Client from 5 years ago.

[table1349]

I had a client whose wedding I did 5 years ago. I was just starting out and just wanted more for my portfolio.
It was a family member of mine and his now wife. No contract signed however a decent bit was paid. The average rate of a shoot and burn. I told them I would be happy to make an album for them. I provided them with fully edited and airbrushed images, a disc with all the images and album layouts for their approval.

Have not heard a peep from them in 5 years. All of a sudden, girl wants me to just print the album. She doesn't remember the layouts, admits that it has been 5 years and they haven't selected so much as 1 photo to change in the layouts. (She is not even sure she has the disc or layouts anymore).

~G

To clarify -- I had emailed them several times within the first year about it. And they never responded with any changes or approvals. They said they were working on it.

This is a close cousin. Directly related.

The hundreds of dollars is accurate -- 200-300 dollars for an album. I used to use graphi-studio because they were the first album maker with which I was introduced. But that is about how much a digital album costs.

I feel like this falls into an extreme case. It would be like me asking a photo lab to print my images and then never picking them up and expecting them to have the images 5 years down the line. NO?

What would the album have cost to print 5 years ago? They paid you for an album. If the printing costs are substantually different then you might charge them part of the difference. If not then Print the album. They paid for it.

5 years or 50 years. As a professional it makes no difference. The photographer that shot my in-laws wedding 50 years ago still had the negatives. We asked if we could get some printed to give to the folks on their 50th anniversary . He said he would but he was more than happy to let us have the negatives so we could have them printed ourselves and save a few dollars. That is a professional. Still customer oriented 50 years later.

 

[jaomul]

I would say you charged the going rate at the time, though you say you were not a pro then but are now. You wanted to do this for your portfolio but don't need the recognition now you are established. It would be the honourable thing to finish the "verbal" contract. If it was archived properly at the start it probably wont be as difficult as it seems. just an opinion

 

[CCericola]

No it's not like a photo lab. Photo labs give you a contract in the fine print whether it's on the envelope you dropped off your film in or the terms and conditions you agreed to when you placed your order online.

If you don't have the money then I would seriously rethink your career choice.

 

[jamesbjenkins]

Do you want the advice of the professionals reading this thread, or don't you?

Stop making excuses and get your cousin their album.

 

[NancyMoranG]

I am not in the business, but have to go along with giving them their album as part of the agreement. You probably have a time limit or extra fee now in your contracts for such a time discrepancy.
AND it being family, can get ugly....just print it and save yourself alot of grief.
Nancy

My wedding photographer threw out negatives if you had not reordered something in that time frame. When we had a house fire, no more wedding album, I called him. Would have paid for another album..

 

[Steve5D]

At the very least, I would charge them the difference in the printing prices you'll deal with now compared to five years ago, as well as a PITA charge.

If they haven't been replying to e-mails regarding this for five years, you could've made a damn strong argument that they no longer had an interest in acquiring it...

 

[greggphoto]

Wow --- quite the spectrum --- I appreciate everyone's input. I am not making excuses at all just trying to provide all the facts so as to get the proper input. The biggest reason I came here was because it involved family and yes it has the potential to get somewhat ugly. I certainly don't wish to upset anyone.

 

[robbins.photo]

Wow --- quite the spectrum --- I appreciate everyone's input. I am not making excuses at all just trying to provide all the facts so as to get the proper input. The biggest reason I came here was because it involved family and yes it has the potential to get somewhat ugly. I certainly don't wish to upset anyone.

In the long run I guess the only question you really need to ask is, what's more important - family or money. Really in the end that's the choice you'll be making. I can pretty much gaurantee that your cousin and his wife will be firmly in the, but we already paid you for the album camp. So you can spend a bit of money out of pocket, save your reputation not so much with your clients but rather with your family and print them the album.

Or you can try to save yourself a few bucks, tick your cousin and his wife off to no end, have them telling everyone in your family their side of the story and not yours, blowing this whole thing way out of proportion and possibly even posting negative stuff about you and your business on facebook and other internet sites that might actually affect your future business.

Will it go that far? Eh, who knows. Is it worth the risk over a couple hundred bucks? Not by the longest shot ever taken in this or any other universe. So yup, you want my advice, pony up and get them the album. Take it as lesson learned, make sure you put something in future contracts so you don't find yourself in this situation again, and move on.

Just my 2 cents worth of course, as usual YMMV

 

[robbins.photo]

Why not charge them? - and give them a contract to sign.

Something tells me your a real hoot at thanksgiving Lew.. lol

 

[Gavjenks]

The story in the OP does not make it clear whether he just casually mentioned that he'd make an album AFTER having been paid, or whether that was like, part of the deal for the amount paid.

If part of what they paid was for the album and knew that when deciding on an amount, then you are under contract, and simply walking away would basically be theft. I would choose one of three options:
1) Give them the album they paid for. If it costs more than you charged then that's your fault for charging less than your costs (which can't possibly be higher now than before. Inflation doesn't count since you could have been earning interest on the money).
2) Reimburse them what they paid for the album, or the whole amount if it's unclear how much was for that.
3) Given them the option of paying your current rates or being reimbursed as in #2.
^
All 3 are fair I think, but I have listed them in ascending order of how much of a douchebag they will make you look.


If you suggested the album after they paid you / they weren't factoring that into the price, then you DON'T have a contract for the album (contracts require something of value from both parties, not one sided gifts), and I think it's fair just to try and drop the issue. It won't score you any brownie points with the family, it is technically fair. Though I would suggest against this anyway, though, for the paltry sum of $200-300 it isn't worth the reputation hit. And at the very least I would still offer one of the 3 options above anyway.

Obviously option #1 above is the best for your reputation.

 

[robbins.photo]

Yup.. I can almost hear the cousin now. "We gave that jerk his start. If we hadn't let him shoot our wedding he wouldn't even be a pro photographer right now. We paid him all that money and now he's refusing to give us our pictures."

Fair? Nah, not really. Accurate? Well when was the last time anyone you ticked off bothered getting all their facts straight before they started blowing off steam? So yup, it really is in your best interest to just bite the bullet and fix this before you have a huge mess on your hands.

Like I said, me, I'd do it for them even if I knew for certain they would'nt raise a fuss about it or ever breathe a word to anyone. If I promised them a wedding album and they didn't get it, none of the rest of this stuff would matter to me personally. Family or not, special circumstances or not. To me none of that is really that is really important.

My grandfather once told me, "Son, the only thing a man has for certain in this life is his word. Everything else you can lose. Everything else can come and go. At the end of the day the only thing your sure to have is your honor. Nobody can every take it from you, and you can never lose it. All you can do is give it away."

But again.. I'm a dinosaur. A walking anachronism. So yup. my best advice to you is to spend the cash, get the album printed, and wish your cousin well.

 

[pixmedic]

If it was not family, i would say to tell them they have to pony up a little money for this...
However, unless this is family you dislike, i would just do it for them for free, providing you arent talking about $300-$400 wedding albums.
Just make it something simple. They waited 5 years so im guessing it isn't critically important.
Not because you have some obligation to...
Not because it is the "professional" thing to do...
just because it is family.

 

[Steve5D]

Give them the album they paid for. If it costs more than you charged then that's your fault for charging less than your costs (which can't possibly be higher now than before. Inflation doesn't count since you could have been earning interest on the money).

That's funny.

I'll go out on a limb and say that the interest earned on the money paid would not be sufficient to cover the increase in printing costs; not even close. The OP doesn't say how much he was paid, but I doubt that it was an amount to generate any significant interest, assuming he kept the money in the bank. When I get paid, that money doesn't sit in the bank for very long.

Additionally, the OP states that he e-mailed them repeatedly regarding this, and received no replies. That works strongly in his favor. The cousins are not without fault here and, in fact, it could be argued that they don't have their album due to no fault of the OP...

 

[CMfromIL]

Give them the album they paid for. If it costs more than you charged then that's your fault for charging less than your costs (which can't possibly be higher now than before. Inflation doesn't count since you could have been earning interest on the money).

That's funny.

I'll go out on a limb and say that the interest earned on the money paid would not be sufficient to cover the increase in printing costs; not even close. The OP doesn't say how much he was paid, but I doubt that it was an amount to generate any significant interest, assuming he kept the money in the bank. When I get paid, that money doesn't sit in the bank for very long.

Additionally, the OP states that he e-mailed them repeatedly regarding this, and received no replies. That works strongly in his favor. The cousins are not without fault here and, in fact, it could be argued that they don't have their album due to no fault of the OP...

That's great Perry Mason, he can use that during his closing argument during the Thanksgiving Day "Family Court" to be judged by all the family. After all appeals are exhausted (between dinner and desert), he'll still come out looking like an ass. "Technically" he may have won the argument but realistically he'll lose the war. Is it really a hill he ought to be dying on?