All digital wedding packages?

geoffellis wrote:

Henry Peach wrote: Businesses can charge whatever they want for their product and services, and consumers can choose or decline to purchase those products and services. Unless dishonesty or a con is involved it has nothing to do with morality. Just because you don't want to pay what a business charges doesn't make them immoral.

While I wont say you are wrong... people can make all the choices they want... and i agree with your first response... I still see it as 1 service/product... not 2 services/products. As such i just cant fathom people doing business as if it was 2 separate services/products...

I think you are looking at it all wrong. Separating the 2 gives more flexibility and price points. It's basically saying the shooting fee is the cheapest you'll go, and after that the price is negotiable.

For example: $2000 shooting fee + x amount of prints for $1000= $3000

Charging $3000 all together, with no other options, or charging $2000 and then having sort of mix and match options for prints and/or CDs gives the client more control over what they want. Nothing immoral about that. And it's not 2 separate products, it's a minimum baseline and then additional costs depending on the clients need.

geoffellis wrote:

MagsWPhoto wrote: Geoff, I think you're way off the mark here. Did you read the whole thread? Illegal? What's illegal about wanting to hold the rights to your own works so they aren't reprinted and misrepresented?

The thread was about people who DON'T WANT prints because they want to be cheap about it and get a CD of images and hold rights to reprint whatever they want. The point was that once the physical elements of photographs are taken out of the equation, the clients could begin to lose sight of the what they are paying you for.

Yes I read the whole thread... and you never said anything about giving away the rights to your work. Giving someone a digital copy of an image is in no way giving away your rights. You automatically own the rights to an image indefinitely unless you otherwise sign it away.

You also failed to mention anything about the client asking for the rights to reprint whatever they want. You said they wanted a CD. As far as I know you are now assuming any ulterior motive.

How is it not giving away your rights? Maybe not legally, but there isn't anything to stop them from reproducing freely once they have the CDs and even if the DO use images outside of personal use and in that instance illegally, what are the odds they'd get caught and I'd see any compensation?

Giving away the CD of images is releasing your work into the ether, laws be damned.

And yes of course, I'm well aware they can scan the images as well... but that's only the images they buy.

It's an interesting dance of getting paid what you're worth while still maintaining customer satisfaction, I'll tell you that.

You have a pretty archaic view of reality. Print media is going the way of the dinosaurs whether you like it or not. Its not gone yet... but its been disappearing steadily. With the prices of technology going down id be surprised if much exists in more than 10 years down the line. Heck did you know you can even buy digital photo frames? books are read on kindles... news is read on smartphones... magazines are read on ipads - And all of these cost a fraction of the price to produce/sell. You no longer have to pay for raw material, shipping, and people to work a cash register to buy it.

Social Media is how people interact now. The days of people gathering around an album is pretty much gone... unless youre about 78... Not to mention that people are spread out around the world. For example I have close relatives in Eastern Canada, Central Canada, Western Canada, England, China, and Australia. And thats just immediate family (mother/father/brothers/sisters), and that wouldnt include my current partners family which live in Korea and the Philippines.

Without digital images it would take years of trekking and album around the world for my family to see my wedding pictures... and friends i grew up with who i havent physically seen in years, likely never would. and no... im not about to purchase 6 copies that i can mail around the world so that family members, while interested in seeing them, do not likely put much value into.

So essentially... its time to stop worrying about what the print is worth... and start worrying about what an image is worth. If you normally get an average of 5 prints per picture from clients then that is what value your image actually has. Its not some made up number in your head that your image is next to priceless or that you should get a commission every time someone views the image...

It's not uncommon in sports for photographers to charge for the job (photographing the sporting event, planning setups, prep) and then to price for whatever images are provided (for websites, programs, team photos, trading cards etc. and time it takes for editing/presentation).

I wonder if part of it is to educate the clients in helping them see the potential to have prints along with the CD. What if after they're married and they never got around to having more than a couple of prints done, the kid(s) they have or dogs they get someday try to eat the CD?? - but really what if it's damaged and they haven't gotten prints yet, what do they have left of their wedding? Or even as technology changes, someday CDs which everybody wants now may go out of popularity and then they might be glad to have some beautiful quality prints that they don't have to get re-done.

People seem to have been budget conscious for so long they seem to still be in the mode of going with whatever's the cheapest; maybe as the economy gradually gets better clients might start thinking about spending more on their wedding photos. Which might help photographers down the road. I'm not sure what the solution is for now but it does seem to be a challenge.

icepics wrote: I wonder if part of it is to educate the clients in helping them see the potential to have prints along with the CD. What if after they're married and they never got around to having more than a couple of prints done, the kid(s) they have or dogs they get someday try to eat the CD?? - but really what if it's damaged and they haven't gotten prints yet, what do they have left of their wedding? Or even as technology changes, someday CDs which everybody wants now may go out of popularity and then they might be glad to have some beautiful quality prints that they don't have to get re-done.

Do you really believe that CD's are more vulnerable than prints? Whats more likely... that a dog would eat a CD, or a mouse making a nest out an album? or humidity causing mold and mildew... or their child uses it as a colouring book. Acidity/grease in your fingerprints will deteriorate the chemicals/papers. heck in 20 years the images will be faded and no longer "beautiful quality prints", and they will need to be redone... but im sure most people wont track down their wedding photographer in the hopes that they still have the files...

A digital image is gonna look exactly the same now... and 100 years in the future. a CD is a transferable medium. The contents are easily duplicated and backed up. hard drives, online services, flash drives. Cant say the same for prints... at least not duplicated to the same quality as the original print...

Sure there might be risk of loss on a cd if no backups are made... they dont last forever either... but between the two options... prints or digital image files... there is definitely a superiority in digital files. And someone that truly values the images will attempt to take as much care as possible either way. But digital will last longer.

The point I was trying to make was that if it's in more than one format, one or the other could be a backup if something happens. I think a framed print on the wall isn't too likely to be damaged; I've worked with kids and seen where they can manage to find to put a CD - it's more likely that someone would leave a CD laying out where a kid can have it down the toilet in no time! (I'm not talking extreme situations in case of fire/floods where people lose everything.) Albums are more likely to be stored out of reach, and it's more likely that people won't ever get around to putting together their own albums.

Color prints may likely only last so long, we've already seen that with film, depends on if archival materials are used, if photos are displayed where they get more sun, etc. Updating photos into a different format is likely and is already being done where people get old family photos restored/preserved.

If all someone has is a CD and they didn't make prints (or only a few), and the photographer deleted the files, there are no photos, they don't have anything to fall back on. If you have photos in more than one format (CD, album etc.), you'd potentially have more options to replace or reprint images.

Geoff, I don't think there is anything archaic about assuming people would want prints. Wouldn't you want something nicely framed in your house? A physical album to look through? Come on. You don't have to be 78 to appreciate print media. That being said, I'm not a fool, I understand everything you are saying about how this is a digital world. Kind of off topic though. You went from claiming different price points are immoral to claiming I'm archaic in my views.

I see a lot of pointless name slinging. OF COURSE I would have to charge for the value of the photo, not just prints. That was the whole point of this thread. People think digital is free, it's harder to see what you are charging for as opposed to prints, even though prints are actually quite cheap.

CDs are definitely on their way out, new tablets and some computers don't even have CD/DVD drives any more and they are very easily damaged.

I bet I could put together a nice thumb drive packet.