I’ve heard for a long time clients stealing images from the photographers they paid for their wedding, engagement or other event coverage directly from their websites, blogs or photo-streams and using them in printed materials like invitations, thank you notes and such.
I just finished reading a similar case again from a lovely photographer on a group I belong to, which is not only shocking but infuriating when your livelihood depends on it and decided to post my approach about it.
As a wedding, engagement or event photographer you charge an hourly fee for your services plus a printing fee, a fee for high resolution images on DVD/CD and fees for other products your decide to offer your clients like albums, canvas prints, etc. The images belong to you, the artist behind the camera, not your clients, you have the copyright by law, and you create the products you sell your clients for an extra profit, otherwise as a photographer you would be filling for bankruptcy very soon if your only income is your hourly fee.
But let’s face it, whatever we as professionals post online is doomed to be copied or reproduced one way or another, so how to stop this? I’m afraid there is no way you can stop this from happening. You can prevent right clicking on your web pages but your clients will just do a print screen and capture the image anyways, or even go to the length of finding the image on your server. You might think watermarking the image would be enough? think again, many would just crop out your watermark and use that image in any way they want because many are that ignorant when it comes to copyright. You could even go further and apply a transparent image on top of the original picture, again this has being proven completely inefficient as well. I’ve had my images from my art sites downloaded for years now, and the only thing I’ve heard from many is “don’t have a website and you won’t be copied” but is this really the solution on the internet era? of course not, you would be loosing hundreds if not thousands of customers if you take all your sites down!
Another approach is the legal route, but unless we are talking about copying for reproduction and profit it makes no absolute sense to go and file a case in court, but there is something that can be done in the case of photography for wedding, portrait and event photographers, charge a fee.
Many photographers (me included) don’t give our images away, we charge a fee for a DVD/CD with the high resolution images and a limited copyright usage. But let say your client didn’t buy a DVD/CD therefore he/she doesn’t have access to a digital file and he’s decided he wants to print out a thank you note on his own. Of course since he has no digital files of the images he thinks is a great idea going to your blog and just right click your image, make the art and send it for printing, without notifying you of his plans. You find out somehow and you know as a professional photographer this is absolutely illegal, and that the printing company could be in serious trouble down the road for printing unauthorized material, but your client doesn’t know and 95% of the times this problem rely on us as professionals by not transmitting the message about OUR copyright to our clients so they know what they can do, what they can’t do and what to expect if they break the law. Since this might be considered a minor offense in court (if you don’t have your work registered at the copyright office) lawyers will not take your case into consideration at all, but you are still stuck with clients abusing you and your work.
My approach is very simple, charge a printing fee to your client for downloading the image off your site, and charge them a penalty fee for cropping out your watermark and abusing your copyright policies. For this to work you will have to add one more clause to your contract agreement, something like “in the eventuality you as the client download, right click or print screen any of the images from my blog, portfolio, facebook, flickr or any other site that’s hosting my images, to use in your personal printing material, etc (whatever you think is inappropriate here) without previously paying the corresponding fee for printed materials and requesting the necessary permits from me the copyright holder of all the images I capture, you will be charged a regular printing fee plus a penalty fee for the violation of my copyright, cropping my watermark off the image to use on your printed material or any other violation which will be billed separately and as per image downloaded. To avoid penalty fees for the download and illegal usage of any of the images on my blog, portfolio, etc. please request the necessary permits from me the photographer”.
You would say this is extreme, why would you penalize your clients for violating your copyright, making you mad, loosing money, sales, etc.?… is it really extreme?…
Another thing you will need to add to your contract is an usage fee (called Royalty Fee) in the case your clients are not purchasing high resolution images with a limited copyright notice, so whenever your clients or anyone for that matter approaches you to legally use one of your images for any printing materials you have the provision in place and know exactly how much to charge on a per image usage. This is a common practice in the art and photography industry so as a professional photographer take advantage of it and you will minimize violations tremendously.
80% of the clients think “I paid the photographer I own the images”. Until this is understood by your clients to be wrong, violations will keep occurring. You are the only one that can enforce your rights. It’s up to your clients to keep up.
Happy shooting!!
