Clients printing images without permission from screen shots

[photo guy]

Put a large bold watermark on the whole photo to try and help stop this.

 

[Big Mike]

We start out by doing all in-studio sales. There are no sneak peeks on a blog or Facebook. They see them during the ordering session and there are no proofs to take home or option for me to upload a gallery somewhere so they can goof around for a month looking at them before ordering. We have minimum purchase requirements based on the type of client session and what session options or add ons were selected. This prevents us from having to worry about somebody coming in and order 5 4x6s then scanning them and never coming back for more. The client is not left alone with their images displayed for them to snap off crappy shots with their cell phones (people will do that). When going over the product line we include the High-Res digital files stating they are $300 each and we clearly emphasize the fact that purchasing these files comes with the legal documentation that is required in order to make prints from the files we provide or if you want to scan the prints you purchase. Note we don't say "Yeah you can print from them" .. they are being clearly educated that legal documentation is required for printing from files AND for scanning prints. If they are the type of people who will do it no matter what it doesn't change anything. However, we have educated them on right and wrong and that's all you can do there.
Give them everything on Facebook and they will print them. In the past we only gave free Facebook pics of the poses that they purchased in their collection and those pics had a huge logo streaming across the bottom. This eliminated the desire to print from them. However, we took it a step further and now low-res files, just like high-res files, are an actual product with a value. This helps to further educate the consumer that digital files are in fact a product and by purchasing low-res files or by not doing so, it either increases our profit or reduces our workload.
When it comes to updating our online portfolio, this is not done right away. You won't find me posting on the blog .. "Check out these awesome portraits from todays client !!" .. or yesterdays .. or last weeks .. in fact it might be several months down the road before I might post something on the blog or Facebook. This is long after the ordering session and by this point if the client hasn't re-ordered odds are they won't anyway.

To sum it up ..
Online Shopping Carts = Bad
Sneak Peek Blog Posts = Bad
Free Facebook Images = Bad
Unsupervised Proof Access = Bad
Tiny Watermarks = Bad


Oh yeah and we also do not offer anything printed on glossy paper .. it's too easy to make a good re-print from at home.

Looking forward to your going out of business sale. Hope you have some good stuff I can use.

About 1 in 10 people on the entire freaking planet are on facebook. Something like 800 million users out there. If you won't provide people pics to share with their friends via social networking, I think you are destined to fail. We may not like what they do with the images once they get them, but, IMO, it's an essential service at this point.

If you won't offer them, your competition will.

I'll have to disagree with you here. I think he's got a winning strategy. It's one thing to cater to the masses (Facebook denizens) but that will lead you to the Wal-mart sales strategy...low cost, high volume (and likely lower quality). If you target the higher end of the market, you can go with a higher cost, lower volume (you'll need a high quality). Both ways can make lots of money, but ask yourself if you'd rather work more hours or less?

And notice that he mentioned that even the low rez files are a product. So people can still purchase the files and put them on Facebook to share with friends & family...but the way he's set it up, the have already purchased prints or at least they are paying a lot for the files.

And that leads to another tip for selling digital files. Many people ask how much they should charge for digital files...and my answer was always to say, 'Charge (at least) as much as you think you would get by keeping the files and selling prints.' So if your average print sale is $200, you might want to charge $150-$200 for the digital files (and the right to make prints). So you still make the same profit, but you don't have to make/order the prints. You might loose out on the occasional large print sale, but it might balance out since you're making up for the ones who would only place a small print order.
One probably with this though, is that you loose control of the final product. They might make prints at home, on typewriter paper (or worse, at Wal-mart) and the prints will look crappy. They'll tell everyone who see them, that you were their photographer.

 

[orljustin]

They'll tell everyone who see them, that you were their photographer.

... which has nothing to do with who the printer was. I think people are smart enough to separate the two. But anyhow, I think you overestimate what people will do. I'm not in the least interested in advertising for you, so I'd be unlikely as hell to say "X was my photographer". On the other hand, I'm certainly not going to pay $200 for 1 file. My value on portraiture is about $100 or so an hour, which is a pretty good hourly rate. 2 hours for the shoot time, an hour prep and cleanup and an hour processing. So, my limit is probably around $500 for a good photo session with all edited images delivered. If you can't operate on $500 for four hours of work, then you're in the wrong business, or you're not scheduling enough. I'm not here to pay your retirement because of you overcharging for prints.

 

[Big Mike]

They'll tell everyone who see them, that you were their photographer.

... which has nothing to do with who the printer was. I think people are smart enough to separate the two.

I think you're overestimating (some) people. We are talking about people who will steal low rez images via screen capture, then print those for display in their home. They probably won't have any interest in advertising for you, but nether will they be quick to take the blame themselves for a poor quality print.

 

[mwcfarms]

They'll tell everyone who see them, that you were their photographer.

... which has nothing to do with who the printer was. I think people are smart enough to separate the two. But anyhow, I think you overestimate what people will do. I'm not in the least interested in advertising for you, so I'd be unlikely as hell to say "X was my photographer". On the other hand, I'm certainly not going to pay $200 for 1 file. My value on portraiture is about $100 or so an hour, which is a pretty good hourly rate. 2 hours for the shoot time, an hour prep and cleanup and an hour processing. So, my limit is probably around $500 for a good photo session with all edited images delivered. If you can't operate on $500 for four hours of work, then you're in the wrong business, or you're not scheduling enough. I'm not here to pay your retirement because of you overcharging for prints.

I'm going to disagree with you here. When you see a piece of artwork an image hanging somewhere you don't ask who was the photographer and who was the printer. People are notoriously lazy and very quick to assume things. If someone tells you that so and so was the photographer do they often say but we got it printed at Costco. Not usually.

 

[bennielou]

We start out by doing all in-studio sales. There are no sneak peeks on a blog or Facebook. They see them during the ordering session and there are no proofs to take home or option for me to upload a gallery somewhere so they can goof around for a month looking at them before ordering. We have minimum purchase requirements based on the type of client session and what session options or add ons were selected. This prevents us from having to worry about somebody coming in and order 5 4x6s then scanning them and never coming back for more. The client is not left alone with their images displayed for them to snap off crappy shots with their cell phones (people will do that). When going over the product line we include the High-Res digital files stating they are $300 each and we clearly emphasize the fact that purchasing these files comes with the legal documentation that is required in order to make prints from the files we provide or if you want to scan the prints you purchase. Note we don't say "Yeah you can print from them" .. they are being clearly educated that legal documentation is required for printing from files AND for scanning prints. If they are the type of people who will do it no matter what it doesn't change anything. However, we have educated them on right and wrong and that's all you can do there.
Give them everything on Facebook and they will print them. In the past we only gave free Facebook pics of the poses that they purchased in their collection and those pics had a huge logo streaming across the bottom. This eliminated the desire to print from them. However, we took it a step further and now low-res files, just like high-res files, are an actual product with a value. This helps to further educate the consumer that digital files are in fact a product and by purchasing low-res files or by not doing so, it either increases our profit or reduces our workload.
When it comes to updating our online portfolio, this is not done right away. You won't find me posting on the blog .. "Check out these awesome portraits from todays client !!" .. or yesterdays .. or last weeks .. in fact it might be several months down the road before I might post something on the blog or Facebook. This is long after the ordering session and by this point if the client hasn't re-ordered odds are they won't anyway.

To sum it up ..
Online Shopping Carts = Bad
Sneak Peek Blog Posts = Bad
Free Facebook Images = Bad
Unsupervised Proof Access = Bad
Tiny Watermarks = Bad


Oh yeah and we also do not offer anything printed on glossy paper .. it's too easy to make a good re-print from at home.

Looking forward to your going out of business sale. Hope you have some good stuff I can use.

About 1 in 10 people on the entire freaking planet are on facebook. Something like 800 million users out there. If you won't provide people pics to share with their friends via social networking, I think you are destined to fail. We may not like what they do with the images once they get them, but, IMO, it's an essential service at this point.

If you won't offer them, your competition will.

I'll have to disagree with you here. I think he's got a winning strategy. It's one thing to cater to the masses (Facebook denizens) but that will lead you to the Wal-mart sales strategy...low cost, high volume (and likely lower quality). If you target the higher end of the market, you can go with a higher cost, lower volume (you'll need a high quality). Both ways can make lots of money, but ask yourself if you'd rather work more hours or less?

And notice that he mentioned that even the low rez files are a product. So people can still purchase the files and put them on Facebook to share with friends & family...but the way he's set it up, the have already purchased prints or at least they are paying a lot for the files.

And that leads to another tip for selling digital files. Many people ask how much they should charge for digital files...and my answer was always to say, 'Charge (at least) as much as you think you would get by keeping the files and selling prints.' So if your average print sale is $200, you might want to charge $150-$200 for the digital files (and the right to make prints). So you still make the same profit, but you don't have to make/order the prints. You might loose out on the occasional large print sale, but it might balance out since you're making up for the ones who would only place a small print order.
One probably with this though, is that you loose control of the final product. They might make prints at home, on typewriter paper (or worse, at Wal-mart) and the prints will look crappy. They'll tell everyone who see them, that you were their photographer.

That's nice and all, but that hasn't worked for years. YES, people who sell seminars will tell you that, but people who sell photography know different. (And by the way, people who sell this way are all pretty much out of business around here, UNLESS they are selling seminars to boost the income.

It just doesn't work anymore. But I still make great money, because I'm selling quality products on the backend that they CAN'T get.

The days of golden plunder are over.

 

[Kerbouchard]

Even the High End Market is on Facebook. Social networking sites are not just for Walmart shoppers. I think people forget that it is a 'networking' site and if you are shooting high end clients, their network is likely to be high end. Same for the low end. To me, it makes more sense to factor that cost directly into your price, post the images to facebook yourself, and tag the client. The client gets preview files, you get free advertising(with an entire network of people similar to your client), and everybody's happy.

But then again, I don't earn my income from photography. I just shoot with people that do, and based on the amount of shots I have of the same person being a bridesmaid and a bride, I would have to say I think it's working. Referrals are a huge part of the business. Facebook/Google Plus, is just another tool to reach more people in the same demographic as your target market. Seems like the few times somebody might print a facebook image does not offset the marketing benefit.

Just my .02.

We start out by doing all in-studio sales. There are no sneak peeks on a blog or Facebook. They see them during the ordering session and there are no proofs to take home or option for me to upload a gallery somewhere so they can goof around for a month looking at them before ordering. We have minimum purchase requirements based on the type of client session and what session options or add ons were selected. This prevents us from having to worry about somebody coming in and order 5 4x6s then scanning them and never coming back for more. The client is not left alone with their images displayed for them to snap off crappy shots with their cell phones (people will do that). When going over the product line we include the High-Res digital files stating they are $300 each and we clearly emphasize the fact that purchasing these files comes with the legal documentation that is required in order to make prints from the files we provide or if you want to scan the prints you purchase. Note we don't say "Yeah you can print from them" .. they are being clearly educated that legal documentation is required for printing from files AND for scanning prints. If they are the type of people who will do it no matter what it doesn't change anything. However, we have educated them on right and wrong and that's all you can do there.
Give them everything on Facebook and they will print them. In the past we only gave free Facebook pics of the poses that they purchased in their collection and those pics had a huge logo streaming across the bottom. This eliminated the desire to print from them. However, we took it a step further and now low-res files, just like high-res files, are an actual product with a value. This helps to further educate the consumer that digital files are in fact a product and by purchasing low-res files or by not doing so, it either increases our profit or reduces our workload.
When it comes to updating our online portfolio, this is not done right away. You won't find me posting on the blog .. "Check out these awesome portraits from todays client !!" .. or yesterdays .. or last weeks .. in fact it might be several months down the road before I might post something on the blog or Facebook. This is long after the ordering session and by this point if the client hasn't re-ordered odds are they won't anyway.

To sum it up ..
Online Shopping Carts = Bad
Sneak Peek Blog Posts = Bad
Free Facebook Images = Bad
Unsupervised Proof Access = Bad
Tiny Watermarks = Bad


Oh yeah and we also do not offer anything printed on glossy paper .. it's too easy to make a good re-print from at home.

Looking forward to your going out of business sale. Hope you have some good stuff I can use.

About 1 in 10 people on the entire freaking planet are on facebook. Something like 800 million users out there. If you won't provide people pics to share with their friends via social networking, I think you are destined to fail. We may not like what they do with the images once they get them, but, IMO, it's an essential service at this point.

If you won't offer them, your competition will.

I'll have to disagree with you here. I think he's got a winning strategy. It's one thing to cater to the masses (Facebook denizens) but that will lead you to the Wal-mart sales strategy...low cost, high volume (and likely lower quality). If you target the higher end of the market, you can go with a higher cost, lower volume (you'll need a high quality). Both ways can make lots of money, but ask yourself if you'd rather work more hours or less?

And notice that he mentioned that even the low rez files are a product. So people can still purchase the files and put them on Facebook to share with friends & family...but the way he's set it up, the have already purchased prints or at least they are paying a lot for the files.

And that leads to another tip for selling digital files. Many people ask how much they should charge for digital files...and my answer was always to say, 'Charge (at least) as much as you think you would get by keeping the files and selling prints.' So if your average print sale is $200, you might want to charge $150-$200 for the digital files (and the right to make prints). So you still make the same profit, but you don't have to make/order the prints. You might loose out on the occasional large print sale, but it might balance out since you're making up for the ones who would only place a small print order.
One probably with this though, is that you loose control of the final product. They might make prints at home, on typewriter paper (or worse, at Wal-mart) and the prints will look crappy. They'll tell everyone who see them, that you were their photographer.

 

[bennielou]

Even the High End Market is on Facebook. Social networking sites are not just for Walmart shoppers. I think people forget that it is a 'networking' site and if you are shooting high end clients, their network is likely to be high end. Same for the low end. To me, it makes more sense to factor that cost directly into your price, post the images to facbook yourself, and tag the client. The client gets preview files, you get free advertising(with an entire network of people similiar to your client), and everybody's happy.

But then again, I don't earn my income from photography. I just shoot with people that do, and based on the amount of shots I have of the same person being a bridesmain and a bride, I would have to say I think it's working. Referrals are a huge part of the business. Facebook/Google Plus, is just another tool to reach more people in the same demographic as your target market. Seems like the few times somebody might print a facebook image does not offset the marketing benefit.

Just my .02.

Looking forward to your going out of business sale. Hope you have some good stuff I can use.

About 1 in 10 people on the entire freaking planet are on facebook. Something like 800 million users out there. If you won't provide people pics to share with their friends via social networking, I think you are destined to fail. We may not like what they do with the images once they get them, but, IMO, it's an essential service at this point.

If you won't offer them, your competition will.

I'll have to disagree with you here. I think he's got a winning strategy. It's one thing to cater to the masses (Facebook denizens) but that will lead you to the Wal-mart sales strategy...low cost, high volume (and likely lower quality). If you target the higher end of the market, you can go with a higher cost, lower volume (you'll need a high quality). Both ways can make lots of money, but ask yourself if you'd rather work more hours or less?

And notice that he mentioned that even the low rez files are a product. So people can still purchase the files and put them on Facebook to share with friends & family...but the way he's set it up, the have already purchased prints or at least they are paying a lot for the files.

And that leads to another tip for selling digital files. Many people ask how much they should charge for digital files...and my answer was always to say, 'Charge (at least) as much as you think you would get by keeping the files and selling prints.' So if your average print sale is $200, you might want to charge $150-$200 for the digital files (and the right to make prints). So you still make the same profit, but you don't have to make/order the prints. You might loose out on the occasional large print sale, but it might balance out since you're making up for the ones who would only place a small print order.
One probably with this though, is that you loose control of the final product. They might make prints at home, on typewriter paper (or worse, at Wal-mart) and the prints will look crappy. They'll tell everyone who see them, that you were their photographer.

And that is the honest truth. I don't sell seminars, and I don't care to. I do weddings. And while I watched several friends of mine who did the old type of sales go out of business, I stayed busy doing the 2011 way.

I don't have a day job, or sell actions, of ask you to come to a seminar. I make money off of word of mouth. 2012 is booked and we just opened 2013. There is a reason for that. And I'm not starving, or going out of business to do it. I changed with the times. I just charge a lot of money. And I get it because friends tell friends tell friends on facebook.

I don't know half of my friends on facebook. I really don't. But I get people there too. Because they saw a photo that someone posted.

I'm not waiting around trying to make $100 on an 8x10. I'm working. All year long. And if people want to go out and advertise for me, I say "Yay!"

 

[orljustin]

I'm going to disagree with you here. When you see a piece of artwork an image hanging somewhere you don't ask who was the photographer and who was the printer. People are notoriously lazy and very quick to assume things. If someone tells you that so and so was the photographer do they often say but we got it printed at Costco. Not usually.

I don't ask anything. I don't normally stick my nose into other people's business, or decorating choices. If someone says that "so and so was the photographer", I would think that most people would think that Mr. And So is the photographer, the guy that shoots the image. Obviously, Mr. And So is not the printer, because a photographer is not a printer, he is the guy that takes pictures. A printer is the guy that prints them out. Not too difficult.

 

[Big Mike]

I just charge a lot of money.

That was (sort of) my point...in a round about sort of way....I think.

This thread is about what to do when people are stealing your images and printing themselves (without permission). One way to help prevent or alleviate this problem, is to give/sell them the files. That does seem to be what everyone wants these days anyway. So if you are going to do that, you have to find a way to make your money, since your print sales will (most likely) be less. And of course, the easy way to do that, is just to change a higher price in the first place (the sitting fee or wedding fee etc.)

Or are you tying to say that targeting the high end of the market, is what doesn't work anymore...:scratch:
By charging a lot of money, that's exactly what you're doing.

 

[Redeyejedi]

This incident describes exactly the problem with providing clients with ANY FORM of images until they have payed handsomely for access to the images that a photographer has been commissioned to create...

If you "give" clients low-resolution proofs before selling them a package of any type (digital files,prints,canvas prints, or any combination), your profit has been flushed down the toilet in many cases. ANY image is often enough to satisfy some people...even a lo-rez printed screen cap...

thanks for that! :thumbup:

 

[rub]

Well, there has sure been a lot of interesting and useful information posted here. I was more concerned with how to address the actual client, but preventing the theft is also important.

A few things I will note. I charge a $250 session fee which includes one 11x14 print. There are no digital files included, and clients can either purchase print packages, a la carte prints, digital files, wall art, albums etc.

Both of the clients have indicatedthey will be making purchases soon, but I know both have financial pressure with the holidays here.

Once I contact her I will let you know her response.

 

[EnjoyPhotoSfl]

bump for update !

 

[jowensphoto]

Don't look now! Zombie thread!

 

[dakkon76]

I don't charge my friends for services. If they're a good friend, I'll show up to help them move, I'll take pictures of them with their kids and give them the finished files so they can do what they want with them, I'll offer them medical advice without asking for compensation. If they're not that close of a friend, I refer them somewhere else so things don't get complicated. If I considered someone a friend and they wanted to charge me for services, even though I would of course offer to pay them, it would tell me that we weren't as close as I had thought we were.

Moral of the story: avoid doing "business" with friends.

Like others have said: if you value the friendship, then you need to do 3 things to preserve it:

1. Drop it.
2. Accept the fact that you might have been better off not charging them in the first place. Take some of the blame so that you don't hold it against them, which will continue to erode the relationship.
3. Print an 8x10 of the image your friend had displayed and give it to them. Tell them you know things are tight around the holidays and you don't want things to be awkward between the two of you.