What is it about the work that hired photographers do that makes them think they can charge for their work over and over and over?
I sent out a bunch of emails yesterday to photography places to ask for prices and give them our (mostly my) requirements for wedding pictures. Here is the list:
1. Wedding Date: Saturday, September 23, 2006
2. General Time: Around Noon to 4 or 5 (4 or 5 hours of service).
3. Most photographs will be live shots (about an hour will be posed).
4. The negatives/digital images, we must have copies of.
5. Use of our photographs for your promotional purposes must be with our permission.
First two are just informational.
The third one is more about wanting to present reality, as opposed to a posed reality. Not that a posed reality can't look nice, but usually it looks...well...posed. The pictures that have the biggest effect on me are usually the ones that are live, action shots. I know that when we talked to the owners of Candle Lit Way they pretty much wanted to get the photographer out of the way so we can go on, but I don't really agree. I want the live shots, the unexpected faces, the honest tears of joy, the excitment. Not just, "smile for the picture".
The fifth, this is about a couple of things. Protecting our image (even if they are technically good photos, we may not like them, or want them published) and the fact that I believe that we, since we are paying for, own the work, so it would need to be used with our permission
The fourth...Ahh the big scam from photographers.
When I develop a website or an application for a website, they pay me for my time, efforts and intelligence. Every time someone hits thier website, I don't expect a small surchage for past design. When I do my work at work, IHS owns what I write. All of what I write, and I, if I left or got fired from that job the next day, wouldn't own any of it. Is it my creation, absolutly, but it's no longer mine.
So what about taking photographs for pay, makes it worth duplicating the cost to produce the picture over and over? Are the pictures artistic or art? I would certainly hope so. But when I buy photographs as art, I pay for the picture (which includes the time and effort and artistic quality. I don't have to pay for the photographer's time before hand.
I think that if a photographer wants me to pay for each image and not give me the negatives, then they shouldn't charge me up front. We should be able to go through the images they have, pick what we want and pay for those, and if they don't have many images they want, well, then they get the short end of the stick.
Or, if they want to be paid upfront for their efforts in photography and image correction skills, then they shouldn't charge a per picture end price, if we want to develop with them, then we can, but we also have the option to go somewhere else.
So far, the photographers I have liked are not working yet (they have a thing on their wabsite that tells you not to contact them until October), or charge way to damn much, or don't allow us to own the negatives/digital images. So far there is one relatively promising one, but their image selection on their website is kinda...well...not the best. The images they have there are good, there's just not a whole lot of 'em.