Help! Do I give the originals to a wedding client?

J13ERO said:
Evening folks!

A few weeks ago I photographed my first wedding and I am very happy with the post processed results, I will be meeting with the clients tomorrow evening to give them the results! My question is... Should I or should I not give them the originals? I currently have a hard drive that they gave me to put the photos on and Ive put both edits and originals on but after a quick google ive found that a lot of people argue that you shouldn't?

Help! Thanks, James :)
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As Alistair said earlier, what was agreed beforehand with the 'client'? I stress that this process is vitally important whether or not they are proper paying clients, or friends. Without a predetermined plan of action and agreement you're opening yourself up to all sorts of problems afterwards. If these are paying clients, I will of course presume that you had a Contract in place. Such a contract would normally detail the conditions surrounding your performance and the deliverables.

Firstly, clients are likely to ask how many pictures they will receive. This very much comes down to your own way of working, but as you can imagine you should never give a precise figure simply because weddings are dynamic affairs and it would be largely impossible to adhere to that. So instead you might say to the client that you aim to deliver between 250 and 350 finished high resolution files. That is my sort of figure, but is largely arbitrary because there is so much variation. Arriving at the finished figure depends on how many photographs you decide to cull during the initial edit. By 'cull' we mean 'get rid off'. These would be the images which do not pass our quality control standards because they contain blinks, distractions, or they're test shots or duplicates. These are the images you will get rid of. Your Contract should make provision for that. Any photographs which do not fall into that category are best kept and processed for the client (unless you have loads of very similar images from the same scene where you will choose the best ones) in case they contain important information. The negatives (meaning your RAW files) have little purpose at this stage and some photographers will either archive them, or delete themand keep only the finished JPEG's as the backed up final product. There are other reasons for not handing over RAW images - they have no use to your customer because they have not been processed, and, even worse, it would be a Copyright violation for your customer to start messing with your files (unless you granted specific licence for them to do so, but that would only happen in unusual circumstances).

As the others have also said, you can then renumber the finished set of JPEGs so that it doesn't appear to the clients that there are lots of 'missing' images. And if they ask you if those are all of the pictures, simply tell them that that is the final set in its entirety.

If you intend to photograph weddings professionally I would advise that you develop a better understanding of workflow as it relates to business management and Contract provision, and that you are able to deal with absolutely ANY questions or requests that your clients are ever likely to put to you.
 
Andrew Davies Photography said:
This is actually also a fair point. As its his first wedding he probably does not yet have the experience of knowing what is and isnt a shot worth keeping.

...

As has already been mentioned if your going to ask the question then listen to the answers , we have been doing this for years and know the pitfalls !
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I'd say it's not a fair point, you shouldn't hang the 'photographer for hire' sign up until you understand what it means. That way you avoid the inevitable 'customer service' problems.

The time to ask for advice is before you've done the job, the 'beginners' section is littered with the remains of people who are 'beginners' who decided to start 'professionally' without thinking through the ramifications.
 
steveo_mcg said:
Unprompted? I offered some advice to the OP from the "other side" there is b****r all weight given to the customer in these threads just circled wagons of the wedding shooters.

My guy missed a couple of groups of people we ad hoc arranged and I chased him for. I'm happy. It might very well have been a big deal if they guy had decided to stick to his play list and only provide what we organised upfront and started being an arse, as it was we opened a dialogue and the issue was resolved. I thought my advise to the OP was clear, clearly not.

Just to be absolutely clear, from a client POV; I advise you to talk with your client and reach a mutually agreeable position don't be afraid to suggest them paying for stuff which is beyond the original spec. This is what I do all the time in my field of work.
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Steady up, where are the circled wagons?

As far as customer service goes, we're singing from the same hymn sheet, it's just that I believe that we shouldn't be making up for our mistakes where those mistakes are easily avoidable, they should be avoided.

And I'd guess what you'd really do in your field of work is exactly that too? Sure open dialogue where there's a problem, and bend over backwards to put it right. But isn't the better situation is to avoid the problem in the first place? I can't see how you think that's an aggressive stance, it's a smart one as far as customer experience goes.

You need to understand 'our' diligence comes from a place of defending the industry, if the OP gets this wrong, the story won't be 'some poor soul who shot his first wedding gave us our images and whilst most of them were garbage, there were some great ones too' it'll be 'we paid a professional photographer and most of the shots they delivered were rubbish!'. The lesson from that which goes out to the world is then 'don't bother hiring a pro, you could probably do as good a job on your Iphone'.
 
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Phil V said:
I'd say it's not a fair point, you shouldn't hang the 'photographer for hire' sign up until you understand what it means. That way you avoid the inevitable 'customer service' problems.

The time to ask for advice is before you've done the job, the 'beginners' section is littered with the remains of people who are 'beginners' who decided to start 'professionally' without thinking through the ramifications.
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and exactly how are you supposed to supposed to get to grips with the editing and culling proceedings of a wedding until you have done one ? Stop jumping on people - he is asking for advice before he makes the decision on what to do so nothing wrong with that.
 
Andrew Davies Photography said:
and exactly how are you supposed to supposed to get to grips with the editing and culling proceedings of a wedding until you have done one ? Stop jumping on people - he is asking for advice before he makes the decision on what to do so nothing wrong with that.
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shooting for a mate?
I'm not 'jumping on anyone' I'm simply offering my opinion that your first set of wedding photo's shouldn't be for 'a client' unless you're really already adept at the business end. Look back through the thread and you'll see I gave constructive friendly and constructive advice to the OP, well before I posted this. :)
 
I'm guessing that James (the OP) has shot this wedding for a friend - I would like to think that nobody acting in a paid professional capacity would have to ask basic questions about originals, but these days many enthusiastic wedding photographers do run before they can walk. This can leave clients in a state of confusion and the photographer feeling hard done by and regretful.

James, as I said earlier, even if you have done this for a friend it's very important that you maintain some control, so it's good that you're asking questions. At the very least when you hand over digital files put something in writing with them (an e-mail is fine) reminding the couple that Copyright always stays with the originator and therefore the photographs are for their personal use only. There is no requirement, under law, that you do that because of course copyright rests with the originator irrespective of whether you have asserted that Copyright, but prevention is far better than trying to deal with unfortunate situations which arise after the fact. And another thing, if you haven't already considered this, give them a separate batch of digital files which have been optimised the social networking and which clearly bear your watermark - remind the couple that only watermarked images can be used for that purpose (this is good advertising for you if you're looking for more wedding work).

If you intend to get into wedding photography on a paid basis I would advise that you read around the forum because there are endless fantastic tips which the professionals here have shared with newcomers - it isn't always what the newcomer wants to hear, but the advice is golden nonetheless.
 
Lindsay D said:
I'm guessing that James (the OP) has shot this wedding for a friend - I would like to think that nobody acting in a paid professional capacity would have to ask basic questions about originals, but these days many enthusiastic wedding photographers do run before they can walk. This can leave clients in a state of confusion and the photographer feeling hard done by and regretful.

James, as I said earlier, even if you have done this for a friend it's very important that you maintain some control, so it's good that you're asking questions. At the very least when you hand over digital files put something in writing with them (an e-mail is fine) reminding the couple that Copyright always stays with the originator and therefore the photographs are for their personal use only. There is no requirement, under law, that you do that because of course copyright rests with the originator irrespective of whether you have asserted that Copyright, but prevention is far better than trying to deal with unfortunate situations which arise after the fact. And another thing, if you haven't already considered this, give them a separate batch of digital files which have been optimised the social networking and which clearly bear your watermark - remind the couple that only watermarked images can be used for that purpose (this is good advertising for you if you're looking for more wedding work).

If you intend to get into wedding photography on a paid basis I would advise that you read around the forum because there are endless fantastic tips which the professionals here have shared with newcomers - it isn't always what the newcomer wants to hear, but the advice is golden nonetheless.
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You'd hope so.
But the 'meeting with the clients tomorrow' line looks ominous, as does the fact he hasn't been back since yesterday morning (he hasn't seen most of this thread :(), which is sadly, an all too familiar pattern...
 
Lindsay D said:
Hopefully he's just busy Phil ... because if James fails to come back and acknowledge the advice he's been given I would consider that to be quite poor form.
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Hope so too. :)
 
If he ever does come back, and understanding his worries about the client wanting a photo he didn't supply : how about his processed photos plus the whole lot (minus the deletes) as tiny thumbnails with an offer to do one more batch of requests from there. There are programs which can batch that job.
He's obviously not making money from this and wants to do a good job but also won't appreciate the albatross of the original RAWs raising its beak some time in the future... here's me agreeing with everyone who say do NOT give them the RAWs.
 
Lindsay D said:
Hopefully he's just busy Phil ... because if James fails to come back and acknowledge the advice he's been given I would consider that to be quite poor form.
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If he doesn't come back I wouldn't blame him. The good advice signal is frequently lost in the noise of the bickering. At face value the bulk of the thread doesn't qualify as a useful response.

Plus ça change.. c'est TP..
 
He said he was meeting the clients this evening, so I would guess he is otherwise engaged and has probably spent all day re-editing the shots, given the advice offered on here. We may get to know what happened in the news ....... "photographer hung drawn and quartered"....and that was before he met the clients. :D

However there has been some very good advice here for anyone starting out, not least to firstly speak to the experts/existing Pros, have a contract and game plan plus a shooting list, all carefully rehearsed, worked out and agreed ahead of the big day, plus discussed and signed off by the client together with getting payment in advance.
 
steveo_mcg said:
From the other side, the guy who did my wedding didn't include a couple of group shots in his original cull, it wasn't till I pressed he sent me the unedited files for the groups and I managed to get a shot that was important to us but was a cull to the photographer. Just because he/she has hired a pro doesn't mean they don't know their way round light room and doesn't understand about editing etc. Besides they're the customer and the customer is always right ;)
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No but the customer is always the customer.
 
shreds said:
He said he was meeting the clients this evening, so I would guess he is otherwise engaged and has probably spent all day re-editing the shots, given the advice offered on here. ...
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He couldn't have read beyond post 16, my guess is since his last post about 10 mins earlier. So he hasn't seen most of the useful advice or any of the bitching...
 
Lead horses, water, drink, etc

C'est la vie!

Move on...
 
Phil V said:
He couldn't have read beyond post 16, my guess is since his last post about 10 mins earlier. So he hasn't seen most of the useful advice or any of the bitching...
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He certainly could. I regularly read from a browser at work that isn't logged and he maybe doing the same.
 
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