UKH

This has bugged me for a while, and I can't be the only one surely. You get some photos takes by a professional, school photographer, wedding photographer, hotel photographer or wherever, and they charge you for each individual print. 

I don't typically want prints, I want digital copies, but often they won't share the digital copies, or charge a silly amount for them, much more than prints.

As the prices are generally high for digital copies I either pick one or two and the rest of the perfectly good photos just stay on the photographers hard drive and never get seen again (well, hopefully who knows).

They would get more money out of me, if they just sold the whole lot in digital at a fair rate. We had some photos taken in Turkey a few days ago at our hotel, I didn't want to do it, but they talked my wife into it. They took about 50 family photos in 30 minutes and wanted £15 for each digital copy. So £750 for the lot. No thanks. Ended up walking away and not buying any.

Why don't many photographers adopt a model that makes the customer happy?

For our wedding photographer, I insisted that we got all the digital copies, so we had to go through quite a few photographers before we found one that was willing to do it this way. I'm not paying £600 for a printed binder when I can get them for £30 online. I'm sure their printing quality is better, but I don't care, the £30 ones are good enough for me. But even then, the lady that did our wedding wasn't willing to share the raw files meaning that any edits we did had to be on the JPEGs. What is she planning on doing with them? We've paid for her time (think it was £1300 8 years ago, so not a small fee in my mind), the work is done, she's been paid as agreed, why not share the raws? The reason she gave is she sees the raws as her property. I didn't really understand it.

I just feel that photographers could have more happy customers with they adopt a business model that gives the customer what they want and charge a fair amount for their time. I for one would end up spending more on professional photographers if this was the norm.

End of rant.

In reply to montyjohn:

They won't give you RAWs as RAWs are better for editing/processing - they don't want you (or someone you ask) to edit their photos. Either because they don't want someone to see badly edited/processed photos and associate them with the photographer, or they want the editing work themselves.

In reply to montyjohn:

I've had the opposite problem - a photographer who only sold digital photos. I've got plenty of those, I wanted one I could bung in a frame & give to grandparents for Christmas. She told us that she didn't have anywhere to get photos printed (really?) so we said ok, do you want Boots / local photographers details...

In reply to montyjohn:

That's an interesting post but there are a couple of things I'd like to respond to, and if I'm picking you up wrong then tell me.

The biggest thing is that your rant looks a little like you're expecting the photographer to provide a service for far less than is reasonable for a professional service. Apologies if not. This attitude plagues photographers who do things like weddings, graduations, family portraits and pets (the latter of which is my occasional side gig, though I have done a couple of weddings).

I would think that the £600 you are paying for a binder will be costed into the photographer's overall fee for their service. If you specify that all you want is a USB stick with the jpegs on it and the rights to print them so you can choose the images then order a bound album online then the photographer's price will be £600, because you're paying for their service (time and expertise), not a folder. If you're being asked for an extra £600 for a bound album then that sounds a bit excessive to me, even allowing for the time involved.

One thing that some photographers might reasonably insist on is control of the printing process (I do). That last thing they want is some big country house hotel printing out some of their wedding images on a crap printer with no attention to colour calibration then sticking them up on their wall. A discerning potential customer may look at them and think, "The venue looks great but let's avoid that photographer, they've made the bride look like she's been on mars."

Personally, I wouldn't give anyone the RAW files. The finished photos are the product and when you employ a professional service you don't expect to be able to do fundamental parts of it yourself to save money, especially when the product is going to represent the professional's standard of output.

In reply to montyjohn.

I'd never sell a RAW photo to a client. 

At a wedding I might deliberately underexpose to save the highlights, knowing i can solve it in post production, or i might shoot wide, knowing that the final product will be a crop.

I agree that photographers should sell digital images at a reasonable price, but what would that be? Every job ends up being half a day minimum by the time you've turned up, taken some photos, processed, organised them and offered them for sale.

For schools, the system would work better by a group of parents banding together to hire a photographer under the condition they get all the digitals included. 

As it is, the photographer (usually a company) has no guaranteed income, and has to try and claw back a profit from the few parents that actually buy prints - and nobody would buy prints if they could get the digitals for peanuts.

A final point is that a good quality print could last centuries, but something done on a home printer probably won't, and the digital photos on parents phones will probably be gone when they lose it. 

In reply to 65:

I don't think this is true. As mentioned we paid £1300 for our wedding photographer for digital photos 8 years ago. We didn't go with the cheapest option. I don't remember what her printed photo albums were quoted as. It will have been hundreds (they all were), whether it was the £600 quote that sticks in my mind I couldn't say.

I'm glad we didn't pay silly amounts for photo albums as we've never looked at the cheap ones we ordered online. They are in the attic somewhere. The photos do flash on our TV from time to time which is how we choose to view them.

All the quotes we had there was a fee for the day, and all prints were optional and extra. Maybe some were under-pricing the shoot and making it up with the prints. We didn't go with the cheapest so this could well be the case. We went with the most flexible in terms of willingness to share the digitals.

I can see a strong case for not passing the photos on and they should only be for the use of the customer. 

I don't think this is valid with our wedding photographer. I don't recall her ever offering significant editing service, only minor corrections that was built into her day fee (presumably to fix colour issues etc). The reason I wanted the raws is for major personal edits just incase there was an excellent photo ruined by a background anomaly. And who know what or how photos will be managed and displayed in the future so having the raws may be beneficial to something not even thought up yet. 

I think the thing that bugs me, take nursery and school photos, every year they hire a photographer to take pics of all the children. They'll take 30 photos (pretty good photos at nursery) but they only sell prints. If you tot up every year and two kids that donzens of prints that will probably sit in the attic for no small fee. And hundreds of great photos that you never get because to buy them all would be too expensive. I would rather pay more, and have all 30 digital photos every year. The photographer gets more money, I get a better service, everyone is happy. I just seems like a win-win.

In reply to Dan Arkle:

Is that a problem though? Customer gets the JPEG as a final product and a raw so they can do theyir own thing if they choose. 

I think it would be better if they were paid for their time. The tricky thing to overcome is what if the photos turn out terrible.

In reply to montyjohn:

My photographer (a climber who doesn't really do weddings) pretty much did what you suggest.

We got a handful of low res images by email the next day (great to share on social media), then a CD with high and low res images (professionally edited) to do with as we wished. We paid a fixed price, so no annoying upselling and we can decide to print copies if/when we want to.

No shortage of places that print decent quality photos, but unless they are being framed it's much better sharing digital copies. I occasionally regret not having a proper album (could easily print one myself if I wanted), but in reality they probably get far more views by having them on my phone.

In reply to montyjohn:

Isn’t this is exactly why people are saying they wouldn’t share RAW files? They don’t want to encourage heavy handed amateur photoshopping which will then get mistaken for or presented as the photographers work.

Besides, the reason for paying a professional rather than just getting a mate with an iPhone to do it is that you’d expect the pictures you get to not be ruined by awful composition in the first place.

In reply to montyjohn:

I was on your side until you said you wanted the Raws and then in the comments section you said you wanted the edited Jpegs AND the Raws. Why would you expect someone to spend time editing the photos and then just hand over the Raws? The Raws are legally and literally the photographer's intellectual property.

When you said you had paid for the photographer's time, so why didn't she hand over the Raws; well you're also paying for the time taken for her to edit the photos, not just turn up at the wedding. Photographing the wedding is the easy bit.

I'm a professional photographer and my market isn't the one you're complaining about, but I do the odd wedding for friends and existing clients. Although weddings are easy, this is because the editing is so time consuming (and weddings usually happen at sunny weekends). I always recommend a service like Blurb for printing as I think wedding albums are a rip off, but if the client wants an album that's fine. I simply haven't got time to chase people to see if they want prints. I deliver my photos along with a pdf letter that gives legal permission for the client to print the photos at a particular, commercial lab.

I just wanted to add to the debate. I'm sure you could definitely find someone who would hand over the Raws, then you could spend four or five days editing them rather than me. It would make life so much easier!

Purely out of interest, what do you consider 'charging a fair amount for their time'?

In reply to montyjohn:

I've got a good friend who's a professional photographer. My impression is that it can be a tough gig to make a living at, that many people underestimate what goes into it and that if they have a business practice which seems odd/restrictive/tight/not what you want, it's because someone has tried to take the piss around that in the past.

In reply to montyjohn:

You would just pay more for their piece work on the day. It's a finite market. Tough to do more than one wedding per day, only so many Saturdays or sundays in summer etc.. selling the production or albums for a margin is a means of increasing their income to a liveable or fair amount. You likely meet them before, they'll be there hours on the day, production time, meet them after.. that's all work time to them.  The price you pay isn't just for that 10mins outside the church. 

In reply to montyjohn:

I think this is a similar issue to the way opticians won't tell you your pupillary distance so as to try to discourage online spectacle sales (something that has really backfired on them because there are apps that will tell you it and they lose sales by being snarky about it - certainly I've blacklisted an otherwise quite good local optician because she was downright rude about not providing the PD rather than simply politely declining and honestly explaining why).

I do understand the thing about not wanting to provide RAWs as editing is part of the creative process, with the finished product being a JPEG (because the user might do a bad job of editing then damage the photographer's reputation by blaming them, say), but aside from that I think the fix is really not to "bundle" the price in with things (e.g. by giving free eye tests but overcharging for spectacles, or giving a low quote for the photography day but insisting on per-image purchase) but rather that professionals should simply charge a reasonable hourly rate for their time and skill (be they opticians or photographers or whatever) and charge separately for value-added services like printing or albums (or spectacles), then the customer can choose the services they want and the professional can be properly and profitably remunerated for the services the customer did choose.

You could probably parallel the idea with the way financial advisers have to charge a fee rather than bundle it in with products (though for a slightly different reason).

But then "I run my business the way I want, I'm not going to adapt for customer desires" is something you do get in a fair few small businesses, which makes sense in some types of business (e.g. stuff like window cleaners where a particular system keeps costs down) but not so much those where a professional service is being engaged and paid hourly.  In the latter if a customer wants a more time consuming approach, say, just charge them for it!

In reply to montyjohn:

The fundamental reason is that most people don't want to pay a decent daily rate as they have no experience of buying based on that. £600-700 a day seems ludicrously high for a lot of people because it's just "time". However, if you stack up a load of "product" then it's an easier sell. 

I suspect that most photographers would want more than a simple daily rate as well as they have to include all the sales time, accounting time, insurance time etc.. 

In reply to Mark Savage:

Good question, I would say £40 to £50 per hour + expenses.

So £40 per hour as a full time equivalent is £83k. Not to be sniffed at.

So my wedding photographer, let's say the day was 12 hours, and double it for editing and meeting us. She can't have spent more time on it as the photos arrived too quickly. £1000 + expenses. She charged £1300 so not far off.

Apply the same to kids being snapped at nursery, if they spend 30 minutes on our kids then £20 for all their photos, agreed beforehand so no time wasted. They get through a lot of kids in a day so there's probably only 10 minutes of actually photographing time.

It's a vicious cycle with the standard model because the more it costs the less people will buy, so the more time is spent taking photos with no buyer so the more you have to pay when you do want a photo.

In reply to Neil Williams:

True, the parallel I drew is it's similar to printers where they sell at a loss and then over charge for ink to make up the difference. Again, a model I hate and refuse to participate in it.

You just end up with a poor customer experience as you end up with a printer you don't want as you only bought it as it was cheap and then you fear printing as each page as it costs so much.

In reply to Mark Savage:

I'm still not sold on this.

If I've paid for their time then providing the raws is no extra effort. I've paid for their editing so I'm not getting a freebie.

I'm just protecting myself should I not like their editing or want something different for a specific reason that may not present itself until years later. Withholding the raws is impacting the customer experience. 

I also don't understand the argument of protecting their quality perception. There is nothing stopping me editing a JPEG, it just means the quality will be even worse. So if I do want to edit a photo so a specific reason, maybe to make somehting for our 10th Anniversary (need to write that down) I will do it anyway with the JPEG but I will be less happy with the result.

In reply to montyjohn:

Almost all of my work is in commercial and editorial photography so the business model/pricing is slightly different, but there’s quite a few parallels with wedding photography etc. Thought I’d offer a few perspectives from the photographers side which might answer some of your questions.

In terms of pricing, an £83k salary would be bloody brilliant frankly, but a big thing you’ve missed in this £40/hr calculation is that the photographer is not just taking and editing photos all of the time, they’re also running a business (which sucks up a lot of time). Personally I’d say on average around 50% of my time is spent on the running a business side of things. So that’s doing accounting, marketing/promotion/social media/website etc (which you need to do if you’re actually going to get any work), answering emails/correspondence/networking etc (this accounts for a big chunk of that 50%). 

Then you’ve also got time spent liasing with clients in the buildup to a shoot to understand what their needs are and what they want to get out of the project, researching the location for the shoot, travel time, training/upskilling (which is obviously pretty important if you actually want to be able to do a good job when it comes to the shoot itself). Once you’ve factored all of that in, the £83k salary you’ve proposed here starts to drop quite dramatically (going by my rough estimate of 50% of time spent on all of the above, you’re down to say £40-45k-ish).

Then you’ve got your actual fixed costs to take off. So you’ve got cost of purchasing camera equipment, maintaining that equipment, equipment insurance, public liability and indemnity insurance, website costs, editing software license costs, computer equipment costs (both a computer to edit on, editing screen, hard drives etc), online cloud storage costs, hiring an office space/place to work in, running a vehicle/travel etc. There are lots of other smaller costs (too many to list!), but basically they all mount up and you’re probably knocking off another £15-20k a year for all of this and suddenly that £83k a year salary from your calculation isn’t looking like that much anymore.

The question about RAWs is perhaps a bit trickier and more nuanced, but from my personal perspective I have style of editing and that style is fairly consistent across all the images I produce. When a client approaches me for work, there’s an understanding that they like the style of images that I produce and so I’ll be trying to produce images that match that style. If they didn’t like the style of images I produced then you’d imagine (/hope!) they’d go to another photographer whose style they preferred. I think the same is true with wedding photographers (and most other genres of photography). You choose to hire a photographer because you like the style of images they produce and so you trust them to produce images which match that style. Editing the images is a big part of achieving that style, hence why photographers are usually reluctant to just hand over the RAW files. Having said that, I’m personally usually like to have the client inputting into the editing stage a bit in order to ensure they’re happy with the final images, so I’ll usually send over a first draft of the edits to the client so they can give some feedback to help guide the edit stage. I’m not sure if this is common practice in wedding photography, but this would obviously solve your issue about potentially not being happy with the editing (that’s on the assumption that you actually chose a photographer whose style you liked in the first place!).

In reply to Hamish Frost:

This is what we found, we liked the style and liked the photos we got. Something I was very aware of at the time however, is it was the first time I ever hired a photographer, my first (I would hope last) wedding and therefore really didn't know what I would like long term or how I was really going to enjoy the photos, or to be honest what I was looking for in a photographer. It was more a hunch of what we thought we would like.

The photographer is experienced as you would expect, but when it comes to weddings you are mainly dealing with inexperienced clients who may want to hedge their bets. If my taste changes as I learn what I like and what I don't I may be stuck with photos I no longer like. I honestly don't know if I could get in touch with the photographer again and if they still have the raws 8 years later. Maybe if I still have access to the email account I used back then I could figure it out but it may be a dead end, especially if she has folded the business. I would be more comfortable having the raws just in case.

We actually paid for engagement shoots. I don't remember the cost, I would guess about £120 but it's a clever way of covering a lot of the client engagement costs. But may put off some customers.

Some of those costs are valid, but others are just standard part of life. I need home office space, a car, time and costs of commuting and that's just a PAYE office job. Expenses like maintaining equipment, averaged across clients do need to be accounted for with pricing I get that.

Haha, yes it would.

In reply to montyjohn:

Totally agree, we just don't buy photos because of this.  I'm sure photographers miss out a lot on school photos due to this.  The best photos we ever got were from nursery, superb and the photographer sold the digitals.  Business head as well as an artistic head.

For wedding photos it should be what you commission.  If I was asked to build some tech as a one off they might not get the designs but if a company commissioned me to design the vision system for their new car they'd get the lot and I would not be saying I can't give it to you because you may use cheaper parts or adjust the design at some point.

If it's a photo for commercial use (like a patent/more unique bit of work) then I understand the model and you have an industry build round this but it's a little different to a wedding.

Cheers

Toby

In reply to montyjohn:

But they won't work 40 hrs a week doing wedding photos. I guess if you aren't happy, then don't use them. The reality is weddings are a scam, everything costs more and is a complete one off, you're buying into a dreamy fairytale, when most wouldn't be better off skipping marriage and using the funds for a house deposit together. Never tried it, but i bet you can book a venue mid week in November, catering etc.. for way less than mid july on a Saturday. That's supply and demand. 

In reply to montyjohn:

Most do. Easy to find. You will get digital copies and option for prints and an album.

In reply to montyjohn:

Like that, you'd likely be bankrupt in a month.

Nobody shoots weddings 8 hours a day, 365 days a year. Most weddings are on weekends in the summer.

A full day's wedding takes at least as much or even double that time to edit. Just the basic edit takes around a day.

As I am not giving you 3,000 photos, including all the ones where you all farted or blinked. I am giving you the very best ones out of these 3,000. A writer doesn't sell their first draft of a book at a bookstore, do they? They sell the finished book. An hour spent shooting is around one or two hours spent editing.

And you do realise photo equipment is really, really expensive?

The commercial rental for just the equivalent of my old full wedding kit (2 cameras, 4 lenses, 2 studio lights and accessories) would be £500‑1,000 per a single weekend.

Bought new, the whole lot cost around £15‑20,000 up front. And that's just the basics – you can easily go over £30,000 on the gear alone, as you aren't just doing weddings, but need other expensive studio stuff as well. Add something like freelance sports, and just a single lens might cost £6‑12,000...

Which all deprecates. Business deprecation is ~3 years, but let's stretch it to 5 for a poor freelancer. That's at least £3‑6,000 in lost gear value per year.

And you can't really stretch it much – I still have a working, two decades old pro DSLR, which cost £11,000 eq. back than (!), but it's just a paperweight now, as nobody would buy the shitty pictures it produces – compared to cameras now. I guess I could sell it on Ebay for around fifty quid now, so I am just keeping it as a paperweight. My 20 year old studio flash? All its caps are long leaked or really flakey now, and even if I replaced all its bad electronic components myself, it would likely just go up in a pop of smoke on a shoot or electrocute somebody. My 20 year old pro zoom lens? Busted, as it rattles and doesn't focus anymore, since unlike your typical 20 year old amateur lens, it was used a lot, really hard.

Add rent. Not living rent – studio rent. Because, guess what, you have to work outside the wedding season as well, like shooting studio portraiture and products.

Add all the other expenses and costs of doing a business – advertising, car, taxes, expensive business insurance on all that very expensive gear you carry around (which if stolen would literally cost you your livelihood), social insurance (as most people might want to retire someday), et cetera – and you might find that you'd actually earn the same money just working at a Tesco's...

There is a reason why most of the good photographers I knew (and some of them really good, as in laureates of WPP and similar prestigious competitions) drove old estate cars and not some fancy Range Rovers. Sure, a minority of even the really good ones might get plenty rich, but that's not by charging £1,000 a wedding.

As to your complaint about the hotel photographer in Turkey wanting £15 a file, plenty of hotel photographers in popular destinations are just underpaid temps employed by the hotels during the season, or even paid on commission, with the hotel taking most of the lot. You might just as well complain about room bar's prices of those 0.05l whisky bottles...

In reply to Frank R.:

I didn't suggest they do. I assumed 40 hours a week. So 1.5 weddings a week with the edit time. Since weddings are typically Friday to Sunday is that not manageable?

This is what I assumed. 40 * 24 (12 + 12) = £1000 + expenses.

That's fine, I don't want the crap photos.

Yes, but so is a degree or pretty much any business start up. 

I recall my photographer used one camera, one or two lenses (can't remember) and a portable light meter. That was it. She was very light and nimble with a fly on the wall approach.

Surely you don't need £15 - £30k of equipment to start out as a wedding photographer. I can believe that after doing it for a decade or so you would easily collect that much equipment but you've had the work to pay for at that point. You can get a Nikon Z9 and the Nikon Z 24-70 for £6k and I'd be surprised if your average customer for a wedding insisted you used the latest mirrorless camera. Although maybe they do but it would be an odd thing to insist on.

I wouldn't want to knowingly accept paying a photographer additional fees to provide a service for someone else. Your other customers can pay for that as I don't want to subsidise it. If you sneak it into wedding customers costs then you are screwing them as easy targets.

In reply to ExiledScot:

If you only work half that, say 20 hours a week, expecting to be paid a full time equivalent is a pretty hard sell.

In reply to montyjohn:

No, you've paid for her service, which was to provide a certain number of images in a specified format. 

Because the agreed price didn't include sharing the raws.

Copyright law says they are her property, unless contractually agreed beforehand.

Presumably this business model works for them. Most customers are presumably happy with what their photographers offer. Most just want photos and videos and won't want to play around with raws. If you want something out of the ordinary be prepared to pay a lot more than the usual fee, but they don't have to accommodate you. It's their choice what service they choose to provide and how much they charge for it.

In reply to montyjohn:

They work full time, being freelancers generally means they work more than full time more often than not. This is the case when pricing for any freelance work on all industries.

In reply to montyjohn:

Cost of everything, value of...?

In reply to montyjohn:

If it's the road to riches then I presume you'll be switching career soon? 

Why is it full time equivalent, it is what is it? At the very least it's time and a half, or double time for weekend work? 

In reply to Howard J:

It is, but I expect photographers would value feedback. I wonder if any proper surveys have been done on this, I couldn't find one but I don't know where to look?

I know when I refused offers from a photographer we never gave a detailed reason. We just said we've signed up with someone else. It feels awkward to be overly honest so we avoid it.

So my curiosity is do photographers realise how many of their customers are put off by their business model?

In reply to montyjohn:

I expect it's all part of the wedding model, how many couples look at a dozen venues before picking one? 

In reply to ExiledScot:

Really? I've had jobs from a garden centre, Tesco, bike shop to profession engineer and I've never been offered time and a half or double for a weekend. In fact, now I'm a chartered professional I get zero pay for weekend work and do it as a freebie.

What do you mean? 

I'm not making any arguments for or against how much photographers get paid. My gripe is on the business model that many adopt.

In reply to montyjohn:

So you don't tell them what you want but complain that they don't provide it

Perhaps they get sufficient work using their current business model.

In reply to montyjohn:

You sound like you got some predetermined value in mind on how much they should earn, regardless of hours, costs, demand etc.. 

In reply to Howard J:

They didn't ask.

Perhaps they do, but what if they are missing a trick to provide more customers what they want? People will always vote with their money. Plenty of photographers in this thread saying how difficult and time consuming it is to find work. I'm openly providing what I find to be a blocker as a customer. They don't have to pay attention to it.

In reply to montyjohn:

A full-time employee isn't responsible for:

• Equipment costs.
• Insurance costs.
• Accountancy costs.
• Staffing and subcontracting costs.
• Training costs.
• Etc.

And receives niceties such as:

• Holiday pay.
• Sick pay.
• Employment rights.
• The ability to actually call in sick to begin with.
• Etc.

Etc.

In reply to ExiledScot:

Surely it is only overtime when you work more than your contracted hours, not everyone has the good fortune to work a nice cosy Monday to Friday week.

In reply to tehmarks:

Not really sure why you've told me the benefits of PAYE.

In reply to ExiledScot:

No, this is just a strawman argument you've invented. I was asked by Mark Savage what I would consider a fair amount to be so I answered based on an hourly rate plus expenses. You previously mentioned that it's hard to get work outside Saturday/Sunday and they are unlikely to work as many hours as 40 per week insinuating the rate should be higher to account for this.

If my wedding photographer said to me, well I can only work three days a week so I want £2300 I would have moved on.

In reply to timjones:

Unsociable or out of hours? 

In reply to montyjohn:

As mentioned by several the hours worked aren't just on day, you'll meet once before and after, plus processing time. You can't just divide on site time into their fee. 

In reply to montyjohn:

I was a professional photographer in the late 1980s into the 90s, and did a number of weddings. I don’t remember any problems at all in doing the deals with the families concerned. I certainly didn’t charge by the hour, but had an all-in fee, which I think included a certain number of freebee postcard size prints. Larger prints I charged for separately. I have no idea now what the fee was (i could look it up by rummaging through old files, but I can’t be bothered). At a guess I’d say it would be something like £800 in present day money (but I haven’t a clue really), with the large formal prints adding quite a lot more. I always took lots of informal shots using a 35mm Nikon in addition to the medium format formal shots, of relatives and guests etc at the reception, and sold loads of these, postcard size, at a very bargain price. I remember that without exception the clients were very happy with the results. Mind you, it was a type of photography I didn’t enjoy much - filling in between mountain landscape photography and portraits. Once I was commissioned for my mountain landscape books I dropped the weddings completely.

In reply to ExiledScot:

I know, and have highlighted this more than once. Example:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/photography/professional_photographer_bus...

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I think a lot of the particular things I discussed were much less of an issue in the 80's and 90's. As a side note, how you ensure all your photos are great on film is beyond me. I can't imagine the stress.

But with digital editing not a service and digital files not being a reasonable format the time + photo processing business model makes a lot of sense.

In reply to montyjohn:

I guess the flipside is, from a school photography POV - they've been doing it for years, and haven't changed the model, which suggests it's working for them.

I would be amazed if they hadn't tried different pricing models, so presumably they've chosen one which gives them the best income.

No doubt people find them expensive (we've never bought any prints), but obviously people must buy them or they'd change the price/model.

In reply to montyjohn:

It doesn't seem unreasonable to get the raws to me, but it seems that most of the photographers on here think it is unreasonable to get the raws.

I don't really understand why it's unreasonable to get the raws, as long as it's agreed beforehand. I write software, sometimes the client gets the source code, sometimes they don't, depends on the contract. If the client wants they can edit the source code and deploy their own version of the software. Mostly they don't edit, which I imagine would also be the case with people editing raws. Other parts of the company specify parts for control systems, the calculations behind what parts are specified are always given to the client. If the client wants they can look at the calculations, decide it's justifiable to apply a lower safety factor, edit the calcs and then specify a different part.

I don't really see the benefit of not giving wedding raws as a photographer (assuming you're paid the same), presumably it's very rare for people to come back and say "we want the edit changing on these photos and we'll pay extra for it". Whereas I can see that it makes sense in a commercial setting where a client might come back and want a photo changing and be willing to pay for it.

In reply to ExiledScot:

I'm not sure that there is any such thing as out "out of hours" when you are self employed?

Who sets your hours?

You can certainly ask your customers for more money but they may not agree to pay it.

In reply to Durbs:

It seems rather similar to race photography.

There is one company that allows you to buy digital copies of all the photo's that you feature in for a good sensible price.  They invariably get more money from me than the companies that as for silly money for single photo's.

They have done all the work to take the photo's, edit them and upload them. It seems silly to price people out of the market when your work becomes worthless within weeks if it remains unsold.

In reply to montyjohn:

I certainly do, this has been an interesting and illuminating thread. Some of what you've written makes me think I wouldn't do business with you, which is fine because you would find another photographer.

In reply to timjones:

I fully get your point, but for many weekend work isn't the best, so some financial compensation helps. But it could be a case of the star gazing astronomer complaining they work mainly nights! 

In reply to Fellover:

Your clients are companies, I guess from your talk of contract and deployment? Not your average Joe buying an app or something like that?

A few analogies for programmers. 

First, as a programmer, how would you feel if your client introduced critical bugs and 0‑days into your code and further distributed it and showed only the buggy version to other potential clients, still under your name? Especially in a business that heavily relies on word‑of‑mouth advertising in the first place? Lots of my clients came to me on recommendation of my former clients, and that usually entails looking at the wedding photos as well.

Second, the edited raws are akin to source code, even with their own "secret" recipe of editing, like programming style. You wouldn't just give out complete Windows source with every sold Windows licence, wouldn't you? As a programmer, you should also know that source code often contains proprietary information, proprietary methods, et cetera, something that can't be copyrighted or trademarked, but can be and often is obfuscated to prevent copying by competitors. Sources can be the most valuable asset of a software company.

Third, before they moved their goalposts, the OP sounded like they wanted all the photos, not just the best selection of the best photos they'd normally get. That's like wanting all your alphas and all the history of private commits (even ones later struck out of the codebase) and such.

Fourth, even the very un‑edited raws are still "originals", much like film negatives were THE originals. You wouldn't give out your film originals with every print sale, just like you wouldn't give out the keys to your codebase versioning account with every app sale. Those raws (like those keys) are one of few things that secure your authorship and copyright.

Say some unscrupulous client adjusts a raw photo, sells it to Microsoft for a big sum for their advertising, and they fight tooth and nail against your claim. How do you assert that you are the actual author and copyright owner, without costly digital forensics and such? And don't say "registering with the copyright office", that's only a US thing for US claim courts and copyright is automatic, even without any registering.

I have had my photos mistakenly "stolen" by clients and given out freely to print magazines in the past, without the mag reimbursing me, even if that was only a honest mistake on the client's part. In all the cases we settled amiably, as everybody understood it was just a dumb mistake of the client not understanding contracts and copyrights and not telling the magazine in the first place, but if I had to file a claim against somebody actively fighting it, me having the raws and them not would make it a really short and easy court case.

I have no issue with providing raw files to a good and vetted company client, if specified in the contract and properly reimbursed. Some even require them, as they have their own graphics professionals that often have a legitimate need to tweak the photos, e.g. to adjust according to their graphic style manual. Again, no problem.

But it's very rare to have your average Joe comply with all my three points above.

That is, have a *legitimate need* to adjust the raw photos in the first place, then have enough *technical and artistic ability* not to mangle them in ways I wouldn't ever want my work publicly presented, and have *enough trustworthiness* to not to do bad things with the originals given.

I wouldn't count some random bloke like the OP calling me trying to book a wedding and demanding all the raws as complying with any of that, unlike my long‑term trusted clients.

Maybe now you can understand why most photographers aren't really that much keen on giving out raws to random clients, even if there are indeed cases when they do give out raws to *some* clients.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Easily done with a ruler though

In reply to Fellover:

For (most) weddings where the actual image has zero value to anyone other than the couple I'm struggling to see what reason there is for the photographer to refuse. Nobody ever asks who the wedding photographer was (unless they are looking for one themselves), so there will be no bad publicity even if they do subsequently make a bad edit.

It's different with subjects where the images might be subsequently sold on to a third party, giving a revenue stream - which a photographer would legitimately want a share of. But for the majority of weddings let's be honest, nobody besides the immediate family really care about the photos.

In reply to timjones:

I'd say being a freelancer you actually have less "out of hours" overtime pay options, compared to just being employed. Balancing your prices to the right clientele bracket, more of cheapskate clients versus less of better‑off clients, et cetera. And for weddings, them being held mostly on weekends, you'd lose most of your cheaper clientele bracket if you increased your prices. Which might (or might not) be a big concern to you, depending on your client ratios and their brackets.

It's a bit easier for somebody like a skilled IT contractor to ask for overtime rates, as they know they won't lose clients over it (going for a cheaper contractor might not solve the client's server crash), than for a skilled photographer to do the same, as they do know any clients might be perfectly willing to go with a cheaper photographer, even if that meant getting worse photos.

And unlike IT, the "skilled" is much more subjective in this field, as plenty of clients can't even tell the difference between a great photo and a merely an average one, whereas IT clients usually can and do tell the difference between knowing SQL and not knowing it, at least from the very outcome of being able to solve their esoteric SQL problem and not being able to (exceptions happen, of course – every IT contractor has had hellish cheapskate clients who just don't care, CEOs being CEOs).

In the EU country I now work in, employees get quite a bit over their base rate on weekends by law (and double the base rate on bank holidays), plus obviously your contract or union contract can stipulate more, if you are lucky or indispensable enough. That's simply not always an available option for self‑employed workers, especially in the more subjective arts business.

Even in the UK where that's not the employee law (IIRC, but I really doubt the Tories would have ever introduce any – even remotely – pro‑employee laws), the OP who said they had no weekend bonuses in their *engineering* job must have had a really bad contract, union contract, or just their own contract negotiating skills.

Maybe the OP just *didn't ask* about any bonus pay over weekends, during their initial interview, and their employer had of course happily obliged them in not ever offering any...

In reply to montyjohn:

You couldn’t. The stress was considerable, as one did not see the results until the next day when shooting near to home, or for several weeks when on location. Also, of course, medium format film and processing was very expensive so one had to ration how much one took. But with the 35mm Nikon as an extra backup camera at weddings I had a motordrive, taking bursts of 5 or 6 frames at a time when shooting people.

The most stressful by far were the mountain shoots, e.g when I was doing my Cuillin book (it was exactly 500 miles from my front door in Derby to the Sligachan hotel). When I came back after a 2-3 week shoot with typically about 30 rolls of 120 film I would go straight to the labs in Derby before even going home, and have a nervous 90 minute wait in a nearby cafe before going back to collect the processed film. The extraordinary thing was that film always had this strange magical/unpredictable quality in that the results were never quite what one expected. Always either MUCH better or much worse. Once, when I got back from a fortnight Lakes trip with very bad weather, the moment I saw the dreary results on the lightbox I knew that there was NOT ONE single publishable frame (mind you, ‘publishable’ had to be very good).

At least with film one has the original ‘master’ transparencies for all time. I’ve still got all mine safely stored in transparent sleeves in expensive ring files - takes up one whole wall of shelves in my office.

I think with one’s very best digital shots it’s often a good idea to have high quality prints made of them. Not very expensive these days.

In reply to Jenny C:

You might be surprised then. Lots of wedding photos are also viewed by the friends of the couple afterwards, especially in todays' social media world, friends who might have actually even been at the wedding itself (thus quite interested in seeing their own pictures there as well).

Some of them prospective clients, as at least some of them would be contemplating their own weddings too around the same time. I certainly got quite a few clients out of that back when I was in that photography business (which is a pretty stressful photography business, even compared to photojournalism), as personal referrals are the best referrals.

And while most of it comes from being a good photographer shooting the best moments, or adding a bit of personal artistic touch in choosing that very moment or composition (apart from the boring group pictures at the end) and of course being a nice, sociable photographer at somebody's else very private event (can't be understated enough!), some of it also comes from your editing and toning style, just like Ansel Adams was pretty much known for their very own printing style and not just for shooting the Yosemite.

I'd certainly not want some random "knows‑it‑all" selecting and running my photos through some random "magic AI enhancement" suite and presenting them as my own work to others, just like any book author worth their name wouldn't want their own book edited by their readers. Back in the film days, some famous photographers even had full‑time printers ("book editors"), as they knew and understood their style.

In reply to montyjohn:

Because at one point you were comparing freelance/self-employed rates to someone in a full-time job - which is totally meaningless regardless of how many hours the self-employed photographer spends actually working.

In reply to Jenny C:

Spot on

In reply to tehmarks:

I was comparing doing 20 hours freelance to 40 hours freelance. Full time doesn't mean employed, it just means doing a typical full weeks of work which is about 40 hours in the UK.

Is it? If as ExiledScot suggests, doing part time work means you need to earn more per hour then you'll be priced out of the market by those managing to fill their week and do it full time. Unless you have something very unique and special to offer.

In reply to montyjohn:

Of course it's totally meaningless. Is that 20h taking photos? Or is that 20h taking photos, dealing with new business, chasing payment for previous business, filing this quarter's VAT return, chasing up what's happening with the repair to the lens you dropped two weeks ago...etc.

In reply to montyjohn:

You are continuing to miss the point. They are not doing 20 hours of work. They are doing 40 hours of work, 20 of which are taking photos. The rest is still part of the job, the business would not operate without it. The fee for those 20 hours has to cover all forty hours. It also needs to cover all the business expenses and funds need to be put aside to cover potential sick leave etc. That is why bringing up the benefits of PAYE was extremely relevant. Not having those benefits doesn’t mean you don’t need those benefits, it means you need to provide them yourself.

A lot of sole traders fail to do this, and then find themselves in serious shit if they get ill, etc.

In reply to Frank R.:

The two consulting engineering firms I've worked for employ over 10,000 people in the UK. Their contract benefits are very open and clear and they are not in the business of offering one employee one benefit, and their peers something different.

Both companies, once you are over a certain grade, you can't claim overtime, and you are expected to work extra in order to get the job done. It's woolly wording, but it's there to ensure that you don't switch your computer off at 5.30, when hanging on an extra 20 minutes would be the difference between delivering and not delivering.

I don't know a single consulting civil engineer that has signed up with a union. It's doesn't seem to be the done thing.

If you tried to push for double overtime, you wouldn't get promoted and/or wouldn't get the job.

In reply to tehmarks:

I'm referring to 20 hours of effort, whatever is needed to get the job done and enable that work. This all started when ExiledScot said "But they won't work 40 hrs a week doing wedding photos." 

If no photographer out there is doing this work part time then it's a moot point.

In reply to montyjohn:

Do you feel that this thread is going well for you?

In reply to Frank R.:

Yes.

Yeah it's not ideal, but it's a risk we take because it provides value to the client. If we didn't I imagine they'd go to someone else who would.

If I were showing someone wedding photos because they were looking for a wedding photographer I'd show them the ones the photographer provided, not the ones I edited, or at least I'd make a distinction when showing them.

Yes and no. As far as I know the Windows source code is not available to anyone, but here is the source code for all of Microsoft .NET https://github.com/dotnet, here is Meta's large language model https://github.com/meta-llama/llama.

Yeah this is sometimes true, but sometimes it isn't. It's only really done for commercial gain and on the other side of the analogy I just don't see what the commercial gain is by refusing to give wedding clients the raws, in the case they're already paying for the rest of the service as normal. I've already acknowledged that in a more commercial setting (e.g. a product photoshoot) keeping hold of the raws seems like it could be commercially valuable. All that's going to happen when you give a wedding client the raws is that they'll play around with them a bit because they're an enthusiastic amateur. They'll still have all the good ones that you the photographer edited and can show their friends, they might even say "oh yeah, this person was great, they gave me the raws as well".

If I were to work as a contractor contributing to a clients project, they would see all my commits etc. I think this is a side issue though.

I would happily share my codebase if there was no downside (e.g. see here for a codebase I 'own' https://github.com/ropeparison/rope-parison). I don't understand what the downside is of giving wedding clients raws, I'm just not getting where the commercial value is in keeping them.

Again, I've already acknowledged that in a more commercial setting keeping the raws seems sensible, but we're talking about random peoples weddings. No-one is selling their wedding photos on for vast sums of money (unless they're a celebrity, which is very much an edge case!)

The number of weddings where this would be an issue is surely miniscule.

Great.

Does a bit of amateur fun editing some photos of their wedding day not count as a "legitmate need"? I know it's hardly essential to the survival of the human race, but most of what we do isn't!

I'm afraid I still don't understand what the negatives are in terms of giving out raws to wedding clients, as long as they're still paying for the whole service (e.g. raws just coming with prints or digital copies). The only downside which I sort of understand is them doing dodgy editing and then showing it to friends under your name. I don't think that would be a massive problem, they're not going to edit all the photos because it's really time consuming, one half of the couple probably isn't into photography and will just share the original versions, the person who is into editing photos is probably also into telling people they edited the photos.

I do appreciate that it's your choice as a photographer if you want to give raws or not.

Sorry that's quite long, don't feel the need to reply to all of it!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

It doesn't matter. Personally I'm finding the whole thread very illuminating, as I'm sure MJ is too.

In reply to Fellover:

I think this is one of the big differences. Most wedding photographer clients probably don't know what a raw file is or what it can be used for, and even if they did wouldn't know how to edit them.

If they did, there would be demand for the raws and photographers would likely have to share them to stay competitive.

As it's likely a very niche request, the photographer is going to prioritise their needs.

Hobbyist photographers is a growing area so it may change in the future.

It's odd to me that when I take photos, I wouldn't dream of not having the raws. But you pay for a service and don't get this luxury. Seems backwards to me.

In reply to montyjohn:

It seems to me that the only reason to be in possession of a RAW file is if you plan to do a new edit of a photo. This a very significant part of producing a photograph. It is entirely understandable that any photographer, professional or otherwise, would want to retain control over this. What you do with your own RAWS is entirely up to you.

Perhaps you would be better off just giving a friend your camera and getting them to take some photos for you which you could then edit yourself. It would save a lot of money and maybe avoid the often unwelcome invasiveness of professional wedding photography.

In reply to montyjohn:

I don't do weddings at all, but if I did, I would never, ever give RAW files to a client. They are effectively negatives in old money, which are the property, and copyright, of the photographer. RAWs and negatives are the very foundational material from which photographers produce marketable work. It is therefore crucial that the he/she has absolute control over the quality of the end product. 

If on the other hand a client does have access to my RAWs, he/she could produce badly edited rubbish from a cheap printer - which would still have my name associated with it. Potentially, this could have catastrophic consequences in marketing for future work.

I'd be slightly more willing to part company with jpegs because they have my own edits baked into them with fewer risks of interpretive error by the client. Even so, the risks still remain and I would have to be as sure as possible that the client's ideas of image quality match my own.  

In reply to montyjohn:

Wedding photographer (amongst a number of other sectors) here. Most of my wedding photography is via a colleague who offers pictures and video and just pays me a day rate. If any of his clients ever requested the RAWs they'd be deeply disappointed.. I'm under strict instruction to shoot JPEG. 'Editing' is done by doing it correctly to begin with. Images are delivered to the client in a neutral (but colour corrected, straightened, sharpened where required) state, usually within 48 hours. If the client wants to stick their own instagram filter on it then it's in their hands as the best possible blank canvas for them to do so - free from any styling of our own.

If I do a wedding on my own then I will shoot RAW however this is only for future proofing myself if I were to ever develop an editing style that required it, so I have an editable archive. Anything I do with them now doesn't require the RAW.. just basic colour, sharpen and straighten and out the door to the client as quickly as possible. Why photographers spend bloody ages on edits is beyond me, who wants to be editing a job from a month (or more!) ago when you've got incoming jobs to focus on?  

I don't have a problem sharing RAWs with any PR or commercial client, and wouldn't to a wedding client either if they were to ask. If they asked for 'all' of them I'd still only give them the RAWs that matched the final edit.. not the blinkers, not the slightly out of focus etc.

In terms of the event photography - I used to work with a small team of colleagues doing Christmas parties in the big marquee at Tatton Park and Aintree, up to 1500 folk a night at each venue. We did either one 6x9 at £15 (Aintree) or £20 (Tatton), three for £35/£45 or a USB stick with everything on for £50/£60. It was an amazingly easy upsell to the USB stick just to save folk spending half their night choosing which print or three to have. Used to be around maybe 20-50 pictures if they went for the USB option, depending on size of the group etc. Didn't even delete the flash misfires, just banged them all out of Lightroom to the USB, took the money and said thanks. Volume and efficiency was key, and people loved it. As someone said above, the pictures were tomorrows chip paper as far as we were concerned.. worthless as soon as the client walked away from the desk.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

'If montyjohn did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him'

Voltaire

In reply to mrphilipoldham:

I reckon you've got the winning formula and will be what more people expect as the generations roll on.

In reply to 65:

I am finding it illuminating but I am not convinced that monytjohn is, hence my question 

In reply to AllanMac:

I can't help but think about the chap above with a shelf full of old negatives. They aren't bringing anybody any joy. My parent for daft reasons kept their photos loose in a draw. I cleared it out a while back and found the original negatives of many of them. This was great as I scanned them in (took forever) so I could share all the digitals of our childhood with my sisters.

I think of the memories of people's most important day on that shelf. Who know what's happened to them, do they still have decent copies of the photos, if they've passed, which kid gets which photo. It just seems like a waste.

I guarantee, that most customers that get a photo printed from a professional wish they had the digital.

This has been said many times and I still don't get it.

I know you don't do weddings, but if we shared a wedding photo (edited or not) on social media I'm not going to add a source. I honestly don't know who the photographer for my wedding was now. If however somebody looked at our album and said great photos, who was the photographer, if they wouldn't part with digitals this would be the first feedback I would give.

We're in an age now were youngsters getting married may never have had a camera that isn't digital. They only view and share photos digitally, so more and more I think it will be expected, and the feedback of not providing digitals, or charging through the roof for them I highly suspect will impact enquires far more than a really unlikely scenario of a edit with a footnote of the photographer named. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I'm finding it interesting how consistent it is that photographers don't like sharing digitals/raws. I'm also finding it interesting that they are putting their perceived risk above that of the customers which I think will hurt photographers more in the long run. But there's no way of recording how many enquiries didn't happy as a customer regretted not getting a digital copy and passed this information on.

Really a proper survey of wedding customers is needed as I think there's is a disconnect between what customers want and photographers want.

In reply to montyjohn:

I don't see how a customer bodged JPEG edit/print is any better for the photographer's reputation than a customer bodged RAW edit/print, what's the difference?

For a wedding where there's one customer hiring the photographer to supply digital images that have no commercial value to anybody else it's weird from a customer perspective to be precious about holding back a particular format.

In reply to elsewhere:

None at all.

In reply to montyjohn:

and yet, back in the real world, customers are happily receiving their nice photographer balanced and edited digital files... to share online to their friends whilst also not giving a monkeys what file format they are in.

It's only seems to be your insistence that they don't. Even your photographer did offer jpg. (although now you are saying they didn't)  Your original gripe was only the format and the cost, but there are different levels of wedding photography to suit all budgets - and the more budget friendly do offer sets of digital files within the package.  I got a CD full of images about half an hour after a friend's wedding to create a photobook for them. Whilst at another I was at, the photographer was selling prints from a laptop at the reception along with digital versions. Some others I've known run their print service through online labs where you can opt for a good quality digital version rather than a print.

In reply to Bellie:

No, I've said requesting raws is probably a niche request and most customers probably don't know what a raw is.

Yes they did. But we did have to make several enquires until we found one that was willing.

No I'm not?

No it wasn't. Is everything in your post wrong? It was the format and the business model. I've not said their fees are too expensive. But I do dislike spending a high amount on just 2 photos, only for 48 to go in the bin. This isn't  complaint about cost, it's the wasteful model that leaves customers feeling disappointed. Different issue.

I generally found the opposite where day rates were higher to get digital only.

In reply to montyjohn:

 > although now you are saying they didn't

No I'm not?

If however somebody looked at our album and said great photos, who was the photographer, if they wouldn't part with digitals this would be the first feedback I would give.

They would get more money out of me, if they just sold the whole lot in digital at a fair rate

Cost gripe or business model - you decide.

The RAW thing continues throughout the thread.

In reply to Frank R.:

I have to say, I work in software, games development to be precise, and in most cases, as in unless there is a very good reason and no other option*, we never ever bring in any external middleware that does not come with source code.

I have had to debug, patch, and/or reimplement/replace too many of those to even contemplate taking the risk.

My point here is that while I understand why some photographers wouldn’t want to share RAWs, just like some developers don’t like sharing source in their B2B sales, this can become part of whether their services will be used or not.

Personally, for photos I paid for, I’d expect a final image in high quality JPG, rather than a raw, if the editing isn’t up to my liking I’m going to say so. On the other hand, if they did not offer digital copies at all, I have to agree with montyjohn, they wouldn’t even enter the list of photographers I would entertain the thought of using. I suspect as more and more millennials and Gen-Z are married, fewer and fewer are going to accept not having photos they can post on the Internet.

Edit: Is print only common at all these days?

In reply to Alkis:

On the other hand, if they did not offer digital copies at all, I have to agree with montyjohn, they wouldn’t even enter the list of photographers I would entertain the thought of using.

Maybe the business model that Montyjohn is suggesting will actually be out of date/step with the modern gen already.  As far as to say with everything being Insta and online, the need for high quality images is diminishing and a business model where a photographer sells a package of online ready files to pop into their SM app of choice might be the route? with a few prints to satisfy the oldies!  Already you see happy couples telling FB friends to hold off posting their pics of the happy day, until they can post the official chosen ones themselves.

In reply to Bellie:

Note the if. 

If I'm willing to spend more money it's obviously not a cost issue. It's entirely a business model issue.

Yes, there have been some strong opinions on it.

In reply to Alkis:

We might print five photos a year. Five out of hundreds that are taken. We don't have the wall space for any more, and know that we don't ever look at photo albums.

In reply to montyjohn:

The RAW thing is a bit like how it works in tv production - broadcaster commissions a show, we go shoot the rushes, edit them into tv programme, give that final master to the broadcaster.

The raw rushes which we shot to make that show, which are generally of a higher quality than the final master delivered to the client and are about 50 x the volume, belong to us.

We would never give the rushes to the broadcaster. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Do you have to agree with others or change your opinion in order to be illuminated?

In reply to montyjohn:

Raw files belong to the person who shot them, regardless of who payed that person to be there on the day. They are the photographers intelectual property and can be put to other uses - either used in their portfolio, or to promote what they do on social media, or in some cases re-sold. It makes absolutely no sense to give away their own intelectual property, regardless of who is asking (do you often give away your own property?). This is a matter of principle for a photographer and shouldn't be expected by a client.

When you pay a photographer you are paying them to provide you with a product - in this case, an edited digital image or print.

When you go to a restaurant you pay a chef to use their skills and ingredients to prepare you a product - a meal. You dont then take a carrier bag into the kitchen and fill it from the fridge and cupboards so you can go and make your own food at home. You didn't pay to take whatever raw ingredients you want, you payed for a meal.

Photographers and others in the creative industries choose to live what is often an incredibly fragile existence, with no financial security, no sick pay, big responsibilities and no pension. They pour years of their lives into honing a craft (just like chefs). They shouldn't be expected to give their work away. What they charge per working day seems high, but when you spread that across a year (they don't get paid like that day after day) it often equates to a fraction of an average salary, and has to sustain their existance during long gaps between paid jobs. They also may need to turn up with £20k or so worth of equipment to do their job - a boss didn't provide that for them!

A lot goes on behind that one image that you pay, or in this case didn't pay for...

In reply to Land and Sky Media:

Seen a few times in this thread the argument that the pro photographer doesn't want to have their reputation besmirched by cack handed editing of raw images. How would anyone know who took the original photo?

In reply to Land and Sky Media:

Do the materials that were used to build your home belong to the builder and can he put them to other uses?

In reply to Land and Sky Media:

I think everyone on this thread acknowledges this. One use they could be put to is being sold to a client.

Yes, every day I give away my intellectual property to my employer because I signed a contract saying that's what happens. Give away is the wrong phrase really, I'm paid for it. In the same way the photographer would be paid for giving away the raw.

I think the point is that some people think it's not unreasonable for that product to be edited digital image/print + the raw.

In reply to Fellover:

I guess in most industries the end agreement is some level of compromise between the wishes of the client and the wishes of the business.

If wedding photographers found that not including raws was putting them out of business, they’d probably start doing it as that would quickly eclipse other concerns. If they are happy enough with the work they are getting on their current terms then why would they introduce a perceived risk to their business (however small) for what must surely be pretty negligible gain?

In reply to Stuart Williams:

Yeah that's fair. As long as the number of people who want the raws is small and all the photographers 'hold the line', they don't really have anything to lose.

Doesn't stop it being frustrating for the small number of wedding clients who want the raws!

In reply to Fellover:

My thinking is similar. I didn't think comparing sharing raws to giving away property is equivalent. If you could copy and paste my property take what you like, no skin off my nose. I don't want the copyright, I don't need it, I just want to right to use the photos how they are typically expected to be used as well as the right to edit them (whether JPEGs or raws).

I don't remember if I had a contract with my photographer, and if I did, what it said, but I think a reasonable expectation is the photographer should be limited to use the photos for marketing only. I think selling photos of my family is very weird and I wouldn't knowingly sign up to that (although I possibly did).

I also think it's reasonable to allow the customer to use the photos for personal and family use with no restrictions, and we shouldn't be allowed to sell them or use them for any commercial purposes. 

I probably won't engage with a photographer again if I can help it. Too me blockers from many and too many reasons to just take your own photos when possible, but if I do, I'll definitely be more aware of what to ask, what I get, how I can use them and what the photographer will be allowed to use them for.

In reply to montyjohn:

So all of the normal things one should be mindful of when signing a contract for the delivery of any service?

In reply to tehmarks:

I can smell the sarcasm as you type.

It certainly never crossed my mind that some photographers wouldn't allow their photos to be edited or that they could sell photos of my family to somebody else (I still find this creepy).

In my mind if I'm paying for them they were my photos. I know the law says otherwise but this isn't the intuitive conclusion I would draw.

Am I right that the photographer at nursery, who has taken photos of my child, who I haven't engaged with at all can sell those pictures? If that's true it's absolutely nuts.

If you don't know about these things you're not going to ask are you?

In reply to montyjohn:

It certainly never crossed my mind that some photographers wouldn't allow their photos to be edited or that they could sell photos of my family to somebody else (I still find this creepy).

(No disrespect intended) but I think these things are more imagined/perceived than real.  Maybe someone suggested such things upthread.  Whilst your wedding photos would technically be available to sell to anyone (within reason). Presumably you would email all the people you wish to see the official pics with a secure link to the photographers portal, if your chosen photographer offers this kind of online print service.  Otherwise it's the old school method of handing the proofs around the family to select.

I would think that nursery photography carries its own strict rules, and you would be the only one to be able to buy images of your child.  It used to be the case that you ordered any amount to send to grannies etc. Nowadays you would probably get your own link/code to order online from the photography company.

In reality - a photography contract is simply an summation of what you expect the photographer to do, what they will do/deliver and what is expected of you the client.  Deliberately simple to avoid mistakes on the day.

Your photographer however will operate as all business do under a set of terms and conditions.  Which would be where you find things like original property ownership etc (the RAW file issue!)

If you can find a contract that stipulates no editing of digital images I'd be surprised. If you want to tinker in PS with the stuff you buy then I'm sure its up to you.  Even if its just to make the Mother in Law look less grumpy.

In reply to montyjohn:

The photographer at nursery owns the copyright to the pictures they took of our children, but I'm sure they have an agreement in place with said nursery that they won't be selling pictures to third parties without permission.

This is here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/copyright-notice-digital-images-...

"Where you commission a professional to take photographs on your behalf, for example wedding photographs, the copyright will usually remain with the photographer. This means that you need to get the photographer’s permission before printing further copies of the images, sharing them with your friends or family, or undertaking other acts restricted by copyright such as posting the images to social media sites.

Many photographers will include licence terms setting out exactly what use you may make of images in their contract with you. If you have specific uses in mind, you should ensure these are discussed before contracts are settled. You could also agree with the photographer that the copyright will be assigned to you – this would be done by having a written and signed contract with the photographer saying you had bought the copyright from them. Depending on your needs, a less expensive solution may be to pay for a licence.

Where a photograph is commissioned for private and domestic purposes, the commissioner does have a right that the photographs will not be issued to the public without their permission. This means that, although a wedding photographer may own the copyright in images of your wedding, they should not post them on their website or exhibit them in public without your permission."

That last paragraph is key - the photographer is the copyright owner but that doesn't mean they have carte blanche to sell or publish them without your consent.  This I'm sure applies to the photographs that have been taken of our kids at nursery, and indeed to your wedding photos.

The photographer may, of course, show them to prospective clients as examples of their work, and I'm sure that's the limit of their intentions.  In reality photographs of our children or wedding are of little interest or value to anyone but ourselves.

In reply to Iamgregp:

That is a sensible and logical requirement.

In reply to montyjohn:

What might be even more perplexing to you is: 

Based on copyright law, the photos that you are paying for from the photographer don’t actually belong to you, the client. They are still the intellectual property of the person that took them. The photographer is simply signing them over for you to use for an agreed amount of time (very few photographers actually sort out contracts for little jobs though, if at all!). Some clients might pay for the use of those photos in perpetuity (for ever), or for a specific amount of time, and they will be paying for certain uses ie in a print campaign, or to release on social media for marketing. That doesn’t mean the client owns them - which is probably why the photographer isn’t keen for you to re-edit them!

If a photographer sells an image that at the time seems almost worthless (for £5 for instance), then 10years down the line some world event happens and that photograph is suddenly worth £25,000 - Should the photographer still have some ownership and revenue from it? That’s not just hypothetical La La, that circumstance happens regularly. This is why ownership and copyright law exists.

To some extent you are getting frustrated about the ins and outs of copyright law and intellectual property rights. Photographers aren’t to blame for that, it’s a system they work within and it’s quite logical if you work in the industry.

Most people who shoot photos for you would be more than happy to give you what you need for personal use, some might even give you the raw files if you perhaps agreed not to put versions you’d edited on the internet (fair enough I reckon).
 

Maybe you just got a photographer who wasn’t up for all that? or maybe you didn’t approach it respectfully…

I’ve often given clients raw files and footage, but they are almost always charities who are doing important social and environmental work and could use the content to get more value for their campaign without needing more budget. I just ask that I can have a look at what they make with it, and decide whether my name is associated with it. If it’s good I’d like to be credited, I’d rather not! I would never give a business that is making money off the campaign my raw files. I appreciate that’s not what your talking about though.

So yeh, a photographer could technically sell I picture of your kids. I’d say there’s almost no chance they would want to though - that’s a question of ethics. Ethics and intellectual property aren’t the same thing. 

Photographer are generally nice and rational people. Don’t worry, they aren’t out to get out…

In reply to Iamgregp:

‘That last paragraph is key - the photographer is the copyright owner but that doesn't mean they have carte blanche to sell or publish them without your consent.  This I'm sure applies to the photographs that have been taken of our kids at nursery, and indeed to your wedding photos.’

This is a good point yeh. This is where a release form comes in for the client to sign. And I guess you would always need to seek permission before you sell or use that image, but I’ve never done it so I don’t fully know.

In reply to Land and Sky Media:

All of that leaves the interesting question of why anyone would trust s photographer to photograph an intimate family event if they would betray your trust and sell photos of you to anyone else if your circumstances changed for either better or worse?

In reply to timjones:

You are talking about ethics and trust in the context of copyright law and ownership.

I don’t know a single photographer that would do that (without your permission), because it would be unethical.

Maybe if you got Donald Trump to photograph your babies christening he would, or someone who worked for Daily Mail maybe…

We've all seen what the paparazzi do. Unethical and dodgy photographers exist, but it would be silly to mistrust a whole industry!

In reply to Land and Sky Media:

Release forms.  The bane of every production company I've ever worked at.  So important, but so often forgotten, misplaced, mismanaged or not worded correctly!

In reply to Land and Sky Media:

I'm really curious now as to know what T&C's I signed up for my wedding as I have no idea. Tried to find her website but no joy.

Stumbled on this. I don't think I ever read any T&C's but this bit is a bit serious sounding:

https://www.martinvaughanphotography.com/info-faq/wedding-photography-contr...

 The Photographer has unrestricted use of these images and can use them wholly or in part in any publication (commercial or otherwise), portfolio or public display with any retouching or alteration without restriction. At events, it is the client’s responsibility to notify guests of this unrestricted use; that attending the event acts as a model release. The client(s) hereby assigns the photographer the irrevocable and unrestricted right to use and publish photographs of the client(s) or in which the client(s) may be included, for editorial, trade, advertising, educational and any other purpose and in any manner and medium; to alter the same without restriction; and to copyright the same without restriction.

Although somewhere else it says they can't use the photos if it harms the client, so that makes it a bit better. But if a guest just happens to be a future politician and makes a bit of a fool of themselves I suspect all bets would be off.

In reply to montyjohn:

That looks pretty standard terminology for a release/contract from a photographer yeh. You should see some of the wording for TV.

Always good to read the T&C’s! Though I admit, I rarely do either.

In reply to montyjohn:

Sounds serious but in effect its just saying that images taken might end up within adverts or promotional materials for the wedding photographer, so the photographer will assume everyone is ok with having their photo taken, unless they say otherwise (on the run/attending incognito etc).

Otherwise how would they be able show potential clients their wares, if they were unable to show pics of previous work.

But cor blimey - why do they have to sound so formal.

As an aside - I was once asked to edit someone out of a shot.  Because he was there with someone not his wife!

In reply to Bellie:

Don't get me started on solicitors, that would be a long thread.

That's pretty funny.

In reply to Bellie:

Because legally binding documents (like contracts) have to be formal -  i.e., unambiguous in the context of law (as far as is possible*) - in the event of a dispute. Otherwise they are useless.

Aside from the interesting discussion of IP ownership and copyright, the basic issue confronting (and confusing) the OP is that nobody is obliged to provide him with any arbitrary service that he desires. The service provider decides what service they offer and he can choose to take it or leave it as he wills. The responsibility lies with him to (a) understand what he is paying for and (b) to make an informed choice. If nobody is offering the service he wants then that is *his* problem not anyone elses.

* I'm still mentally scarred by spending far too long (years ago) arguing with lawyers about the precise meaning of the word "that" in a slightly ambiguous legal context.

In reply to Marek:

I'm not sure why you think I'm confused about it. Maybe I'm a little confused that I believe the way I want to use photos is probably quite typical, and whilst requests for raws may be niche at the moment, I expect it will be more common in the future, so I'm surprised that more photographers don't actively want to capitalise on this and many still use a model that made a lot more sense when photos were developed from film. Although I think that's me more surprised than confused. 

In reply to montyjohn:

You seemed to be confused (apologies if I misread your posts) about what you had paid for and about how 'providing a service' works (the provider offers a service which you accept or decline rather than you putting out a contract for tender). Your original post seemed to suggest that professional photographers didn't understand their business, which I'd suggest is on balance unlikely.

Apart from the T&Cs, there are also such things as privacy and personal likeness laws, which always (at least outside of the US, which is funny their own way) trump T&Cs. Even if the photographer technically owns the copyright to the images, there is also a really big smorgasbord of other laws that apply.

So no, photographers won't really resell your random wedding photos to advertise "a Coca Cola happy couple" on billboards all over the UK or something like that, even if some broadly worded generic copy‑pasta T&Cs might seem to allow that.

Heck, the last thing I'd want in my business would be a client suing me over something, as that's generally really, really bad for any business that basically relies on clients' trust in something that's a pretty personal moment for them.

And the last thing any advertiser would want to see is any lawsuits over their campaign, hence why their corporate lawyers are really keen on model releases and all the important legalese. Think the famous "Windows XP rolling hills" background would work for Microsoft if there were any random, but recognisable people in it, without them specifically signing off their rights to use their likeness? That could be the lawsuit of the century...

You may note that most boudoir photographers' (yes, that's a very real genre) portfolios contain only posed photos of their friends doing the modelling or of professional models, not of their actual clients. For some pretty obvious reasons.

In reply to Frank R.:

Boudoir photographer? Is that a brilliant euphemism or just advertising for IKEA beds and so on?

In reply to Robert Durran:

Google it up, but better not at work, perhaps – it can be a bit NSFW, "wink wink, nudge nudge" in that Monty Python way 

In reply to timjones:

No, Tim. You don't. 

At the time I posted, montyjohn wasn't merely "not agreeing with others", they were lazily regurgitating bits of their OP with a discourteous  disregard for the explanations from people actually in the know. They have subsequently opened up VERY SLIGHTLY. 

In reply to montyjohn:

Photography related (it is technically photography). To address your (self-claimed) "niche" desire to have RAW files so you can apply your photo editing expertise, I will for once give an insight into what I do for a living. I operate a high-end x-ray CT system for industrial inspection. In this context, I (and my employer) am "the photographer". People pay us to create very good quality x-ray CT 3D models of their products so we can try to identify defects / failures etc. 
We output the 3D image data. 
If they ask for the "raw" data, they are asking for an insight into the years of experience put into creating that data. 99 times out of 100 they don't understand what they asking for and would not have a clue how to use it, they just feel that they have some "right" to it. And a lot of time I let them have it, and then ignore their follow up requests for us to explain what to do with the data they've demanded. What I should really do is just give the images (the equivalent of your .jpgs). They have paid for my time to optimise the presentation. 

When you pay the bill in a restaurant, do you kick off when you aren't given a list of the ingredients, the recipe and a run-down of the exact cookers, pans, knives etc. used to prepare your meal? 

In reply to montyjohn:

Useful to remind everyone of the OP here.

I think montyjohn understands it now. I hope so; it's been explained enough times! 


Next: I got my car serviced and they wouldn't give me a video showing all the work they did

In reply to montyjohn:

I couldn't be bothered to read through all the results, but a wedding is (unless very familiar to the photographer) a job that usually requires a pre-visit, discussion with the family and possibly considerable post processing – perhaps 5 days in total in a job that may attract aggression from clergy and others and requires skill, with many quiet days in between unless they have another arm to their photography. Most photography start-ups go bust because of this - I have read up to 90%. £260 / day in that circumstances does not sound unreasonable, and probably rather cheap if you have good pictures, they were done speedily and with good interactions with you and the guests. Having done some weddings for friends I would not rush to return to that task unless pressed, and I am using my camera most days of the week at work.

I can understand that RAW files risk a very poor consumer experiences, but I do not see why you would not be satisfied with high quality TIFFs or JPGS post-processing with an agreed single additional price? There will be many of those photographs that you will never print, but have aunty Flo or whoever pictured and they will be a good thing to hold onto.

The hotel photographer I have much less sympathy with.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

You might be able to answer something I almost forgot about. I broke my foot a few years ago, limped into the NHS, had an x-ray, and sure enough, they showed me a couple of cracks on the screen. It was one of these, uh oh, but yet, at least I'm not complaining other nothing moment. Anyway, I asked if I could take a quick picture of the screen and I wasn't allowed. I didn't ask why, but remember thinking, why can't I take a photo of my own foot?

I wasn't sure if it was a blanket no photos in the hospital reason, or if it was for some other reason similar to what you describe?

I'm an engineer, working for a consultant and I am a designer. We generally share everything, unless the client says they don't want it. This will include optioneering, early drafts, sifting report, decision logs, calculations, assumptions, risks, simulation models the lot. All our experience is handed over to the client, partly so they are protected if they decide to ditch us and finish the work off with someone else, or if they find our solution isn't working down the line and want to re-evaluate things, or maybe they just want to check that we are doing our job properly, usually by hiring another consultant to do an independent peer review. 

I would say many of the reasons for not sharing raws apply to engineering, however, client needs are just far more important. We literally have workshops around added value to find ways to identify things we are already doing that the client may want to so can give them more as a selling point.

I don't think we will ever agree because possibly through my profession, I have a different expectation of the relationship between client and professional. You say I don't understand, I do understand the reasons that have been given in this thread, I just don't agree with principle of them. And that's fine, if I'm a minority it won't matter, if not, something will eventually change. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

To be fair at the time that you posted there had been quite a few replies that appeared to dismiss and/or disregard the content of the OP.

Is that not also discourteous?

I think the request for RAW files is legitimate and whilst a photographer can refuse that request I'm not sure that I have seen anybody offer an entirely logical reason for that refusal in the thread.

A wedding photographer is nothing without a subject to photograph and the attitude that the photographer has a greater right to the images than the subject seems both selfish and illogical.

In reply to timjones:

You need to read the entire thread again.

In reply to 65:

I agree with tim. In this thread there's a lot of photographers saying that the raws are their property, they don't have to and don't want to sell raws (that's totally fine, up to them), but very little in the way of compelling reasons why they would refuse in the context of a wedding.

Edit to add. Obviously 'compelling' is in the eye of the beholder, which goes a long way to explaining all the disagreement.

In reply to 65:

No thank you, Ive already read it all once and substantial parts of it twice

It is a typical UKC thread with 2 sides with opposing views failing to reach agreement because both opinions have their own validity.

Accusing people of being discourteous for not sharing your own view is just plain rude.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

TBF I cannnot remember any garage trying to claim some sort of extended rights to the use of my car just because I had paid them to service it.

Once the bill is settled all the parts that they have fitted become mine and I think that I may also entitled to ask for the old parts that they have removed.

I am not entitlled to have their tools but no-one is asking a photographer to hand over their cameras after every shoot

In reply to montyjohn:

It’ll be a blanket no photos policy - standard policy across all NHS services (and many other services) including to avoid any risk that there is another persons data anywhere within the shot, or that another patient is visible.

In reply to SouthernSteve:

Having been self-employed for over 30 years paying for my quiet days has always been my own repsonsibility. The usual way to do this is by finding productive work to do on those quiet days.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

that’s funny, ’cause a few years back… that was exactly What they did… as in a video on all the checks they did highlighting if it was ok, should be looked at, or should ve repaired. They did not show step be step repair DIY videos though. But still a nice visual representation of the stuff they did or checked. And it was sent at the same time the notice to pick up the car was sent. Rather cool, but indeed I would not be able to do tge maintenance work myself based on that video…

In reply to HeMa:

My wife had keyhole surgery to repair the cartilage in her knee and they kindly provided a video of what had gone on during the surgery inside her knee. I’m pretty sure I could now carry out the operation myself should her other knee have problems. 

In reply to montyjohn:

Sorry, I have had nothing to do with medical x-rays since a brief M.Sc project in 1997 and have no idea about IP rights within hospitals. 

In reply to Fellover: 

have you ever handed over “raw” data (whether photographic files or in some other format or field) by demand of a customer, only to have them angrily complain that they don’t know what to do with them or they “look rubbish”? I have. And a poster upthread alluded to this with specific reference to wedding photographs. Maybe another reason that photographers don’t want to give them out.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The assumption that they won't know what to do with the data may be correct in some cases.

In other cases in will be incorrect, rather patronising and maybe even discourteous.

The courteous answer would probably be to ask if they know how to process the data rather than making blind assumptions.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I have had a somewhat similar experience.  You end up giving free lessons in how to deal with the data to stave off repetitional damage.

Providing an end-to-end service, having a potential client ask for access to the middle of the process raises a bunch of red flags about how they’re probably going to be a massive time sink not making their business worthwhile.  

In reply to wintertree:

Indeed. As a service business you are balancing providing a more complex (personal, risky) service against the risk of customer confusion and reputational damage. You can't realistically do that on a case-by-case basis so you accept that the safe and sensible think to do is to turn away that 5% of business that wants something 'more' and keep things relatively simple and low risk for the other 95%. It's called having a well thought out, sustainable and scalable business model (to the OP's original point).

In reply to timjones:

I never wrote that I made any such assumption, but you clearly have a bee in your bonnet about all of my posts so I am not even going to stoop to trying to dignify myself, to timjones, with any sort of justification despite having actual experience-based justifications. You'll argue and dislike whatever I write anyway. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

What on earth are we doing here if we cannot debate things?

You seem tobe on a bit sensitive?

I rarely dislike posts and if I do it is related to the content rather than the poster, why would you assume that I dislike whatever you write.?

 

In reply to Fellover:

Agreed - when somebody is paying for my time as a consultant, as far as I'm concerned they are paying for the output of that time. I think this includes the source code and any documentation of how the thing works, although I realise plenty of people deliberately produce obtuse results to try and ensure repeat business (I think they generally lose out in the long run).

If they're paying for use of a product I have produced, this is different, and they'd be paying a fixed price in return for some the use of some predefined thing.

I have produced plenty of code for customers, and open source code. I've had many people mess around with both and end up with bad results - I don't particularly care, they chose to do that, it's their problem. If they went around claiming I'd produced the bad result, perhaps I'd care more but I wouldn't try to force them to use only my code. In practice, the more common complaint in the open source world is not attributing your work rather than claiming you did something you didn't (although I have encountered both).

I still get plenty of work by word of mouth, people seem to remember the good job I did in the first place, and when they find that somebody else can't necessarily do as good a job this only reinforces their perception of me.

On the Windows example - reverse engineering is always possible (see: FreeDOS, Wine, ScummVM etc.) and is generally legal (in the US there are laws against doing so in some circumstances where the aim is specifically to facilitate copyright infringement rather than to produce an equivalent product). Less so with a photograph once the photons have interacted with the imaging sensor and the moment has passed! Perhaps you could ask somebody to paint a watercolour based on a photo? I think interfaces have generally been regarded as not copyrightable, so the analogy really starts to break down rather quickly once you dig into it.

An analogy might be to hand over RAW files if you're on a day rate, on the condition that your name can't be associated with any derivative work. i.e. there is a difference between buying "a" specific collection of photographs, and a day of somebody's time.

In reply to timjones:

You seem less to be debating, and more to be making very strong (and incorrect) implications that alter the meaning of my posts. 

By "dislike" I didn't mean "clicking the dislike button". I meant actually disliking. 

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I'm not sure I follow. Your point originated around the client may not know what to do with raws (or similar). I don't think Tim said anything wrong, only that making the effort to understand the clients needs would be a good thing.

I don't agree with your original point however. First, in all the scenarios discussed in this thread the client will have the edited outputs as JPEG and the raws so the client isn't likely to complain that the raws look terrible. If anything they are more likely to appreciate the effort gone into the editing seeing the final result side by side.

Second, if there was a scenario where only raws were being provided then it's down to the photographer to explain to the client what they are getting and what they are not getting.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

You stated that maybe photographers didn't want to hand over RAW data because the clients might not know how to use it?

There doesn't seem to be much room to misinterpret that?

It is possible to hold an opinion without disliking.the opposing view or the person that holds that view.

In reply to montyjohn:

What field of engineering? I am also an engineer, working in an engineering consultancy, and we often tell clients they can't have the "raw" data behind the deliverables that we produce for them, as a lot of it is out IP that we believe gives us an edge on our competitors (I imagine we all do the same using very similar systems as we all use the same industry software).

In your case in the OP though, I can understand you wanting the jpegs and I can understand why that might be expensive due to the lost "mark up" for the prints, but surely you have picked a photographer for their style of image (which not only comes from their eye for an image/framing but their editing skill too) and if they gave you the raw files instead of the jpegs, you are missing out on a lot of what you have paid for?

(As an aside, since I started "shooting raw" I imagine some photographers would just be embarrassed about sharing what a raw photo actually looks like compared to the images they shared......)

In reply to montyjohn:

You're talking about a rather idealised hypothetical client there, who seems to be perfectly logical, reasonable and honourable.  The photographers who've piped up in this thread and tried to tell you why they choose not to share RAW files with their clients (those who do actually produce them) are speaking from experience of clients in the real world who may be somewhat less so. 

No doubt you are the living embodiment of that 'perfect' appreciative client who can safely be given the RAW files with no problem at all.  I suspect the trouble is that all the other 'real world' clients would claim to be as well.

In reply to Orkie:

Let's be a bit more precise here: You have a contract with the customer. That contract says what you will deliver. There's no 'as far as I'm concerned' about what you deliver, it's in the contract. If it says you'll deliver source code or RAW, then deliver it. If it says binary code or JPEG then customer doesn't get source/RAW. Simple. If the customer accepts a contract for binary/JPEG and then asks for source/RAW you say "Sorry, that's not what you paid for." If you don't have a contract then you both deserve to be disappointed in the outcome.

In reply to galpinos:

Civil engineering. Infrastructure projects. If we produce something that we want to keep as our IP, we need to be careful that our time developing it is booked as an overhead. If our client has paid for it then we would ordinarily hand it over.

I have no doubt stuff does get produced in the industry that the client isn't aware but has paid for but this isn't being fair to the client. Probably goes against many contracts also.

I was after both. I didn't want the raws instead of JPEGS. I mainly wanted them because we didn't know quite know how we wanted to use the images. What if in a future home we have a room where a photo of our wedding would look great in a certain style that differs to what we have?

What if our taste changes and we decide later that the photos we have are not to are liking anymore?

It's easy for a photographer to know they style, what they like, what they don't. They have the experienced. But clients are often inexperienced in this and may not know their taste and that it may change.

So just future proofing in general. Example above with my parents old draw of photos, which also had the negatives in it. They kept the negatives just in case they wanted more photos producing. They never imagined they would have any value scanning them in to convert them to digital such that they can be shared with the wider family.

Who knows what raws may be useful for in the future? Things we haven't thought of yet.

And then there's just the fair side of it, if I've paid for the photographer's time, the venue, the decorations, the food for the guests. The whole thing basically, the idea that I pay someone to take a picture of somehting I have paid for, but can't even get a copy of the raw data rubs salt in the wound a bit.

In reply to Marek:

Sure, that's just what I'd consider to be standard and reasonable in a professional services contract (and what I'd expect to deliver). Certainly in the IT world. Clearly it's not the norm for photography services and that is the complaint here, is it not?

In reply to Marek:

For B2B you may have a point, but if working directly with individuals, many of which won't think for a second that a contract is needed, or what a contract may contain, or what to even look for, yet apparently they deserve to be disappointed. 

You often learn that you need a contract by being disappointed. That does not mean you deserve it. What a terrible attitude to have.

In reply to deepsoup:

Is there a photographer here that has actually shared raw files with a customer and then been criticised for poor quality? If so, was it JPEGs and raw, or just raw?

In reply to montyjohn:

It doesn't matter if it's a physical thing or a service: You gave gave someone some money without asking what you'll get in return. "Pig in a poke".

In reply to Marek:

Well I didn't, I asked before paying. Order is a little hazy, but I think we met up first, asked all the questions, this is when the raw thing came up, then did an engagement shoot, then paid, then she did the work. But who knows, memories work in odd ways.

But I still disagree with your point. Imagine if you hired a builder to do some roof insulation work. Whilst doing the work, he took a load of photos to show you and said, "this is how much insulation I managed to get in, just took these photos before boxing it all in so i can show you".

If I said, "ohh, great, can you email me those photos as it might be handy when it comes to selling as proof of what's there", and the builder said, "no, these are my photos, you haven't paid me for them or agreed this beforehand".

Whilst the builder would be in his right to say so, my opinion of that builder would be in tatters and I'd probably never use them again.

In reply to montyjohn:

That of course is your privilege. Out of curiosity, if he'd not shown you the pictures in the first place would you have been happy?

In reply to montyjohn:

I'm a bit confused: You say "... asked all the questions, this is when the raw thing came up ..." Did she say she'd provide the RAW files or not? If she said no and you accepted that then surely you have no complaint. If she said yes and then refused than that's a completely different matter.

In reply to Marek:

She said no, and we accepted.

We dealt with a fair amount of photographers trying to get what we wanted and this option was the least compromised.

I can't can't complain that there wasn't a photographer that offered the service I wanted and I had to make a compromise. I'm not going to complain to her, and I haven't, but why can't I complain generally? I do have a complaint. I couldn't find the service I wanted.

In reply to Marek:

I would expect so. If you don't know something exists you can't want it. But I know the raws exist. They are probably still on a hard drive somewhere.

In reply to montyjohn:

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

WTAF? You've got bonkers expectations.

In reply to montyjohn:

So you got what you paid for and were (hypothetically) happy, the builder then gave you a freebie, but you wanted a bigger one and now you're unhappy with him for only giving you a small one?

In reply to Marek:

A freebie of an item that's free to give.

If my dashcam recorded a traffic accident I would freely hand over the info to help someone out. It's the decent thing to do. 

I would expect the same from a builder. 

In reply to montyjohn:

You have degenerated into near-incomprehensibility now.

Most/many professional photographers who shoot weddings will be members of the BIPP (British Institute of Professional Photography) … I used to be a member when I was doing professional wedding, portrait and industrial jobs. They were very useful for all such legal questions. You can still look up various guidelines on their website, even if you’re not a member. For example:

"Who owns the copyright in a photograph?
"In most circumstances, the copyright in a photograph belongs to the person who took it, unless the photograph was taken in the course of the photographer’s employment, when the employer owns the copyright. These are the default positions and can be altered by contract.

"A person who commissions a freelance photographer for a particular assignment is not regarded in law as an employer and the copyright will belong to the photographer.

"…. RAW format

"… It is extremely rare for a photographer to hand over or sell their RAW files, unless they’re working in a partnership with a retoucher, company or another photographer to process the files. It is quite similar to giving a customer cake batter before putting it in the oven – the job isn’t finished at this stage."

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

A lot of montyjohn's posting history does the same. They come across as needlessly angry and wound up. I tend not to interact, although I have no regrets about my posts on this thread. This is my last one on this thread.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

There isn't a question about who owns the copyright. And it's well established that it's rare for the raws to be handed over.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

It's possibly the way you are reading them. I'm neither angry or wound up. But I think it's always worth sharing experiences and thoughts on all matters of life.

In reply to montyjohn:

Chuck them in the bin? I don't know really. What if your taste changes and you decide that the wife you married is not to your liking anymore?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Same here. It’s only about my fourth anyway. It’s just too tedious/boring.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

He's got a point though.
What is actually so precious that the photographer feels the need to hold on to the RAW files and not just give them to client?
No skin off their nose, as I assume that once the job is done, that they will never even think of that particular assignment ever again and will in all probability bin the files in due course.
Why not just give them to the client?
 

In reply to montyjohn:

A lot of where you are going with this is getting a little batshit but in answer to the above (batshit) question, if I'd been the photographer and you contacted me about this, I'd propose doing another edit for you and provide you with a price. If I was no longer in the photography biz I might just chuck you the RAWs and wish you luck, though equally if your correspondence resembled this thread there's a good chance I'd not bother responding.

The legal aspects of and the reasons why RAW images remain the property of the photographer have been explained to death. If you (and a few others) haven't grasped that by now then I give up.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Photoshop someone else's head onto the wedding photos?

In reply to FactorXXX:

Because it's not the finished result - it's about as far removed from the finished result that you can get without not taking the photograph at all. When you commission a painting you don't expect the artist to also give you their rough sketches.

In reply to 65:

That sounds like the expensive repeat work I'm trying to avoid.

In reply to montyjohn:

As many thoughtful people in history have observed: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."

Probably should be engraved in big letters above the portal of every social media site/app.

In reply to montyjohn:.

Statements like this only ever come from those who have never run a business!

In reply to Marek:

You consider customer needs, experience and feedback to be foolish? Interesting.

In reply to montyjohn:

I think this is a good example of the possible risks of giving away the RAW files:

https://petapixel.com/2014/11/23/revisiting-case-wedding-photographer-threa...

Obviously it’s a fairly extreme case where he gave away all of the RAW files (rather than just the selected best images), and he also made the mistake of not having any contract in place, but it illustrates the potential risks in a (very) worst case scenario. 

From this thread on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/WeddingPhotography/comments/96ckow/how_long_do_you...) it sounds like the vast majority of wedding photographers keep a backup of their selects indefinitely (it something I certainly do for all the shoots that I do as storage is very cheap nowadays), so maybe a reasonable solution if you decided at a later date that you didn’t like the style of the edit anymore would be to contact that photographer and ask them if they’d be happy to give them a re-edit. I’d hazard a guess that most photographers would be happy to do this. They’d obviously charge for the editing time, but it means that you’d get what you wanted, and the photographer would also be happy that the images retain a style that they’re also happy with (which solves the potential issue of reputational risk to the photographer if poorly edited images appeared online/social media with their name attached to them).

It also sounds like from this thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/o4opa4/why_is_asking_a_weddin...) that there’s a mix of some photographers being happy to hand out RAWs to clients and some who aren't, so I’m sure if you shop around a bit you could find a photographer who would be happy to provide them. I guess the decision as to whether a photographer is happy to give out RAWs is an entirely personal one and you should respect their reasons for not doing so if they aren't (and instead look for someone who is happy to provide them!).

In reply to tehmarks:

I assume that the photographer would still give the client edited photos as either JPEG's and/or prints.
Why not then just give the client the RAW files?
The photographer has provided the client with what they feel is the best available photos after editing, etc. and it gives the client the option of delving into the RAW files to see if the photographer has missed anything of interest.
I think a lot of photographers wanting to keep the RAW files harks back to the film days when the negatives were sacrosanct.  Times have changed though, you can have multiple copies of the same RAW file and it doesn't matter if one gets lost.
I also think there's a bit of elitism going on as well and the photographer doesn't want anyone else to have a play with their work.  Again, that might be harking back to film when the only people that could produce negatives were people with access to a darkroom.  Those days are gone and lots of people have access and ability to edit RAW files as least as well as a professional photographer.  
As for the photographer not wanting to give the RAW files to the client for reputational reasons due to poor editing, etc. then couldn't the client just edit the provided JPEG's?
Obviously, it's up to the client and photographer to discuss this before the event and the client can always go to a photographer that will provide the RAW files.

In reply to FactorXXX:

Why would you distrust that the photographer has done their job properly and used their professional judgement to furnish you with the set of photographs that they think are usable and fully document your event, fully corrected technically and processed as per the aesthetic the photographer is presumably selling themselves on?

Realistically, what are you actually going to do with an extra thousand photos that are technically unusable or photographically really dull, plus the other thousand photos you already have processed versions of, in their pre-processed state probably needing all sorts of technical corrections? Why don't you trust the photographer to do what you're actually paying them to do? What do you think you're going to find that they've overlooked?

This just seems to be another flavour of the bane of my life, where people seem to think that, because I charge per day, they are paying for my time rather than for a service.  If you want a robot to press the shutter button and hand over the SD card as-is, you don't need a photographer.

This thread is making me really quite thankful that I only deal with professional clients and not the general public, to be quite honest.

(Edit to clarify: I'm not a photographer but am a freelance creative in a semi-related discipline.)

In reply to Hamish Frost:

Would it have been any better if he hadn't handed over the RAW files?

In reply to timjones:

It wasn't clear to me if the photographer only provided the raws, or edited images and all of the raws. It's quite ambiguous.

Could be read either way.

In reply to montyjohn:

I mean "Not several hundred edited images that are typical for wedding photography agreements, *but* ALL OF THE RAW IMAGES" seems to suggest to me that he just delivered all of the raws. It then later says that in order to try and resolve the issue, the photographer offered to retouch some of the images, which might suggest that there were no edited images provided originally.

Either way I'm not sure how that's particularly relevant to the original issues you raised in your first post, I was just trying to illustrate a potential risk in providing RAW images (in that they aren't a finished product). Did you have any thoughts on my proposed solution (whereby you contact your photographer and ask about re-editing)?

In reply to timjones:

I'd imagine if he hadn't handed over all of the RAW files, the situation might have been better yes. The first stage of the edit/post-production process is going through images and culling any which aren't that good or are out of focus etc. I'd say on an average shoot I probably end up getting rid of about two thirds of the shots I take, and the other third are the keepers that the client sees. This other article about the case suggests that he had a lot of good images in there, but because the client saw all of the RAW files, they probably saw all the non-keepers too and drew a conclusion that he'd done a bad job:

https://petapixel.com/2014/12/09/gary-fong-account-ridiculous-300000-lawsui...

In reply to Hamish Frost:

I wouldn't do this. I would just accept a compromised result and edit the JPEGs.

In reply to tehmarks:

I would trust them and that's why I would pay them for their services in the first place and part of the deal would be them supplying an agreed number/type of prints and/or JPEG's.

What do mean by 'technically unusable'?  Editing RAW files is relatively straightforward and doesn't require any special skills that only a professional photographer would be aware of.
They might be photographically dull to the photographer for aesthetic and/or technical reasons, but to the client, there might well be some photos in there that are special to them despite what the photographer thinks.

I said in my earlier post that there was a possibility of elitism at play and with photographers thinking the client can't possibly know as much as them when it comes to editing RAW files.  Think you've just confirmed it...

In reply to FactorXXX:

Fantastic. That's sensible. That's not what the OP is suggesting though.

Technically unusable - out of focus, unrescuably underlit - unusable photographs, for technical reasons. Technically unusable.

I think you're not understanding the entire concept of paying for someone's creative abilities. If you paid me for a painting, I wouldn't expect to provide you the pencil sketch I used to develop it. A raw file is an intermediate step. Actually taking the photo is the beginning of the process, not the end. I'm not sure how else it can be put. It's got nothing to do with elitism, and to me everything to do with providing a finished product. A raw file isn't even close to a finished product, somewhat by definition and by name.

I can't begin to imagine the video equivalent of demanding the entire set of original camera records, even the ones not used in the final edit, in raw format. It would be totally absurd. If it's part of the contract, sure. But it's a weird expectation.

In reply to montyjohn:

I’m assuming your wife doesn’t read ukc.

In reply to 65:

Haha, no. But for the record she's irreplaceable (just in case).

Either way, it lstil looks to me like there is a fundamental misunderstanding from the OP what a RAW photo actually looks like.

It doesn't! That's part of the problem.

Each and every RAW editing or even viewing application renders them differently. Zero applications even honour any edits saved inside the RAW file made by any other apps.

Say I shoot your wedding under some shite fluorescent and candle lighting mix because that's what your chosen church had. Not wanting to disturb the ambiance, I am not using flash.

I can edit them in e.g. Adobe Camera Raw to carefully balance the colours so your skin won't look like Shrek or some hungover dude. I can even do that toning locally, so your auntie in the second row, who's lit only by the ghoulish green fluorescents doesn't look like Shrek, while the couple near the altar lit by candles don't look all reddish hangover‑like. Just like Hollywood does it at times, unless you want me to replace all the fluorescent bulbs up there with expensive filtered ones and use some 5kW HID lights outside to simulate sunlight (I could of course, but that's gonna cost you some Hollywood rates).

I can make both yours and your auntie's skin tones look pretty natural, even if one of you is lit by greenish fluorescents and the other by reddish candles. All thanks to working in RAW.

I can even give you a finished TIFF that you can print 2m wide if you wish so and if contracted for, even recommending a good printing house that actually knows what colour management means (it can be bloody difficult, that's why it's called colour science!), so you don't get some shite mis‑coloured prints from your local grocery, making everybody look like from Avatar.

I'll even give you JPEGs in sRGB so they still look great on your £200 un‑calibrated TV and would still look OK on the TVs of your family members who have their TV's contrast and saturation dialled up to eleven.

No problem with any of that, that's the service, and photographers want clients to be happy with the result.

Instead of the photos only looking good on my £3,000 colour‑managed and monthly calibrated studio monitor, in a CIE‑standardised studio with special‑grey painted walls and expensive D65 light sources. You are paying for the result, not the process. I'd be even happy to provide you the RAWs

Yet if I give you the very same, edited RAW that I carefully prodded inside Adobe Camera Raw to look great there and you open it up in any other application, say Apple Photos – you won't see any of my hours of work and technical investments that you pay me for. All you might see is a ghastly green Shrek‑ish auntie and a ghastly reddish hangover‑like couple, because that's what the camera saw, given its technical limitations.

Not only I don't control your viewing conditions, I don't even know if your random RAW viewer will see any of the edits I made there for it to look good, or not. And 99% chance it won't. Just like Hollywood doesn't release rough cuts or ungraded (colour grading) films, only the final cut.

Remember, cameras are not eyes. Our eyes and memories capture scenes very differently to cameras. What looks great to our eyes in reality might still need a lot of work to look even remotely the same when captured by a camera and viewed on a screen.

Again, there were professional clients I'd be happy to give RAWs to, as I knew they'd have their own professionals looking at them properly, not messing it up and complaining afterwards due to their own technical incompetence. But sorry, the OP doesn't really seem to be one of them...

In reply to montyjohn:

You've answered your own question, you've paid for their time, not the product, there's a degree of subjectivity in assessing 'terrible' - how terrible ?

In reply to Frank R.:

I thank (and respect) you, as will other contributors. The OP won’t convincingly convey sincerity when they try to post a similar comment 

In reply to Ade in Sheffield:

The arguments being made here are the opposite. As I understand, most photographers here want to be paid for their service (and outputs of that service) and not their time.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

You are quite rude.

Can I just remind you of some of your history on this thread. You introduced yourself by simply saying:

A comment I ignored. Then you move on to:

Then you had a pop at timjones for raising his frankly reasonable and fair points:

Then you said the following about me:

I think you may have an irony deficiency.

In reply to Frank R.:

Not entirely sure why this is a problem. I confess, I've only ever edited my own raws so never tried editing somebody else's. I use darktable, as it's free, or at least I used to, we're going back a bit now to pre kid times when I had time to edit photos and videos etc.

I don't necessarily need the photographers edits baked in as the whole point would be to make my own decisions to make the photo match what I remember it looking like or whatever else takes my fancy. Sure I might cheat and use the JPEG as a reference.

I can quite happily edit my own photos. I'm sure I'm not the most competent, but I know the basics and I'm not going to complain to the photographer if my talent doesn't live up to my expectation.