Wedding photographers own their pictures of you

Bad Wigins wrote:

sports photographer wrote:

my fear is that someone will make an alteration to MY photo and do a crappy job

sounds like transformative fair use to me. If they want to change the color curves and contrast, airbrush here or there, give it an aesthetic other than you intended, your copyright might not stop them.

You are like a sculptor worrying that someone will paint your sculpture a freaky color and chop off its arms to make you look bad.

Shepard Fairey's famous Obama "Hope" poster originated from an AP photographer's photo which he did not have rights to. Fairey manipulated and sold the Obama poster. AP sued him for infringement. The point is, AP having the rights to the photo did not PREVENT Fairey from manipulating and exploiting the photo but it gave AP legal recourse. Without it, they would have been helpless to prevent Fairey from exploiting the photo.

DC Wonk wrote:

That's hilarious -- to anyone who thinks they can shoot a wedding as well as an experienced pro because they recently bought a new Nikon camera, are you going to run a marathon as fast as Wilson Kpisang because you are wearing the same shoes???

Pro wedding photography is very demanding, difficult work, as anyone who knows anything about photography will tell you. Has very little to do with equipment, although pro wedding photogs certainly use top quality gear ,including redundant kits (equipment failure during the actual shoot can happen), lighting (you could spend the next 5 years of your life trying to learn all you should know about lighting but you're still just a beginner), and on and on.

^This^.

There's a LOT more to "people photography" and "event photography" than just pointing a nice camera and shooting. Pros know where to be and when, how NOT to intrude on the event itself, usually have a 2nd photographer shooting so angles and moments are less likely to be missed, etc, etc. on top of that, they know how to deal with thousands of images, and quickly, file management, as well as editing images, has a HUGE learning curve.

mirrorless camera addict is:

a: troll

b: stupid

c: cheap

d: all of the above

get with the tymes wrote:

Just another wedding industry scam. The wedding industrial complex is alive and well.

In 2015 an amateur can get great photos with a decent camera, stable hand, and trigger happy finger. And an amateur is not going to be a stickler about copyright b.s.

Why do wedding photographers throw around copyright like they are creating Beethoven-level masterpieces? Like typists, an obsolete industry.

re: "an amateur can get great photos with a decent camera" - I dare you to get married and use an amateur with a decent camera. I would be interested in knowing what your wife and family thinks about the trivialness you treat one of the most important days in your life.

The average wedding photography is about $3K, net of expenses, the main photographer only walks away with 1 grand. The wedding pre and post work hours comes out to about $15 buck and hour. Also, a wedding photographer will have at about $10,000 worth of equipment and spend $300 a month on business expenses, such as website, advertising, insurance and memberships.

we interviewed 3 photographers and asked about owning the images

2 of the 3 had no problem with it and we wrote it into the contract with the 1 we chose, the third photographer got all indignant and made it very easy to decide not to work with her if she got that way over a simple question, then how would she be to work with going forward?

good luck

good idea to own because what you gonna do in 25 years when you want another copy/print and the photographer is dead etc. they do not have to keep your images either, could just trash them

same rules apply wrote:

edward teach wrote:

Don't like it, get your friend or brother to take the photos. I'm sure they'll turn out just as well...

Wouldn't the same issue apply regardless of who you hired?

Maybe, but your friend or brother isn't going to notice you reusing his images most likely and won't try to sue , if you have a good relationship with him, hopefully. If you have someone who is a good enough photographer that you can make money off his photos, you'd be using him paid or unpaid, and not hiring another professional anyhow.

Les wrote:

[quote]Bad Wigins wrote:

Shepard Fairey's famous Obama "Hope" poster originated from an AP photographer's photo which he did not have rights to. Fairey manipulated and sold the Obama poster. AP sued him for infringement. The point is, AP having the rights to the photo did not PREVENT Fairey from manipulating and exploiting the photo but it gave AP legal recourse. Without it, they would have been helpless to prevent Fairey from exploiting the photo.

They would still have been helpless if the courts had ruled it fair use, as they likely would in the case of the actual subjects of the photo transforming it for non-commercial purposes.