Wedding Photo Issue

[OverWyreGrower]

Mr OWG and I got married 8 years ago (actually, 9 years in June 2011!) before the digital age of photography really took off.

We paid quite handsomely for a good photographer, got a main album, 2 smaller albums, and then a couple of years later got some re-prints to frame. I suspect that we've spent a good £1.5k on the wedding photography and related prints etc.

I recently contacted the photographer to ask about buying the negatives of the photos we have in the main album (about 14 pictures). I wanted to have them converted to digital files on my PC - this means we can print as many as we want, or photoshop them etc.

Yesterday I got an email back saying that the 14 negatives I wanted would cost me £150; and if I wanted all the negatives from the pictures he took, it would be about £350

I was gobsmacked with the price! I can't believe that someone would charge £150 for 14 negatives that are nearly 9 years old! There is no way that we can afford £150 for them (plus, of course, the cost of having them scanned to digital files). He won't make any money out of the pictures if we're not buying further reprints - and we weren't planning to get any, as we don't need them.

I realise I could have the existing pictures scanned, but I would have to take my wedding album to pieces to do it - the pictures are stuck into mounts etc. I don't really want to start trashing my album!

I haven't replied to his email yet. However, am I totally out of touch? Most of the people I know who got married recently have (within their wedding package) been given a CD with all their pictures on (as well as printed albums etc), for about £50 extra - that's why I thought this was a good idea!

Would I be out of line to write back and say why I find the price too high? Or is it that I'm too tight/skint to appreciate why these are priced like this?

[Aberdeenplotter]

I'd be inclined to be as diplomatic as possible(which for me isn't easy) and to grovel whilst letting them know that you can't afford their prices but also letting them know that they really don't have a market for them either. Maybe also stress that you still have the original album to show that you don't actually need the negatives, just that you would like to have them. In this situation though, the photographer holds all the aces and can hold you to ransom.

[taff]

If you hired a good photographer, then he knows the copyright of his work remains with him, unless you agreed otherwise at the time.
You're asking for the originals that he prints from. If he gives them to you, that's no further income from those prints.
He can still use the photos/negatives for promotional purposes for himself, or for whatever he wants to use them for.
If he's still a good photographer, he's probably gone digital by now, and has maybe already scanned the negatives, you might try asking if he has and negotiate for those? Or for a disc of digital images instead of the negatives.

Not arguing for or against here, just pondering out loud.....

[Nicos]

...just wondering how long negatives keep their colour these days???

(I imagine the negatives chez him would be kept in ideal storage conditions which most of us can't provide in our own homes. )

[SueA]

O.W.G., we got married nearly 30 years ago, luckily they'd discovered colour by then but not digital! We have a fairly basic printer/scanner & I have managed to get a few copies onto my computer by holding the (very thick) album open & ramming the scanner lid down but as you say O.W.G. it's not very easy & you do have to try a few times to get the photos fairly flat. Another trick I've tried which works but I've had to try a few times to get the light right etc. is to take a photo of the photo with a digital camera & then transfer it to a computer. Don't use the flash just get the album in a good light & try not to get any reflections on the page & you can get reasonable results. Yes I do think the photographer is trying to rip you off a bit but you could try asking if they could put them on a digital format for you & see what the cost of that would be.

[danmon_81]

If you hired a good photographer, then he knows the copyright of his work remains with him, unless you agreed otherwise at the time.
You're asking for the originals that he prints from. If he gives them to you, that's no further income from those prints.
He can still use the photos/negatives for promotional purposes for himself, or for whatever he wants to use them for.
If he's still a good photographer, he's probably gone digital by now, and has maybe already scanned the negatives, you might try asking if he has and negotiate for those? Or for a disc of digital images instead of the negatives.

Not arguing for or against here, just pondering out loud.....

have to agree....unless you payed for copyright of the photo's (which is more of a new digital thing) the law is death plus 70 years....find out why (in a polite way) its would cost this much? Surely if he's still trading he wont be using your print photos as 'showcases'...

[Bagpuss]

Hi OWG
We're planning our wedding for May this year. We are having to pay I think about £250 to have a disc of all of the photos taken with a licence to use them as we wish to. The charges seem a little on the high side, particularly for the 14, but not unheard of. As has been said, the photographer, unless you had a different agreement at the time, retains the copyright in the photos, I think it is for 70 years after death, but you would need to check.
Is there any chance you could scan the photos (perhaps try Jessops) into a digital file or get them to create a negative for you from the photo ?

[Two_Sheds]

take a photo of the photo with a digital camera & then transfer it to a computer.

That's what I did with my 20 year old school photos: you can't really tell the difference between the scans and the originals

I am still reeling at the price of wedding photos: they aren't even very good most of the time (cheesy, wooden, but not good)

[jojo2910]

I agree with Bagpuss, we paid £200 for a disc of the photos. Though it seems a lot, re-prints were being charged around £7 each and this way we have them forever and don't have to keep in touch with the photographer. We didn't find anyone charging less than this.

[zazen999]

This is why I hate wedding photographers.

[chris]

I have to agree with taff too, I was going to go into the wedding market - but things changed (diff job offer, and found out we were going to have a baby). We paid a crazy amount for our wedding photographer, but he was awesome. Every other photographer around didn't even compare.

We've spent a lot of money on prints from our photographer now, so he tends to do us deals or throw in the full set from the shoot.

£150 vs either scanning in situ (not sure if that's possible) or taking the prints in your album off the mounts is really only a decision you can make as you know how it's put together etc.. I do agree it's a lot of money from a consumers point of view, but as above he's not going to make any more money from you if you buy the negatives off him (as you have already said) so he'll want to get something back at least.

I asked for the RAW files from our wedding, and was flat out refused - he wouldn't even sell them to me. Reason being, if I edited and printed some off, as he put it "you may be good at post production, but you'd taint my name if you went around showing the photo off which wasn't to my standards". At the time I was annoyed, but now I can completely agree.

Nicos has a good point about storage, but I guess if you get them transferred to digital that doesn't really matter? Hope you get it sorted either way!!

[northepaul]

I do wedding photography -its (when there's not a recession) a good earner as jobs go. I quite like the work the experience and atmosphere, except when you get people who expect something for nothing.

Not trying to self publicise here, but my charges start at £275 - and that includes my time at the ceremony, travel to and from, my time editing and calibrating the images for easy printing, & a disk with between 50-100 images on and a permssion form (which means I retain the copyright but give my permission to use etc etc etc) - so the couple can do what they like with pictures.
However I can understand that the photographer would charge a fee for his negatives -thats his copyright and bread and butter. A friend of mine sells the copyright of her images after a year and charges around the same fee. However I would say thats a bit excessive considering the time since the wedding.

[Sheepish]

Although this is only a technicality, as I understand it if a photographer takes photos off their own bat the copyright is theirs but if they are commissioned or employed to take photos then, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, the copyright is with the commissioner or employer. Of course professional photographers' standard contracts will have an agreement to the contrary, so you relinquish your rights.
This explains in more detail (the photographs section is some way down) Copyright Regulations

[Hilary B]

I've never got involved with a normal photographic 'contract'. Our own wedding photos were taken by my then brother-in-law, and he handed them over, we discussed the photography issue with a professional when my daughter got married, and were horrified by the price (the idea was he would take just 30 photos, print them and proide a fancy album, total price around £300, this was 7 years ago) so I asked a friend who was a retired professional, he charged us £75 plus his travel costs, took 8 rolls of film and we got them processed by CoLab, who provided us with digital CDs as well as the prints.
For my son's wedding last year another friend took loads of pictures, digital, high quality, and didn't charge at all (apart from travel costs and 2 extra places at the reception).