Quick questions:
There has been a lot of talk lately about digital files so I'm curious about two things.
1. If you don't sell your digital files - why not?
2. If you do sell your digital files - how much do you charge?
Feel free to post below or go to the OSP forum and join the conversation there. :)
9 comments:
I haven't and don't really. I tell clients (if they ask) they can buy them for $50.00 each and they must buy all of them.
I am old school. I own the copyrights. But for $50 each I would grant them a "use right" for printing only not for any publication.
Wazup Deeje?!
They get them with a purchase of any main wedding album (complimentary) or for $1600 for the disk. Otherwise, they are $100/each.
My philosophy is look at the opportunity cost and help your clients have FINAL products in their hands. If we give our clients a disk, without offering them options ... we're not doing our jobs right as pro photographers. (Envision/create the piece from start to finish). I don't do it all myself of course but I have people that do it for me that know my taste.
Similar to Liana, they get them when the purchase the wedding album. If they don't buy an album then it $1,000 for the discs.
I've only sold the discs once. The bride was a super creative type, heavy into scrapbooking and wanted to build the album herself.
I didn't but now I do, because every other major photographer in our area does, and while I'm not one to follow the crowd per se, we were beginning to lose a lot of business because of it. So we upped our prices accordingly and included them in each package. However, I have a page on my blog about how the digital negatives they get (which are straight out of the camera unedited files) don't look nearly as sharp and pretty as the ones they see on my website or blog, and if they want those, they will have to purchase prints through me. Most of my clients seem to understand, and agree that purchasing through me is smartest.
We always tell our clients that if they don't want them, they can trade them for additional album pages, but virtually 100% of our clients say that digital negatives are one of the most important things to them.
I know that if I got married, I would want the files included in my package, or at least at a reasonable price, so I like to treat my clients the same way.
In addition to giving the bride her digital negatives on a disc we upload them so friends and family can download files or order prints at 25 cents. I would much rather sell a $5000 wedding package than sell 1000 $5 prints.
Wow, I really like what Liana & Josh do. Thats a great idea!
I include a print right and a CD of the photos with all of my packages, but like liana mentioned, I explain that the best results are when they order from me for a final print. At the same time, I dont want to have the photos that I will never use taking up hard drive space. I also explain that they should treat them like real negatives and safeguard them accordingly.
In todays market, i believe that having the files in hand is not a requirement, but that there is no reason to not give them away. However, they still only have print and web rights for private use, and cannot post to photobucket or other sites where they take ownership of the photos.
Liana, Stacy, you are SO right on! When it comes to talking about these digital files, I think a better phrase would be "digital proofs" instead- the straight-out-of-camera, non color-corrected JPEGs that give my "darkroomed" files far greater perceived value- my albums now look even better! I include those with my packages and online proof store Pickpic(WHCC). You see, including proofs in all my packages does not affect my "darkroomed" images that we use for the albums, parent magazines, pre-wed books, etc. that trademark (brand) my business- in fact, they allow my final image files to have INVESTMENT value over time, and the value of the out-of-camera files decrease in value over time. I think about all the fuss my clients made about the CD of files and after they saw the album they didn't seem to care anymore about them, so I include them now without hesitation and my prices have gone up.
I don't offer it but will do so if they insist. I'll remind them that they're paying for a lot of photos they probably don't want or won't print; as well... it's more of a quality control thing. Prints they order through me are properly corrected and calibrated to the lab's printer. If they go print photos at another lab and they come out looking too dark or whatnot, it looks bad on ME.
Usually they seem to understand...
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