My son, a professional photographer, shot a wedding of a friend. The contract included 5 'free' prints, with all others to be charged for individually. NO mention in the contract of a cd of images. The couple now want a cd of all the images they order. My son would effectively be relinguishing future sales as they could print them anywhere. What to do??
Thanks

Hi Kiska.

Giving up your Hi Res Originals would be like giving up your negatives. This is something a Pro photographer would Never do without being paid a fair price for them.
You could total up what value the expected ‘missed orders’ could be and then work out the ‘missed’ profit and charge a similar amount for the CD.

Or, of course you could simply refuse. They are your images and the customer (friend) has no right to the originals unless this was agreed prior to the shoot.

However you may be interpreting their request incorrectly. They may just want a CD/DVD of the day to play on the TV as well as an album. In which case you could make up a nice DVD of low resolution pictures which will look fine on the TV.

Hope this helps

Ken.

If your son is an experienced pro (with good records) he should be able to predict his losses and charge accordingly.
eg. On average, how many future sales would he expect to make? Take the pure profit from those sales and add on the cost of the CD.

Kiska,

Like what was just said, that'd be the business way really.
If he wanted to though, he could always give them the CD/DVD for a small price, then learn a valuable lesson at the same time, he'd never make that same mistake/oversight again.
Personally, I'd take the loss, that is, not unless it was at lot of money and time at stake.
I take losses like that occasionally, not from mistakes necessarily, but still a loss, and word travels fast that I am honest, and as helpful as I can be, customers like that.
In certain cases someone might try to take advantage of that same offer, then they could just be told that is no longer in effect...

I will say I am not a professional photographer, so there may be more to all of this 'normally' than I realize.

Randy

Thanks guys. If he charged a 'future profit' amount for the cd it would be for 20 images at $150 per. The family already used one of his images on cups at the rehearsel dinner BEFORE asking for permission. Most likely would get cheap prints off the cd. No telling what kind of quality, which would then reflect on son's photo ability.

I would just say no. :wavey:

Explain that the contract doesn't include that option, and that they couldn't afford to purchase all the images outright.....whats to keep them from taking something, selling it to a stock house, or a magazine...you give up your rights when you give people your originals.

Further explain, that while the images are of them, they do not belong to them, your son was hired for a service and his contract SHOULD explain that he retains all rights to the images. If not, he needs to revise his contracts.

The other option, is to, as stated above, provide them with a slideshow cd, charge them a small fee for the service, low qual 72 dpi images. everyone is happy.

keep in mind, the technically unsavvy, dont really know what they want. They probably don't want to print the images at all, just want a "cd with images to look at"...in which case the slideshow option is just fine. It also seems to be the norm these days.


Good luck

I would just say no. :wavey:

Explain that the contract doesn't include that option, and that they couldn't afford to purchase all the images outright.....whats to keep them from taking something, selling it to a stock house, or a magazine...you give up your rights when you give people your originals.

Selling your 'originals' does NOT give away your rights, legal or moral. The only way you would give up the rights to the images is to sign a legal contract, assigning copyright to a 3rd party. You can never give away your moral right - that is the right to claim authorish of the images and to be acknowledged as the photographer.

yes, in theory, that is if everyone played by the rules...:-)

The key word in your post is "friend". If it is a good friend and they are providing you with some payment, I'd go ahead and give them the shots. If it is an acquaintance, I'd either say no or I'd provide them with a cost that would be equal to or slightly greater than a printed photo. To me, the money flows now, not with future reorders.

I always look at situations like these as opportunities to provide the kind of service they can't get elsewhere. Think about it like this. You have something they want but probably can't afford. Find a way to give them what they can afford. Maybe tell them while it is probably cost-prohibitive for them to purchase all of the images, perhaps if they chose 10 images you could work out a decent price for them. Or ask them if it's prints that they want and work out a special price for them to continue to order the prints from you. If they just want a DVD, throw it in there for good faith. The concept here is to work with them. Don't antagonize them.

I see it like this, it's lost revenue if you hand over the images. But it's also just as lost if you don't give them anything and they don't ever use you for anything. Don't be a hard-*ss, and show a little empathy for your customer and they will be a customer for a long time. Not to mention the referrals you may get. In fact you could ask for referrals in return.