Expert: Tricia Scott-Sahler - 11/10/2008

Question
Hi! I am by no means a pro but people like my work so I'll occasionally do shoots for friends and family. Anyway, I recently did a shoot for a family. Out of 280+ photos I took, they've received proofs in a slideshow for over 60 images. I've offered all of these edited/cropped images on a CD to them for practically nothing as I'm chalking this all up as a learning experience... The customer now requests ALL of the images as well on a CD to keep "just in case"... I have reservations about this as these are technically my images and many of the ones they aren't seeing are not that good - don't we all do that now - shoot a bunch then present the best to the customer? Anyway - how wold you approach this? Would you go ahead since I'm not a pro, just prefacing it that it's a special circumstance... I'm torn. Thank you for any advise!

Answer
Leigh,

Yes, it is industry practice to edit out the "bad" ones!  It's your work and if they are technically bad, or people are blinking, you don't want that out there!  In case of what?  An occasion where they want an out of focus image :)  There may be something specific they are looking for, that they remember you shooting.  Maybe you can find middle ground and give them some of those?

Did you have any kind of agreement with them on how many images they would receive?  If so, stick to it.  You should probably begin to think of these things if you are going to be shooting for monetary compensation.  Allworth has great books that are the "legal" side of photography.  Also check out APA and your local ASMP chapter.  

Hope this helps.