PHOTOGRAPHERS -- Here's How to Rip off Your Clients!
Author: Dan Eitreim
Article Posted: 22/02/2008
While surfing the Web today, I ran across a blog post with the title... I Hate Photoshop! It really could have said -- How My Photographer Is Ripping Me off!
Her hating Photoshop made for an interesting title so I decided to go ahead and read the post.
The article was written, it turns out, by a bride who had hired a photographer for her wedding. She'd used him for four or five hours (her words, she wasn't exactly sure how long.)
She had insisted that she be given all the negatives. So, after the wedding, in accord with their contract, the photographer gave her all the negatives. Her feeling is that photographers who keep the negatives and try to sell photos later are a scam. By the way, in the analog world giving the customer the negatives is the same as giving them a CD file of the photos or a memory stick in the digital world.
So, she wound up with all the negatives.
She had no retouching software, so she'd kept the negatives for quite a while. She didn't say how long. Finally she got a copy of Photoshop, and was now "retouching" over 500 black-and-white images. It turns out the photographer had shot half of the images in black and white and half in color. So I guess she had another 500 left to retouch after the black-and-white images were finished.
Gee... I have to wonder how good this photographer really is if the bride had to retouch all 500 of them! Fortunately for her, she got the Photoshop software as a Christmas gift, so the $600 + price tag isn't why she hated the software! She never said anything about the steep learning curve, or the costs for printer ink photo paper and so on... The reason she "hates" Photoshop is because of the boredom involved in retouching 500 photos!
But, at least in her mind, she wasn't "scammed" by some photographer! No, she wasn't scammed by a photographer who had actually paid the $600 for the software, rode the steep learning curve to figure out how to use it, took the time to retouch all 500 photos, edit out the bad ones, and paid for the cost to print them, and took the time to compile them into an album. (We won't bother to even mention the cost of the equipment, training, and all the other miscellaneous details that go into creating a wedding photo session in the first place.)
Photographers who actually want to charge a fair price for their work, consider it their inventory -- and not give it away for free -- are a real scam! (Yes, I'm being facetious.)
Consider this, how many brides never actually get a wedding album, because they are trying to save a couple bucks and "print them themselves"? But never seem to get around to actually doing it? How many brides DO get an album -- but it's a lousy one, simply because they don't have the $600 piece of software needed to retouch the photos? Or, don't want to take the time or have the knowledge to actually do all the work?
We, as professional photographers, know or least we should know the amount of work and effort involved in creating a beautiful wedding album -- or the hardcover books that are popular these days. We know that brides will very rarely, if ever put in the work involved to do the job right. We know they'll end up with either no album or a substandard one at best.
Who really is getting ripped off? When you take the easy way out and give them the negatives or a CD, or whatever, you truly are ripping them off. You know they'll never be able to see the album the way it should be seen or enjoy it away should be enjoyed. You've cheated them. And what's worse, they'll never even know!
You've cheated yourself too, by the way! Their friends and relatives are never going to see your work the way it should be seen. Your reputation and future bookings are in the hands of an amateur who "hates Photoshop".
Is that what you want? I don't. Stand your ground, and charge for your work. Everyone will be better off because of it.
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