I recently did a couple shoots with my husband for our anniversary and was super excited to book this local photographer. We agreed on a 3 week turn around for final gallery and paid upfront $320 for 30-40 final images. The shoot went well, even gave her a new location for future shoots and gave her a mood/inspo board of what I was going for.
Anyways first issue that happened was after the 3 week mark came (a Wednesday) I heard nothing and waited until the end of the week giving hear a few days of grace to give me an update. I reached out on Monday and heard back later that day basically saying she was behind and was sorry for not communicating. I understood bc life gets busy but was a little upset bc it shouldn’t be the clients responsibility reaching out to check in.
Finally received the final galley but was so upset at the shots that were picked and some of the editing. Several pictures had this motion/blur effect for still images that had no movement, she included Black and White images which I never agreed to the final gallery and she had the worst cropping ratios to several pictures. Where if I wanted to print a 5x7 the image would not be fully printed. I emailed her politely saying that neither my husband nor I were fans of certain pics and asked if resizing/re-editing could be done. She said that the ones with motion blur effect were done with camera and nothing could be done with those and that if I wanted re-edited pics it would be an additional $75 for a “Artistic Rights Fee”.
Now I just wanted to know if that fee is a common thing in the industry? Especially knowing your client was unsatisfied with your work. I feel a bit cheated expressing that we didn’t like certain pics and that if we wanted anything done it would be extra $.
I posted examples on my page for reference to this post. Thanks!
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Is it normal for photographer to charge extra for re-editing?
Yes. It is normal for a photog to charge for additional work. However…
It is not normal to charge extra just to give the customer what they paid for in the first place, if that first deliverable does not include it.
Check your contract for specifics about what the photographer is responsible for delivering, but if there are no specifics, you’re probably out of luck, if not a little wiser for who not to book next time you have a function.
It sounds to me by the non-standard aspect ratios of the final photos and the relatively cheap price ($10-ish/photo) that you’ve contracted an inexperienced photog, and maybe some gentle “You know… other photographers I’ve spoken to wouldn’t do it that way” discussion might go far into a discount on that $75 “Artistic Rights Fee” or whatever they’re calling it.
Best of luck!
If you don’t like certain photos you can just hide or remove them from the gallery.
5x7 is a different crop from 4x6 so it’s hardly possible to have both.
My advice don’t print 4x6 its just too small for a good picture.
There’s maybe 6-8 out of 30 decent photos that I really like where it’s similar to her editing and our faces/heads are visible. I would be hiding over 75% of the gallery lol.
I was going to reply that another 1 sided story as it usually happens here but then i saw the pics that you posted on your profile and wow those are bad. Like bad BAD.
I’d say cut the losses and find another photographer
first red flag for me is that they didn’t let you choose your final images. you’re the paying customer you should be able to select the final pictures you will receive.
to answer your question it is normal but only if the client is asking for something completely different then from the original direction. but if they want something slightly warmer or cooler or change in tint i don’t charge for that. i personally allow 1-2 minor adjustments for free before i do charge additional edit fees.
I deliver 3:2 ratio. Same as every cameras shoot at.
I got my kid’s school portraits back today. I paid $12 for retouching. They botched it, it looks horrible, like there is something added to his mouth, with a big white splotchy thing in there. Clearly an error. They are telling me they not only can’t undo because they don’t have the original (less than a month after the shoot), but that they won’t refund the retouching fee now or on retakes because “the work is already done.” So yea I guess some photographers do charge for rework that is their fault.
30-40 edits for $320? You’re lucky you got anything out of a price that low. And sounds like you expected $6-800 level of work.
I wasn’t expecting anything editorial just better lol I had high hopes from everyone recommending her with high reviews and her portfolio 🥲
Geez… shouldn’t expect anything for $320?! That’s a fairly average price for a simple couples shoot… this isn’t wedding pics, senior pics etc… did you even look at the photos?
Is it me or are those photos really… bad? Like you said, the blur, the cropping, the colors,… Looks like an amateur took them and slapped some bad filters on it.
So did you pay $320 for the shoot and the edited images? If so, it’s likely you are working with an amateur…a bad one judging by the photos. She tried to do black and white to compensate for terrible light and exposure, probably bad focus, too. Black and white can hide a few things. She probably didn’t shoot in raw, making it all the worse. She tried photo techniques (the spin) without practicing enough first… turned out crappy. It’s fine to try, but if it doesn’t work you don’t show the client. If her work was better on her page, it may have been from a photo workshop where someone else set the scene, created lighting, etc. And then they took the pictures and included in their portfolio. Try again with a different photog. Don’t recommend this one to your friends.
I’ve seen this one, I usually refuse to edit someone else’s photos but a friend of mine came to me with some absolutely terrible wedding photos. They were sooooo bad. I went to look at the photographer’s work on his Facebook page (this was in the mid 2010s) and there were some really great photos, but the ones that were good were all in a studio with models and grouped together. Usually you get a little info from posts, but these were just photos with no captions. The rest ranged from mild cringe to just ok–nothing that came even close to the handful of well lit and composed studio shots.
She got married the day after Christmas which severely limited the pool to choose from, but she trusted his work based off those stunning studio photos. I didn’t add any artistic effect, just clean edits for color correction (white balance was way off, she really wanted a white dress) some skin editing, crop/straighten and noise correction. Dude had an older crop frame and cranked up the ISO to the cameras max and let’s just say camera sensors have come a long way since then. I usually rename photos when I export, these were all original file names and for the most part sequential. Some of them were barely in focus so I’m guessing he just tossed a few of the worst and delivered everything else. There were maybe two that looked edited and it was BS Pinterest crap with words on the background. It was bad. Also an absurdly high number of photos of people who were taking pictures with their phone or the bride scrolling FB while getting her hair done. Like some weird passive aggressive thing about the phone photography at weddings trope. But I did make a couple black and white because it was just easier than the huge amount of time it would have taken to fix them properly and I was doing it as a favor.
That spin effect would be impossible to do in-camera. The lady’s hand is in focus but the blurring encircles this so it’s not like she rotated the camera for creative effect otherwise the hand would be blurred too.
This is why I just give my clients all the pictures. Why don’t they deserve every shot you took of them? And whatever they want edited, you deliver the gallery first, get the list of edit requests, deliver edits in a separate folder, get paid, done.
Took me a minute to find your pics, but in my opinion, those are not very good photos.
I think the motion blur almost looks like what happens when I am playing with the lens and moving the zoom back and forth while I take shots – just me trying to get interesting photos, but in no way would I do that in a paid photo shoot.
Also, the headless photos are odd.
And the 1 black and white is quite dark – at least on my monitor.
$320 is bargain basement. I think if they have a camera then it’s a good deal. That being said the $75 is ridiculous.
Just because you bought an expensive camera and charge people money doesn’t mean you know what looks good lmao
WHOA… I looked at the two examples!
It looks to me like a fairly inexperienced photographer tried to get really creative with your shots when they should not have.
I can see why you are not happy.