think anyone needs on their wedding day is an employee who thinks they're running the shit. As if you don't have enough to worry about, imagine having your photographer come to you all in a huff and saying "They're taking PICTURES! Of *MY* WEDDING! I'm history."
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
"this asshole who seriously believes that the wedding is being put on for his benefit rather than, you know, that of you and your guests" Actually, it seems to be closer to: "You are paying me to perform a service, To perform that service optimally, you need to do X, Y & Z, The job will not be done correctly if you add "D" or remove "Z", So I am writing that into my contract. " The analogy can be compared to roadwork, you need to close the freeway for the roadwork to be done, they won't do it if you insist on driving through when they are working. Get a clue.
It is amazing that I can go to so much trouble to carefully explain my position only to have you come along and fail to comprehend it, completely. I have to give you credit, though. You did manage to pack more erroneous statements into fewer words than I've seen in a long time. Shall I give you a list?
I went to great pains to point out that photogs who act like the wedding is an occasion for taking pictures have got it all wrong. The whole point of my post was that by insisting on good working conditions, I would have a LESS negative impact on the wedding and make sure that the B&G stayed the focus rather than any friction between me and guests who insist on hindering my ability to do my job detracting from your special day.
Define shit. You hire me to do the photography. I expect to do the photography. If the photography==the shit, then I sure as hell expect to run the shit. OTOH, if you mean the whole event==the shit, then you obviously weren't listening. How many times do I have to say that by insisting on reasonable working conditions, I was able to get into and out of each scenario quickly and unobtrusively, thereby MINIMIZING my impact on the event? Face it, having a pro shoot your wedding is a distraction. There's no way around that. But a good one, like I was, will do everything in his power to make sure he distracts as little as possible from the proceedings.
Now you're just being stupid. Look again at the post you're replying to. I emphasized that I set up, well in advance, a contact for this purpose. That person is NEVER the bride or groom. One of the biggest advantages of insisting on good working conditions is that I NEVER had to bother the B&G with administrative details during the event.
Look, you may be Mr. Control Freak who can't stand to let his employees do their jobs without dictating how and why, but most of my clients hired me to "just handle it." And handle it, I did. They got great pictures. The attendees sometimes didn't even notice I was there. (I literally had dozens of brides give me feedback in the months after a wedding that there were people who looked at the wedding album and commented that they didn't even realize a photographer was at the wedding. I took that as a very high compliment.) Because there was nothing screwing up my gig, I never had to interfere with the flow of the event. I don't know how to explain this any more clearly: The only reason to insist on being the only shooter at the event is to make sure that competent work gets done without having to make an ass of myself toward the people who will otherwise be happy to jump in front of me as soon as I get a shot set up.
If you don't trust a particular photographer enough to give him full responsibility to do his job, find another shooter you do trust. Obviously, you have problems with competent employees who expect to be allowed to do their job without interference. That's cool. I know lots of jerks like that. Find someone who doesn't mind working under those conditions and stop whining about those of us who expect to act and be treated professionally.
You in the US, please tell the rest of us so that maybe we can avoid it - how on earth did you screw up your legal system to the extent that people who have absolutely no means whatsoever of identifying who holds the copyright on an image can be held liable for their customer's actions?
Beyond asking the customer to declare that the images do not infringe copyright, there is absolutely nothing that Walmart can reasonably be expected to do, other than to shut up shop.
Seriously, how did it get his bad?
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
Traditionally, wedding and portrait photographers sell you prints but the images are copyright to the photographer. Their business depends heavily on reprints. Now we have a trend where commercial photographers are trying to slip into that business niche with terms like "photojournalist wedding phtography". The trouble is that in *their* industry they typically sell the images - not the prints. They don't "get" the business they are encroaching upon and as such have wedding and portrait photographers pretty pissed.
This fits in with the Walmart story in that it has pressured the traditional photogs to take a pro-active stand to keep their business market from eroding further by making the printers gun-shy of printing someone elses work.
The PPA has been discussing these issues as of late...
regards,
Didn't think so.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Everyone that gets refused should sue the guy that started the madness.. its a Denial of Service attack they have launched!! I know Walmart can give a pretty low level of service at times.. but it is still service :)
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Try Costco next time. The machine does most of the work. The technician might do some tweaking, but they don't snoop into your personal business.
" There are some liabilities that you can't disclaim. "
Tell that to the people who write EULA text.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Just because they wrote it into their EULA doesn't mean a court will allow that portion of it to exist.
my bad ... www.ppa.com, and here's the link to the PPA's comments to the Copyright Office: http://www.ppa.com/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=428
(Slashdot wouldn't let me post yesterday, the idiot timer ...)