Client selling my wedding photos on her SmugMug site

<p>Katrin, my best advice to you is to contact photo.net and beg them to have this entire article removed.</p>

<p>As I have found to be the case rather often in the past, William W says it best: </p>

 

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<p>If you give or sell a disc of High Res Files, then the images will be printed, that is a fact.</p>

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<p>I think the original poster's problem - if indeed there is a problem here at all, which isn't clear - is a problem that we all face now and it ain't going away. Digital has changed everything for pro photographers, starting with the fact that we now face competition from people who just bought their first camera six months ago, all the way to the fact that we have very little control over how our images are distributed and/or used.</p>

<p>As William W suggests, the thing to do now is structure our businesses so that we prevent these issues from ever becoming problems in the first place. If you rely on the terms of your contract and then find yourself having to defend those terms by calling a lawyer, well, you're already screwed at that point. If a former client sold a picture of mine to Brides magazine for thousands of dollars, well, I'd call an attorney. Otherwise, I generally sigh and move on.</p>

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<p>One small detail: The issue isn't whether the OP's former client has a pro account at SmugMug, it's whether the prices on these photos have been jacked up to provide the bride herself with a profit. Yes, you have to have a pro account to set custom pricing. But while CP requires PA, PA does not require CP, that is, the holder of a pro account does not HAVE to provide custom pricing, and does not have to earn a profit. When I was using SmugMug, I often had private galleries for family where I posted personal photos without custom prices.</p>

<p>*</p>

<p>Anyway, if you give the client high-res image files, you should assume they're going to post 'em online and/or print 'em. </p>

<p>I have not made a decision on this yet, but I've been toying with the idea of providing only medium high-res files, suitable for prints up to 5x7, say. Not sure this idea will work, though, for two reasons. First, the printers are getting better and better at making large prints from small files; and in any case if the client has a medium res file, they may order a large print from their own printing source and then blame me if the print doesn't look as good as they expected. And second, if I don't give them the high res files, it becomes incumbent on me to keep those files myself in my archives, in case they want them in the future. And I can certainly imagine that somebody might come back to me four years after the wedding and get mad because I don't still have the files.</p>

<p>So in the meantime, the main thing I do is give clients a lecture about print quality. I'm also now providing all my clients with a handful of high-quality prints, as part of the package. I pick the photos. The idea here is to give them a sense of the difference that high-quality printing can make. And if they can't tell the difference between a print from a pro lab and a print from Walgreens, well, God bless 'em.</p>

<p>Will </p>

<p>William P.--I think giving medium res files won't produce the effect you want. Clients will still print giant prints from them. And 8x10s from a 5x7 sized file look pretty good. They won't see any difference.</p>