Wedding Photography Basics I should know

Dizkoteck

Dizkoteck

Well-known member
So yea, thats basically what I am asking for.

Ive been asked to do a wedding and been getting emails from potential clients asking for full rights for the photos, and one asking for high rez disc so they can print it themselves.

As for me, I admit I am kind of green doing wedding photography and dealing with the politics of it. Would it be wise to give them rights and hi rez disc? Would it be acceptable to give that up(with reserve) just to get the experience and the client?

Whats your advice?
 
Never give full rights to the photo. I mean you can but I would charge them a whole lot of money that i'm sure they aren't trying to pay. You can give them limited rights to print them and give out but restrict that to family and friends and not allow any commercial capacity

Giving them a full res disc isn't really as much of a problem and most people give that only if they aren't providing prints for them. If you are providing prints then I wouldn't give the cd because then you can get money off of them coming to you for prints.
 
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Brandon Rice asked this question about 6 months ago... Do a search, you'll find extensive answers regarding wedding/event photography :)
 
I do wedding video's as my side business, but I would never do photography. Brides can be crazy about their photos. For some reason I think they have low expectations about video, and then are always blown away when we give them an end product. (The key is to not lower my standard to theirs!)

Back on topic, I don't see any problem with selling them a full res disc. You still maintain the rights to the photos, and they should not be able to use them for anything other than personal prints. The terms of use for the photos should be part of the sales agreement. The key is to just price the disk the same way you would price your prints so you don't lose any money. If a bride would normally buy $500 in prints, sell the disc for $700. I also offer to sell my raw footage, $100 per DVD in MPEG2 format.
 
It is very hard to make up for the built in mark up in prints and albums through RAW footage.

That being said, I have done it and I worked a deal with my wedding photographer for her to sell me the RAW footage. This is NOT the full rights to the images though. I would NEVER sell the rights to my images... I would sell limited rights, which is the way my contracts are worded currently.
 
my wife and i do some photography/video. we do a home use rights contract. basically, we get to use the photos for whatever we want, promotion, contests, etc. the clients can also do basically anything they want with them, but if they publish them for some reason they have to give us credit. they also get a disc with high rez images, and can give copies to friends, family. really, it's just easier that way for us that they can do whatever they want without having to come back to us. i don't think i have a contract on our site (which is waaaaaayyyyyyy overdue for an overhaul/update) right now, but i can send you a copy if you want to read over it. just pm me.
 
The number one lesson is dont get suckered into doing wedding videography as well. 3 times the work for the same price.
 
I recently got married and I worked out with the photographer to get all the RAW images beforehand. He said it's pretty common these days. He pretty much charged me a $250 fee and he had me sign a copyright release form.
I'm only an amateur photographer, but if I did weddings professionally I would absolutely do the same.
 
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