copyright

The quotes for the day were between £2 and £4 grand, and included between 2 and 3 sets of prints depending which photographer I was speaking to (3 in total). After that any extra sets of prints (5x7) were £350-500 each. I would never be given the original negatives (this was 7 years ago). One of these guys operated out of a shop but I don't think he was involved in the business, he just some arrangement with the owners. The other two worked out of home I believe.

It seemed an awful lot to me

Please note that I live in an affluent area, and I don't believe all wedding photographers charge these prices!

A proffesional photographer earning a living from their work should apply whatever stringent protection they deem necessary, and I do not think that is wasting time - it is saving time!

People who copy images from the internet are'nt the type of people who pay for the work in the first place therefore you are'nt loosing anything is completely missing the point. It's theft, plain and simple.

If it happened to me, yes I'd take some of it as a compliment, but I'd want to get paid, and would fight for that. A proffesional photographer would probaly not see it as any compliment and would just fight to get their royalty fee; but if some simple measures can be applied to prevent the legal battle from happening, I see it as saving time in the long run rather than wasting it, and in any event it is also saving money.

To me this is simple common sense, and I can't understand the criticism being levied to the pro's among us wishing to protect their work.

My cousin paid £2000 which included a very large heavy album with its own briefcase to hold it. The presentation was excellent and two photographers were in attandance all day and evening. It was let down by the quality of the book printing IMO, but the general audience for the images were completely satisfied, which I suppose is what counts.

Personally I don't do many weddings, far too much like hard work. But I will do them if I know the people involved or when pushed to! I have to confess that I do enjoy doing them when I get down to it...The time spent is far more than a day at a wedding though, as all the images are individually adjusted, plus we tend to do some bonus things like slide shows in Pictures2Exe, which tend to please the couple.

I wonder what you think the value is of two of us spending at least two very long days - one at the wedding and one processing images - and maybe longer if we think it needs it?

I'm curious as to what value a few of us would put on that service? What would you think is a fair price to pay? :

Good point John and I'd like to add the actual costs such as an album or picture book, petrol, lab costs etc. To say nothing of overheads, down-time and so on.

Then there are the costs (and time away from the business) of raising an occasional action at the Small Claims Court for copyright theft!

Actually and to be honest, I have no idea how I got that from Mowog's comment Maybe it's because I wrote it in the early hours of the morning, but I will continue to say that I have a right to be worried about copyright of my images.

My views on Flickr are my own, as I have stated before I would never dream of showing my images on that site as even if you tick a box stating that you cannot download the images, there are straight forward ways around this. If ems82 felt strong enough about the site to delete her account then kudos to her as she feels strongly about copyright.


That is your opinion and I can only say that if you ever turn professional then you too will want to protect your hard work.

So us professionals will continue to "Waste Our Time" as you put it...but to be brutally honest, I really do not give a monkey's what you think!!!

Never really thought of myself as a time-waster before but you gain valuable insights every day.

Hahahaha hmmm me neither

When a photographer makes an image, as John Riley says, the copyright is automatically theirs. They cannot, however, copyright the idea, so if someone sees the image stands in the same spot and reproduces it exactly, they are perfectly free to do that.

Given that the image is the property of the photographer, if someone simply takes it for their own use, that is theft. For someone who would otherwise not buy it, would it not be perfectly simple and more honest to ask permission from the author and credit them?

I'm surprised anyone here would seek to justify stealing other's work in any way at all.

p.s While you can't stop Google from indexing your images on sites like flickr, if you have your own web space you can use an .htaccess file to tell them not to. Google's robots do respect that.

The biggest problem I have found in arguing with people over copyright theft is the lack of a physical medium.

Because an image / song / TV show / film is just a series of 1s and 0s, and it is so easy to download, it is deemed by a very large percentage of people to be in the public domain!

I have people coming into my shop and expecting me to 'sort aaght Tom Tom for me mobile, I'll give you a fiver for it', tell them where to get games from so they don't have to pay for them, complaining that companies charge for ring tones 'when it's free innit' because of this general misconception.

When I start explaining to these people that I do not get involved in theft, so sorry I won't help you, they all go defensive, start having a go, and shouting at me for daring to suggest they are involved in criminal activity, it's even more fun when I just tell 'em straight 'but you are!' Just ask anyone who would buy a fake DVD or download it off the net to walk into HMV take a DVD off the shelf and walk out with it, no one would agree to do it.

They also try and justify their ways by saying that they can't afford it, or it should be cheaper,so I say 'so that justifies theft does it?! I can't afford an Aston Martin, but that gives me no right to go out and steal one.'

People generally will not walk into a shop and steal things because they know it's wrong. Until we can change peoples attitudes into realising that taking a digital file without permission is theft we will always have this problem.

Sorry, rant mode off now!

That's it, isn't it? People don't pay for online newspapers, for BBC drama online, so many things seem to be free that they don't perceive anything on the web as having monetary value.

Well, this is going nowhere fast

I have stated my opinions. If paullucas and others "do not give a monkeys what i think", then so be it.

As for the attempts to twist my words, e.g. "I'm surprised anyone here would seek to justify stealing other's work in any way at all" and "the criticism being levied to the pro's among us", I am not going to dignify those comments with any response.

Thanks for the "debate" (and I use that word loosely)! It is unlikely I will respond any further in this thread

PS Johnriley, it wasn't so much the £2-4 grand I had a problem with, it was the reprint charge and the fact I would never be given the negatives. I was concerned about what would happen when photographer moved away/went out of business/passed away, etc.

He's right, Paul. You're not losing anything if somebody steals your work who, had you been able to stop him doing so, would not have bought it.

G

I think this thread highlights a still unresolved problem with digital media - which mainly means music and images.

Many purveyors of digital material still don't seem to have adapted to the difference between digital and pre-digital product. The difference is that the marginal cost of the digital product is almost zero.

For a wedding photographer, this means that he must make his money from the up-front charge, then supply the product at a price which reflects the marginal (additional) cost. In other words, not much. People won't mind so much paying say £2,000 up front if additional prints/downloads cost very little.

For the music publisher, he must make the work available for download at a modest cost which means that the buyer will not be tempted to try to avoid the charge by stealing the music. In the end, if the music is any good, he will make his money by selling in much larger volumes than he would have done before downloading became an option.

This might mean that we will have fewer versions available of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusick, but not all of us would be dismayed by that.

I have colected CDs since the early 80s, but I have far fewer than I would have done if prices had been more reasonable. Publishers need to have the courage to go for volume in this digital age.

A final point. It's easy to see why people "steal" digital music when the prices being charged are often so ridiculously high.

The best thing professional 'tog's can do (in my view) is to add their website URL discreetly to SMALL images, in the hope that people will contact them to obtain LARGE ones.

G

Maybe it's just me but I find that statement breathtaking.

It's the stock reason people give for pirating Photoshop.

Here's another analogy. It's a warm day so I leave my windows open. Someone reaches through and takes my camera.

I'm not losing anything because the bloke wouldn never have bought it anyway.

You (one) could argue that your work has no value and you don't care if someone steals it but I think my work does have value and I do not want it stolen. Your argument does not stand generalisation.

Apart from anything else, theft is morally wrong.

That not quite the same Lemmy - if someone steal your image you still actually have it. Not the same with the camera analogy but I see your point.

I actually, however, agree with Tim. For the vast majority of us photography theft is just not a problem. Firstly, there are so many images out there the chances of a photo-robber stealing yours is low. Secondly, if somebody stole my images the forst thing I would ask myself is (apart from "why the hell would they want that?!?!?" :shock would be, well what would I have done with it? if it becomes a modern day Ansel Adams classic, then of course it wouldn't be hard to prove it's mine, get the royalties and catch up the posts on this forum from the carribean. But that won't happen, I think.

If you're selling images as a living then it's a different story and you should protect you images as you see fit. but isn't posting low-res images enough? who wants to blow up a crappy low-res copy of you image? probably the same sort of person who wouldn't mind a picture with a watermark on it. and at the end of the day if they want that then they can have it.

Incidentally I do have a chuckle when I see photos of er..."average" standard with a great big watermark splashed across it. you can almost picture the owner sleeping beside his PC with a shot gun in his hand, as if he's expecting the greatest photo-heist in history to be just round the corner, and tomorrows papers to read "Daves sunset photo from the weekend stolen - reward £1m"