I want to virtually strangle my wedding photographer...

[olive519]

So, I got married in 2005 and just got around to getting my act together to request the wedding album. Yes, it's been 4 yrs but I could offer up a bunch of excuses why I never had the time. My contract stated I was due an album with 20 photos and there was a surcharge if you ordered 12 mos after.

I email the photography team, asking for final instructions. I get an email back telling me that for an additional $1500, she cam make the album but has to charge me all these additional fees because technologies have changed and the negatives are in storage, or for the small fee of $275, I can just get all my negatives back!

I'm so fuming right now! Yes, I am way late on this but somehow I doubt I'm the first.

None of these new surcharges she's pulling out of her hat were ever mentioned in the contract and I think she's trying to a) punish me for waiting and inconveniencing her and b)trying to stick me with the technology costs of them moving from film to digital

I responded to her email politely but firmly, laying out what I will and will not pay for.

If we can't resolve, I have a lot of free time... BBB, small claims court, arbitration etc all seem like a fun learning opportunity for me now, kinda like soduku...

Thanks for letting me rant a bit

[juneping]

great that you have a lot of time....get your right.

[laloki]

Sorry I think that after four years you should incur some penalty. Why should she have to wear the costs for the inconvenience & technology costs?? I find it hard to believe that someone would go four years before getting something that is important to them finished and completed, so I think it is a situation that you have contributed to and unfortunately will have to face the extra financial consequences for.

Maybe they are also at fault for not following up with you after the Wedding but if I was in her shoes I would have thought that after four years that you weren't interested.

[sweetneet]

i know this probably isn't what you want to hear, but I sorta have to see the photographer's point here. 4 years is a long time, and the contract did state that there would be a surcharge if the album was ordered after 1 year, so i personally don't think what the photographer is doing is all that wrong.

Six months ago I got my first DSLR and started taking classes on photography and image processing (Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom). Only after that did I realize why photographers charge so much $$; processing photos is a TON of work. If the images were originally on film and the photographers' system of storage/processing has changed (which I can easily imagine it would, after such a long time) I can imagine that's even more extra work, hence the charge. Also, since it costs the photographer $$ to store all the clients images (may not seem like much, but with ~800 images per wedding, and doing a wedding every week, it adds up over the years) i imagine that if a client wants to be able to order something after, say 5 years, the client should have to pay for the storage of the images during those 5 years, in addition to the cost of the album.

You mentioned you have a lot of free time.. so if I were you I would just get the images and create my own wedding album. sites like MyPublisher or blurb.com are really good for creating albums/photobooks. My wedding was over 2 years ago and I never got around to doing my wedding album either (plus I didn't want to pay over $1k for an album) so this is what I am currently doing. Most of these publishing sites have templates/layouts specifically with wedding themes so pretty much you just have to supply the images. The cost these photobooks is pretty cheap compared to what most photographers charge for wedding albums.

[juneping]

but OP said:

Quote:

My contract stated I was due an album with 20 photos and there was a surcharge if you ordered 12 mos after.

so...why penalize OP??
i graduated 10/11 years ago...our school had professional photographer and they already used digital camera..we just order online for our pictures. why 4 years ago they still used negative?? doesn't make sense to me...??
OP...did you check your contract to see if they are supposed to send the album to you or you had to get the album? any mentioning of late charge??
i think it's cheaper to get the negative and do a contact sheet and print whatever you like for a cheaper price...20 photos for 1500 which is 75 per one photo. but the quality could be less perfect...b/c you might not have the professional dark room service to perfect each photo...after i break down the price..i think she just charging you the labor fee...20 photos can take about a week or less to do so.

[Roo]

You are lucky your photographer even still HAS the photos after almost five years. IMO.

[amanda]

OP, don't punish the photographer for your own procrastination. If your contract said that there would be a fee after 12 months, then that's exactly what she's doing - charging you a fee. Nearly five years is a ridiculous amount of time. Photographers are professionals, they're not doing you a personal favor. If this was a priority for you, you should have handled it in a timely manner and given some respect to the fact that the photographer has clients and business issues above and beyond sitting around and waiting to make your wedding album. 5 years is a lot of time, in terms of technology and photo editing technique. You may discount the difficulty and time associated with suddenly snapping your fingers and expecting to get what you want after half a decade, but if it was such a simple thing, then people wouldn't hire wedding photographers, they'd just have their buddies take the pictures.

I work in a creative industry, and people always seem to assume that the work we do is somehow slightly less important or less difficult than others. It's not, we're professionals too, and we have every right to be expected to be treated professionally.

[omgsweet]

Originally Posted by Roo

You are lucky your photographer even still HAS the photos after almost five years. IMO.

This is what I was going to say.

But why do you have to request the album? Didn't you already pay for it before the wedding? Should they have completed the album and sent it to you already?

My husband does wedding videos. Once the video is completed, we mail it to the customer. We don't wait for them to request it.

ETA: I understand she is charging a fee...but $1500 seems a little crazy. If she still has the photos that you already paid her to take, then the fee to develop them shouldn't be so high.

[lorihmatthews]

I'm on the photographer's side on this one. You signed a contract that specifically stated a fee would be charged after 12 months. But why didn't you get that album? Is it because you didn't pick out the photos for her to put in the album? Then you're the one who dropped the ball and I don't think the photographer is responsible for your procrastination.

Frankly I think it would be ridiculous to try and sue this person no matter how much time you have on your hands. It's just wrong. I hardly think that the photographer is wanting to "punish" you for waiting so long. That's ridiculous.

[sarahloveslouis]

I *just* got my wedding photos digitally this morning - and I got married on 9-1-09. I thought that TWO MONTHS was nerve-racking enough.

I couldn't imagine putting it off for almost five years!

[chinahopes]

It's all about the contract. Unless your contract explicitly states what the fees are/will be, she can charge you whatever she wants... Good luck!

[MissyBaby]

I myself am a wedding photographer and understand all of the things she is saying, so as a wedding photographer, I can understand HER frusteration, but as a BRIDE I understand YOUR frusteration. So I straddle the fence on this one. As a Photog I have a similar clause in all my wedding contracts and say that yes there is a fee after a certain period of time. At no time will your photos ever be intentionally destroyed. If we still have them, which we should, every photog need to make a CD copy and an external harddrive copy, JIC, we charge the fee, make the album and send it out. HOWEVER $1500 is an insane amount, unless the fee changes with each passing year. So maybe if you had ordered sooner the fee would have been less. But, back to what I was saying.

Personally, it's not that hard to move NEGATIVE to DIGITAL. Really. I have a machine here at home that does it.

SO.... I can offer you this....buy your negatives from her. FOR $275, just buy the negatives. You can buy a machine on B&H Photo called a NEGATIVE VIEWER. We've taken negatives from the 70's and have turned them into digital. It lets you view the negatives on your computer screen and save a copy. If you have some kind of Photo Editing Program on your computer you can edit them yourself, send them to walgreens online and get copies the next day. This, to me, seems SOOO much easier than going to small claims court or paying $1500. The machine itself stands about as tall as an average size book, and is as wide as a coke bottle. There's a slot in the middle that you slide your negatives, in the negative carrier (as we called them while I was in school, when Photography schools still taught the lost art of darkroom), through. Very simple. Anyone can do it!


Yes you are quite a bit late in asking for them, but sometimes life gets away with you. As as photographer I would be happy to have the business, but apparently she has customers to spare.....buy the negatives, buy the machine, save yourself a lot of hassle.

As one of the above posters said, we photographers are working professionals and we can't play favorites. Our business is an expensive business and it costs what it costs, but if you were given to option to buy the negatives, I SERIOUSLY would buy the negatives and look into the Negative Viewer. (Here's a link, I was looking fast so I THINK this is what we're talking about. If it's not, I'll post again with the correct link. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc....html#features .... here's the link to the search page. I searched "NEGATIVE SCANNERS" it has been a little while since I've used my machine and they've changed the names on me. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search...tialSearch=yes BTW, some of those can run very expensive, but search "Low to High" the more inexpensive machines work just as well, trust me.)

[Charles]

Originally Posted by juneping

but OP said: so...why penalize OP?? i graduated 10/11 years ago...our school had professional photographer and they already used digital camera..we just order online for our pictures. why 4 years ago they still used negative?? doesn't make sense to me...?? OP...did you check your contract to see if they are supposed to send the album to you or you had to get the album? any mentioning of late charge?? i think it's cheaper to get the negative and do a contact sheet and print whatever you like for a cheaper price...20 photos for 1500 which is 75 per one photo. but the quality could be less perfect...b/c you might not have the professional dark room service to perfect each photo...after i break down the price..i think she just charging you the labor fee...20 photos can take about a week or less to do so.

I'm assuming it was understood that the OP would select which 20 photos would be in the album, but the OP never got around to it. Now she's expecting everything to be like it was over 4 years ago.
As for what your school used 10 years ago, I don't think that really applies. If the photographer used film 4 years ago, then she used film. Now she doesn't and that's all that matters. All of her negatives are in storage and thus a fee will be charged to get the negatives out of storage and send them to the OP.
It all seems rather logical to me, although, I will say, $1500 for 20 photos is a bit much.

[Ellie Mae]

Originally Posted by Roo

You are lucky your photographer even still HAS the photos after almost five years. IMO.

I have to agree with this. FOUR+ YEARS later OP now wants her wedding pix?? You are lucky, OP, that the photographer still has negs AND that they are usable.
Yes, the fees quoted you are high. Perhaps, they just don't want to mess with it at this late date. Get your negs. Then get some prices locally to transfer negs to CD, and then print what you want.
With some photographers, you would simply be SOL after 4 yrs.

[sweetdreamer16]

yea i have to side with almost everyone here! I mean wedding photos are so huge why would you procrastinate like that? the photographer is right in charging u extra fees but $1500 is way too much!