- This topic is empty.
Communion / Confirmation School Photos
-
After much (gentle !) persuasion I have been hired to take the official communion & confirmation photographs for the local boys school. It probably helps that my son is making his communion with them this year.
I have spoken to another photographer who has gotten out of that aspect of work. He told me that one of the reasons he opted out was because he suspected that many parents were taking the photographs home with them, scanning them, and then returning them saying they didn’t want them. There was no way of proving this, but he said that over the last few years he was getting more and more returns each year.
Just wondering if anyone has had similar experiences, or, if anyone has any ideas on how to deal with this.
Charging the full price up front is not an option, and it won’t stop the returns anyway.
Would be interested to hear anyones thoughts.
Regards
Kevin
Much as I find them distasteful, put a big bloody watermark on your photo, or give them a postage stamp sized photo and let them decide if they want bigger.
Actually giving them a small photograph might be the way to go.
That being said, I recall a photograph I took of my children. Had it printed but upon looking
at it printed, realised that I needed to do some PS work on it.
Discovered one evening to my horror that my inlaws had borrowed it. I say horror as it
was an unfinished photograph which wasn’t fit to be seen by others.
Anyhow, they borrowed it, got it copied and blown up in size in the city by what looked like
some sort of colour photocopier and to my embarrassment put it on their wall for all to see.Point of my story I guess is that even with the small photograph they might copy it and
not valuing the quality of a proper print, photocopy it and show it off for the world to see :roll: :DMark
I had thought of smaller sizes, but as Mark pointed out that still might not stop them.
Then they would have a pretty crappy enlargement, and my name would be worth nothing if they were asked “who took the photo of little Johnny” :evil:The watermark, on a 6*4, could be the way to go, but, with things like this you have to act fast, otherwise they forget about ordering, and then its the summer holidays !!
Beginning to wonder if its worth the hassle
Thanks
Kevin
Batch work is your friend. It might be worth getting hold of Aperature if you do a fair bit of such work (eh, assuming you’re a mac user) as it has some really excellent batch processing tools.
KPM wrote:
I have spoken to another photographer who has gotten out of that aspect of work. He told me that one of the reasons he opted out was because he suspected that many parents were taking the photographs home with them, scanning them, and then returning them saying they didn’t want them. There was no way of proving this, but he said that over the last few years he was getting more and more returns each year.
Just wondering if anyone has had similar experiences, or, if anyone has any ideas on how to deal with this.
Kevin,
he’s absolutely right …….. this is happening countrywide. Sad thing is they then print them on A4 photocopy paper
and distribute them to friends and relations saying they were taken by, say, Gerry Costello.
You need to charge upfront in some shape or form. I always do proofs at 72dpi on an A4 sheet with 9 small pics (about 2.5″ x 1.75″ in size) and they are still scanning them and distributing them.Only 3 weeks ago a woman arrived into the studio with an A4 sheet of copy paper and an awful pic on it ……. about 8″x6″ asking me to “improve the photo” as it was taken by me only a week before and she thought “I should not have let it out looking like that”.
She was right……it was taken by me but her daughter only picked up the proofs as described above and to date had ordered no prints.
In this case I have set the wheels of an court action in place as it I see it as an assation on my good name as a photographer. There is a solicitors letter winging its way to the offending person at present and I fully intend to see
this one through. At the worst ….. it will let the community know I am taking no crap as im just sick of folk taking me
for a mug and at best I’ll get some compensation.I don’t suppose there are any easy answers to this one, but there are a few things worth looking into.
1. A faint watermark diagonally across every image
2. One or two holes punched through each image (that’s how I received my wedding proofs when I got married twn years ago!)
3. Provide proofs on paper which has “Copyright” or something like Kodak/Epson Professional paper written on the back of it. If they bring it to a lab, then the lab should not copy it but if they do, they are the ones breaching copyright. I know that at least two of the local mini-labs here will not copy such images.
4. Payment in advance, although this one could be very difficult to manage.
I don’t do communion/confirmation photographs at the school, but am taking bookings for family communion/confirmation shoots, generally taken at the families home. I charge a sitting/shoot fee which includes one 10×8 and after that it’s watermarked proof sheets or a slideshow on CD. While it is possible to capture images from the slideshow, most people don’t know how to do this, so the images are reasonably safe.
Put a lo res on a secure website send a framed print to the school make sure the print is not downloadable from the web site give them a password, and let them order from there, now they know the look of the photo the frame the quality, what more do they want, this way ur not framing and printing every shot, but only the ones that are ordered, it also allows them to look at the shots in their own time and in their own home.
At least thats what i do and it works well, so far.
A few good suggestions here.
Personally I think if they’re going o do it, they’re going to do it, but make it as difficult as possible. Transparent embossed copyright notice across the picture is probably the most effective, but also has the biggest effect on the picture. Using professional paper, and a small copyright notice on front and back, won’t stop them getting it copied, but will make it difficult, and if they use a photocopier, at least anyone who sees it will know they’ve breached copyright… Maybe get an ink stamp made up for the notice on the rear of the print? Maybe even just put a fine white X mark across the front of the photo. 1 px wide won’t ruin the shot, but wouldn’t exactly look great on the wall…
Just my thoughts!
just a thought…. but would it be possible to hold a photo viewing session a day or two after the shoot… where you could show the perants the photos taken (on a laptop or desktop) and they could order any prints the require and maybe pay up front or arrange…..
maybe not an option, but just the thought..
Where theres a will theres a way.
What about using stock shots for the print selections.
You could show the proud parents there kids on screen
and then provide them a stock shot just showing available formats.When my brother got married thats what his photographer had.
She just showed them all the shots on screen and then had sample layouts.
The first time they ever saw the actual prints were after they paid.
I guess the problem comes afterwards when all the relations are doing crap scans and photocrapies.
I see you run a Flash based website-
if it was easy to add galleries to it,
then maybe that would be one way to go-Photoshop and Lightroom have Flash gallery templates in the Automate menu-
they’re very easy to do-
then you could upload the gallery to your website-You could take payment through Paypal, or Cheque or whatever-
just a thought-
j
Thanks for all the feedback – some great ideas in there.
I’m deep in the season at the moment and what I have been doing for the schools is to get a deposit for each student, and then I am sending back a proof image, about 2*3 ins, with a watermark and a final order form with a request that all balances must be paid in full along with the order. This seems to have gone very well, the schools like the fact that there is very little work for them to do, and the parents also like being able to see the print before ordering. Its a bit of extra work for me, but worth it if it saves a few bob. On the first set of confirmation photos I got 38 out of 38 orders fully paid and no returns. With a few more in the pipeline hopefully it will continue.
For private sittings I set up a secure webpage with lo-res images, again with faint watermarks, and this seems to be going well also.
First time I have been heavily involved in the schools photography so perhaps its just beginners luck !!
Have already secured next years shoot with two schools – maybe I can get that LaCie screen from Sheldon after all !!!Thanks again for all the feedback.
Regards
Kevin
i have not seen this in photo paper (though it should be), but my mom is a court reporter and she can get some kind of paper (regular printer paper) with an invisible stripe down it. when you copy it, the copies have a black stripe where the the invisible stripe is on the original.. i’d be willing to pay extra at the print shop for this if it were offered..
i put a large do not copy stamp with copyright info on the back of photos. this doesn’t deter the ones that scan and print at home, but i’ve had the local print shop call me twice when someone was trying to get an image copied.
i’m in the process of redoing my website, complete with watermarks, one woman actually bragged to me about how she made a screen saver out of images from my website, and she had the nerve to ask me to provide bigger images so she could use one for her desktop. oy. some people.
beth
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
