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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."
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.
..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
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.
... 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.
I went digital for my wedding, but the agreement with the photographer stipulated that I was the copyright holder and that the digital copies would be turned over to me. He was allowed to keep & make copies to promote his business, but he was not allowed to sell them.
I agree absolutely there is no reason to give up control of copyright to the pictures of your own wedding. We were able to turn around and make good quality prints for friends and relatives for pennies. Our total printing costs came to just over a hunderd dollars and we were able to send out prints along with every thank-you card.
Photographers deserve to be paid as a professional at a fair wage for their time and effort, but they dont deserve to 0wnZ3r your wedding.
We have the best government that money can buy.
I had something like that happen at a Quebec to Vermont border crossing. I was in my early 20's driving a brand new (gasp) SUV. The US BP agent was certain I couldn't own such a vehicle. She even hesitated to accept the temporary registration and title application as proof (I hadn't registered it yet).
There's too many busy-bodies and not enough MYOB sense.
Why would Martmart even be the victim of a lawsuit? They acted on a request of a customer, if the customer ordered a reprint of a copywritten work THEY should be the guilty party. Without an absolute way of verifying copyright status it's absurd to hold Martmart responsible.
I work in a professional photo lab and we saw this print your own trend in our professional clients. They would go out and buy some fancy-ass Epson printer and try to print their own work, only to discover what a righteous pain in the ass it can be. From color issues to problems with the original image (going to a "professional" photographer does NOT guarantee a "professional" image) there is a minefield of places that things can go wrong.
PS. Pro's are also getting there work printed at the discount places right along side you, and still trying to charge $10 or even $20 dollars for a 4x6 print they paid $0.29 for. They are well deserved to be in the list of over paid profession. Plus they have to be about the whiniest people I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.
I never said this. I was not here.
The problem people buying wedding photography don't usually get is that, for most photographers, there's only 1-2 weddings per week they can shoot. That's because almost everyone gets married on Saturday afternoon. That'd be OK, except that a wedding's worth of photos need to be gone through, touched up, organized, proofs or other comparison method made up, sent out, process the incoming order and otherwise take up much more time afterward, all tied to the wedding on Saturday. Not to mention spending time at bridal shows, meeting with potential customers that don't sign, working on marketing and the rest of the non-billable portions of running a business. Combine that with couples that want the photographer to shoot the rehersal dinner and rehersal itself the night before and want that included in the package and you're left having to charge an entire week's worth of labor and materials to a single customer.
Then, as a self-employed person, they need to effectively double the money they want to pay themselves to cover their own payroll taxes, unemployment insurance (mandatory in my state), etc. you have to charge the equivalent of $40/hour, just to make $40,000. But, almost no one gets married in Nov-March, so you have to compress it further if you want to make your living doing just weddings. Throw in another couple of weeks here and there where the couple breaks up and cancels and you don't get another booking and you're left only able to get billable clients for about 26 weeks per year.
The end result is that you'd have to charge $3200 a wedding just to break even on the LABOR and still only make $40,000/yr, working weekends in addition to weekdays, dealing with people on one of the most stressful days possible, working without a safety net (just waiting to get sued because you "ruined" their once-in-a-lifetime-day and caused them major emotional distress).
I started down this road a couple of years ago and, after running the numbers and doing about 4 weddings, I decided that to be worth the hassle, the expense in redundant equipment (the bride doesn't want to hear that your *only* 135mm portrait lens cracked on HER SPECIAL DAY) and extra crap like multiple tuxedos in your closet because couples insist that the photographer wear one too, I'd have to charge well over $5000 a wedding to do it. And, since "anyone can take pictures" and "you're only working 3 hours a week", no one except the really high end clients wants to pay $5000-$7500 for a basic wedding photo package. If it were in that price range, work for hire would be fine.
However, quote $5000-$7500 for a wedding on a work-for hire basis, and you'll hear the whole working for 2-6 hours thing and they'll quickly do their own math and say, "No one's worth $2500/hr".
So, photographers have relied on print purchases to spread that cost around a big. After all, if the album's "worth" $1400, if the proofs are $400, if the digital photos on DVD are $250 etc. then the remaining money doesn't seem as bad.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I work in the photography field, so I might be able to offer a different perspective.
Did you know that photographers who work for National Geogrpahic own their images, even if they appear in the magazine? They fought for that right in court and the Supreme Court sided with the little guy on this one - that being the photographer.
Your contract as a programmer states explicitly that what you create on the job is owned by the company. But if you did not agree to that upfront, then anything you invented/created on the job would actually belong to you.
You see - the NFL owns the game, but NBC owns the broadcast. You own the content of your wedding, but the photographer owns the images they created. Now, the NFL and NBC have certainly negociated something that is beneficial to both, otherwise the NFL takes its games to another network (which happens all the time). And likewise, you have the ability to negociate with your photographer over rights and find another one if the terms are not to your liking.
What I do is offer prints as part of the package, and additional prints online at a reasonable charge, and at the same time the couple may purchase the "negatives" (a CD of the RAW images and full resolution processed JPEGs) along with the rights to do whatever. My charge for taking the photos + handing over the rights is still under the market price, however.
Copyright law goes back decades protects the photographer to same way it protects freelance programmers and journalists. Organizations like AMPS and PPA have spent a lot of time, money, and effort defending the rights of photographers and other creators/inventors againsts the interests of large corporations. And if the average person could stick it to the photographer, then the large corporation can too as well as the creative programer.
-- Richard Finn http://www.random-seed.com/
if you feel that $20 a print (or whatever is being charged) is to steep, have your friend take the photos at your wedding. but remember that these are the pictures that will be on your wall in 50 years, when you celebrate your anniversary. Exactly...but the point of this article is that if those pictures your friend takes actually look decent, you won't be able to get the printed to hang on your wall at all because "surely, some pro photographer took them since they look good, so if you print them, you're ripping him off.
All of this seems to describe why you shouldn't build a business purely out of taking wedding pictures, rather than any sort of motivation actually to pay people foolish enough to try such large sums of money.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
the flaw in your logic is easy to spot: obviously you create your own wedding, but you don't create the pictures.
if your idea of good wedding pictures is something to "document" that something happened, might as well get anyone with a recent cellphone to do the job. "look, ma', i got married. here's me, here's the church."
a good photographer doesn't just take photos, he makes photos.
you'll see this the clearest during the formals. he'll take the happy couple to a place with a pleasant background. he'll make sure the sun isn't in their face, because he knows that sunlight isn't high quality light. he'll use a flash to lift facial shadows, often with a light modifier. he'll bring reflectors if needed to make sure there is enough light, possibly portable power with monoblocks, big ol' honkin' softboxes.
and you probably won't end up with pictures where the happy couple is squinting, the sweat on there face pouring with overwhelming distracting backgrounds.
a good photographer will do a lot to candids; chances are he knows how to spot them in a way people that don't care as much for photography as he does. maybe you won't be irritated that someone's arm is partially blocking a face. small stuff, but enough to make yourself go "that's a good picture".
so first of all, your logic is flawed in that the photographs aren't the photographers creation.
your developer analogy is valid. a developer goes into contract, just like you say. and so will most photographers, as this thread indicates. you can find photographers that will give you the copyright of the images. it all boils down to revenue model. everything has its price, and photography, like every other profession, has representatives that are overpriced.
but you do not want a document on your mantlepiece, like the NBC-broadcast of that fourth touchdown. you want a piece of art. a creation, not a mere documentation.
How can you possibly think that the photographer does not own the copyright to work HE/SHE created?
How can you possibly think that the buyer does not own the copyright to work HE/SHE paid for?
You really need to learn what "work for hire" means.
No it's not. It's just a way of forcing people to pay more for a service/product than they are willing to pay in a free market.
A lot of the crap being passed as "intellectual property" nowadays didn't require much of an investment - however, even if something DOES require a substantial investment to develop, the value of that "thing" is NOT set by the seller - it is set by what people are willing to pay to get it in a free market. If you can't get people to pay a certain amount to get something in a free market, then it isn't worth that amount.
Really? You got some studies to back this up? All of the historical studies that I've read indicate that the U.S. became as economically successful as it is today by riding roughshod over European "intellectual property" concerns. China is getting rich & still growing during tough times by pretty much ignoring "intellectual property" laws (except for some lip service).
It seems more like developed countries try to encumber competitor countries by getting to them to go along with "intellectual property" laws (either by bribing or threatening them). Developing countries which ignore those intellectual property laws often end up with economies which go like gangbusters (except for economy-destroying scenarios like massive corruption).
So give me a few examples of countries that have benefited by passing laws which restrict the ability of their citizens to innovate (which is exactly what "intellectual property" laws do).