Dear Client: Please don’t crop off my logo…

Watermarks are one of those high-emotion subjects that I don’t usually involve myself in. I just put a discreet (and I DO mean discreet) watermark on the sneak peeks I post on Facebook and my blog and go about my business.

But….

The practice of copying these photographs, cutting off the logo and then using the photograph elsewhere has become so commonplace that I must register my disappointment in this practice.

So here’s the deal:

I no longer charge a sitting fee. That means that you come to my studio and I spend at least an hour, and more likely 2 hours photographing you with no compensation. I choose 1-3 favorites from the session, do a full retouch on them (at this point I have AT LEAST an additional 2 hours invested in you) and post a few sneak peeks on Facebook and/or my blog.

I’m not doing this to be nice. I hope you think of me as a nice person, but I’m doing this because I want you to be excited about your photographs. And I *hope* that you share these photographs with your friends.

It doesn’t do me one bit of good if you share these with your friends with my logo cut off.

At this point, I have 3-5 hours invested in your session with no compensation. I’m hoping that you order some photo products and prints to help me recoup my investment in you.

I’m hoping that your friends are suitably impressed with your photographs and they are motivated to call me and schedule their own session based on your photographs. If they don’t see my logo on your sneak peeks, they won’t know who to call. And don’t give me that crap about how they will ask you. They won’t.  Hence the logo.

Furthermore, you have not yet paid me a cent. These photographs do not belong to you to do with as you choose. These sneak peeks are a courtesy and one of the purposes of these is to serve as a little bit of advertising. When you chop off or remove my logo, you have eliminated my chance to gain any further business. If you would like to purchase the digital file, I will prepare it for you WITHOUT a logo and then it is yours to use as you see fit (short of submitting it for publication or selling it for profit). I will have finally earned some income from your session, so all will be square between us.

The situation is further disappointing when the session in question was free of charge. I don’t do many sessions without pay, but when I do, I expect some common courtesy in how the photographs and sneak peeks are shared. If I gift you with a session and package worth hundreds of dollars, I expect that you will be very careful in your treatment of the resulting images.

Now, I know how it goes. Sometimes the clients are not educated and don’t realize that this is an issue. So – take this a PSA. It’s not cool. Please don’t do it. Use the images from your session in the FULL format in which they were given. It’s good Karma.

I know there’s a lot of confusion out there – so let me make a simple clarification. Just because you are in the photo does not mean that it belongs to you. It belongs to me. I am the copyright holder and I am the artist. Yes, you were my lovely subject, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

Another point of consideration is whether you are a “model” for my studio. If I have asked you to be a model, it’s not because I’m just a silly woman who wants to shower you with free photo products and sessions, it’s because we are entering a win-win situation. I do favors for you and you do favors for me. The favors you do for me include sharing your photographs with your friends and letting them know where you had them taken. You are a source of advertising for me. Yes, I like you and you like me, but I own a business and this is part of business. If you help me out with getting some potential new clients, I help you out with some complimentary sessions and products. Make sense?

If I continue to have this happen, I will have no choice but to discontinue sharing my photographs. Then where will we be? You will not have photos to share with your friends and I will not have recent photos to show off my photographic skills. Right now I’m one of the FEW photographers that uses a tasteful logo on their photos. Most photographers create the most obnoxious logo that they can or else they place their logo across the faces of the people in the photographs. I hate how that looks and I know that you hate it too. That’s why mine is simple, discreet and a lowered opacity.

I hope this has served to educate. Have a nice day.