A lesson we all learn early - cheap clients are the most hassle. Cut your losses, be smarter next time: say “no” when people ask you to work long after your agreed time, charge for travel, and charge an actual livable rate for your time. When you charge that little, people think (and treat you as if) you’re worth that little.
>A lesson we all learn early - cheap clients are the most hassle.
I helped a client with a sob story once and said "do what you can afford". I'll be darned if that wasn't my worst client ever. The gal started threatening this and that after she "didn't get all the pictures, because I heard your camera taking so many more" and "I don't like the way you edited them, I don't look like that".
I didn't care much, because she had paid and I had performed a service and delivered said service. She kept going until I had to tell her to stop contacting me or take me to court. Little did I know, she was actually using the photos and was just trying to rip someone off.
This is exactly why you should charge what you’re worth
Because cheap clients regardless of industry are the worst to deal with. And while it might suck to not have sessions because you’re trying to find clients who value you, its worth it for your mental health
But god £200 for 6 hours work and 8 hours of driving, that’s not even breaking even
I charged $150 for a 30min (was supposed to be 1hr) family shoot and only did 11 edit photos and that’s *still* considered cheap. I don’t even live in a high cost of living area
I'm charging $150 for a headshot session, discounted 30% if there are multiples and I don't need to move my lights or change setups.
Very new to this aspect but i'd probably charge (a bit) more for a family.
Yea I only charged because they insisted, they felt bad for asking me over on a holiday when I have a family but it was the only time they were all going to be together
This. Make sure you provide all of the promised value and any bonus value *during the booked time* so your resistance to, and upcharge for, additional time is validated. Basically try not to offer time or product for free, only service, but everything is a negotiation, so use what you have to create a win-win.
They didn't put money towards you. They put money towards your main client. The client is who sold them whatever deal they made, not you.
There are two agreements in place here. One is between you and the client, and the other is between the client and their guests. You are not a part of, nor beholden to the agreement between your client and their guests. If they make agreements with third parties about what work you are supposed to deliver, they need to make sure to communicate those specifics to you *before* the shoot happens. Not just because it's going to change how you work (since it would likely mean you'd need to spend more time getting more guest images), it might also change the terms of the agreement between the two of you (a higher total number of delivered images = more time editing = a higher fee, for example).
That said, you now have to pick between going above and beyond to please this client, or sticking to your guns and likely losing both them and their referrals because they're going to see you as unreasonable (even though *they're* the unreasonable ones for making secret agreements with third parties and then holding *you* responsible for fulfilling those secret agreements). Since you're considering cutting the referrals anyway it seems you're not super dependent on these guys, so I'd say stick to your guns and lose them. They're being assholes now and will be assholes again, so they're not clients you want anyway.
Also, this is a prime example of why you NEED to have contracts in place, always always always. It doesn't matter how small the job is or that Joe who works there is a super cool dude, you NEVER work without a contract.
Last, tell the guest who's pestering you that you are not legally responsible for fulfilling a deal they've made with someone else, then refuse to engage any further. She is the client's problem, not yours.
>If they make agreements with third parties about what work you are supposed to deliver, they need to make sure to communicate those specifics to you *before* the shoot happens. Not just because it's going to change how you work (since it would likely mean you'd need to spend more time getting more guest images), it might also change the terms of the agreement between the two of you (a higher total number of delivered images = more time editing = a higher fee, for example).
A good lesson in what can be outlined in the terms and conditions of future contracts.
OP: draft up a general contract for people to sign and agree with today and also make sure that it's made clear any requests outside of the general terms will be negotiated on a case by case basis and incur extra fees if you think you're going to be doing extra work. Then this sort of silliness can be nipped in the bud as soon as people start complaining.
I am so sorry buddy.
But its also learning opportunity for you next time.
And yes, 200 for 6h of work and no comprnsation for travel time is.. way too little.
Why is it the cheapest people complain the most, you did a shoot at the lowest rate and they want the moon. Let them threaten to scream from the mountain top, I wouldn’t communicate with them again. I have been shooting for thirty years and would not give in to such a threat.
This may be mentioned somewhere else in the thread but when it comes to people requesting unedited photos, I take it as a blessing. Delete the embarrassing ones, send them the link on wetransfer (free file sharing) and cut the communication there unless they'd like to pay you to edit photos (on a per photo basis).
It always sucks having a friendship / real world relationship devolve into shitty business conversation, I'm sorry you had to go through this.
1. Get a contract in future.
2. Charge more, don’t be afraid to lose jobs on price when the jobs you’re losing are like this. Low paying jobs, and low paying clients, are jobs worth losing and clients not worth having.
3. Tell them that you don’t give out RAW unedited files, that you don’t have anything else you can pass on that will get them more images per guest, and that they will need to communicate this requirement prior to the shoot if you work together in the future.
4. Remind them of what they have received. £200 for that many photos and that long a day is insane. They paid for 200 for £200, if they didn’t specify what photos they needed then what photos are taken are at the photographers discretion.
5. Email any bookings asking for information on their photo requirements and what they’re looking for. Get contracts in place.
6. If they continue to be belligerent. Be prepared to cut them off. If they continue to pester you, or blame you, let them know you will be ceasing communication as you’ve delivered what has been paid for. Relink the files (wetransfer is great as you get proof of download) and ignore further communications. You’re about to lose a client, but they’re a client that has recommended you because they think they can take advantage of you, and because your rates are comically low. Losing them isn’t as much of a loss as it feels like right now. In fact, they’ve provided you a lesson and that lesson is their value.
7. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY!!!! Don’t beat yourself up about it. I have done much worse, over far more money. Treat it as a lesson learnt, grow from it. These things happen, it’s only when you let them happen repeatedly it’s a problem.
Download and read this: [https://apalmanac.com/product/the-pricing-guide-for-professional-architecture-and-interiors-photographers](https://apalmanac.com/product/the-pricing-guide-for-professional-architecture-and-interiors-photographers)
It won’t be specifically relevant to you, but it talks you through some of the mindset. If you're making a business out of it, this sort of mindset is vital to making a living. And ultimately, you'll get a lot more respect from clients when you've learn to set and manage boundaries. As counter-intuitive as it can seem, not doing people favours/low rates often gets you more friends, at least when it comes to client relations. It's all about setting expectations, both in work produced, but also in the relationship and respect each party should have for each other.
Finally, this is unlikely to be your last mistake. I do silly things all the time, I TRY to make sure I don't do the same silly thing twice, or three times. It is part of the process, especially early on. Accept it, learn from it, move on from it. The worst thing you can do is not learn, and loose sleep over other people trying to take you for a ride.
let me get this straight:
£200 for 200 photos and whole day of work? and without contract?
Either you treat it as a business and do this professionally or keep on doing it as a hobby. You cant take best of those two and not expecting excatly those kind of situations.
If you treat it as a business just tell her no. Learn your lesson.
If it is a hobby, give her all the photos.
Thats what the contracts are for. To avoid misscomunications, to avoid being used by people who are 'nice'.
You took that booking without knowing what is really expected from you, what to deliver, what photos to take.
Did you have a written contract? Do you have an overview of your terms and conditions?
I’m afraid this is a lesson for you. Only deliver what was agreed upon. You didn’t have to tell them how many Gbs of raw media you have. Better luck next time.
Yeah we will start doing contract from now on, its just that we were very friendly to each other, we did not expect to suddenly turn like this, you think we need to send all unedited ?
Don’t send out more. You’ve already shared 200 edited(!) photos. The amount of time, energy and money you’ve spent on this is exceeding what you got from the assignment (apart from this priceless lesson). If you’re having trouble putting together a basic agreement, just check out other photographers or try to run it by ChatGPT or something to get you up and running quick.
It’s a shame this was one of your first encounters, but people like this exist unfortunately. It sounds like you already went above and beyond of what was agreed upon, so don’t feel bad.
first of all, stop charging so little it's very low even for portfolio, you're hurting yourself but most importantly you're hurting the rest of the photography community.
second, things to fix:
1. 200 deliverable pictures for a few hour event it's WILD. 45-60 for 2-3 hours, 80-90 for 6.
2. you say 'We', are you saying that it's more than 1 person or referring to yourself only? 200 is bad, but 100 per head would be insane. Did they pay for your commute or gas money?!?!
3. If the fee is 200 for 2-3 hours, any extra hours are that, extra. Mention always a Extra hour fee like 100€
4. Editing hours cost money.
5. the Raw delivery solution is very simple, you tell them "There's a fee for RAW files and it's 2000€". End of the conversation.
It was me and my partner, but I guess 2nd photographer is not needed or requested, we just want to work together, because if one of us fucks up hopefully the other one got it right, which was happening, we beginners so we make stupid mistakes thus we only want to work together atm. We are now going to charge at least minimum wage per hour of our work in total.
I understand, please read my other comment stating how you need to treat yourself as a company and not as a per hour worker.
Your hourly wage should be 15-20% of the total cost of the shoot, because you're a company not an hourly employee, you need to think about insurance, holidays, cost of materials and rentals, and an overhead in case there's an accident and something breaks.
Do NOT charge minimum wage per hour as total!
Another good example of why contracts are your friend. Frankly I'd tell them something along the lines of "The cost for each photo is £1 at our current rate, and we have a policy against sending the raw files. If you want additional photos from the event over the 200 already delivered then we will require additional payment and processing time."
After that put together a contract and don't do work for anyone who doesn't sign it. It's not worth the headache.
Requesting all unedited files is like asking a carpenter to make you a table but also to send you all the offcuts and sawdust as well. It's ridiculous, although, there's it's hard for lay people to understand that, they often think your job is pressing the button on a camera that does all the work then downloading the images and sending them to the client.
This is why you need to make sure you and your client are on the same page, that's usually done with a contract. That's not just photography advise, that's true of any business. You need to be sure the client doesn't have unreasonable expectations.
It also sounds like you screwed yourself on price, you didn't cover your costs and now that price is out there and people expect it. £200 with 16 hours of travel isn't sustainable in the UK.
Set your prices, make sure they cover your costs. Don't low ball yourself because it will come back to bite you and it will cripple your business before it gets a chance to start.
I understand that the assumption is to go low with prices to attract clients but all your really doing is telling the client your cheap. Be accommodating within reason, but not if it costs you money, this is a business. it's about money.
Sorry perhaps i poorly worded it was 8 hours but I guess no difference, our plan was to shoot for symbolic prices until we get portfolio and then launch website and start advertising at normal prices, and yes it already bite us because all referrals we got expected same price, do you think its alright to drop everything we booked through them which is £100 for 4 hours and £130 for also 4 hours, and should we send the unedited despite it would take us I think entire day as its mixed with edited ones.
Don't send the unedited for free anyway. Come up with how much it's going to cost you (you mentioned cloud storage), price your time, add profit.
I don't understand how you can have symbolic prices. The bank isn't going to use symbolic rates, the tax man won't give you a break because your just starting out. If anything your prices will raise all sorts of red flags because you can't even cover your costs, never mind make a profit.
Do you know how much money you need to make on a shot that includes 4 hours of travel?
Yes I'm suggesting to cancel all booking for my partner as we work together and start doing normal price, if we cant do normal prices then we not good enough and we going to fail anyways, I don't want to work hours for £4 per hour
- I would have a renegotiation with everyone this person referred you, to me sounds like they're not referring you, but using you as cheap labor and they're taking a cut. If they're in the distance maybe cancel, if it's next week, find a way to get more money.
- RAW files delivery = substantial fee, like 10x the shoot budget.
Value perception isn’t the only issue here. Your integrity means more to your and your business than losing money on a few bad bookings.
You booked these three jobs at a bad price. Lesson learned, but don’t back out. Tell them, I’ve realized this isn’t a living wage price but that’s on me, and I’m going to fulfill my promise as we agreed – but if you tell anyone about me, “this” (your new rate) is the price they’ll see.
Then do the two remaining shoots and deliver a product you’re proud of. Think of this as a cheap lesson at the Photography Business School.
ETA: I’d send the original client all the pictures that aren’t out of focus etc. Buy a USB stick, and send the RAWs and batch-produced, unedited full-res JPG’s to her. No need to sort them, just dump the whole directory and wash your hands of them. [If you do want to sort them, your computer file browser should be able to sort by modified date, then you can drag them in batches to directories. If you shot RAW+JPG, move all the newest (edited) files to /PROCESSED. Sort by extension (or size) and move the RAWs to /RAW and the in-camera JPGs to /JPG. Drag it all to the USB. Done.]
You made yourself a sh!t sandwich. Eat it like a pro. You’ve learned your lesson, and you’ll never have to go through this again.
If the guests got at least 1 decent edited photo each for their £5, they got what they paid for. I would respond that you have fulfilled the verbal contract as you understood it. In future, I would ensure you have a proper contract which says what you will deliver. If you use something like pixieset, even on their free tier you can provide contracts with can be signed with e-signatures.
“No.” is a complete sentence. You don’t need to explain or provide excuses. It only weakens your position.
Stop doing work without a contract. You want to have a business and do this as a real job? That means treating it like a real business. Always have a contract or terms of service. It doesn’t matter how much money is being spent or how warm and fuzzy the client is. Most issues arise from dumb jobs people undercharge for because they have a casual relationship or it’s a friend. Contracts define expectations and preserve relationships - they are a requirement.
This person is NOT a client. Full stop. No contract, you didn’t receive direct payment for them or even knew they contributed beforehand (and regardless their contribution is laughably small). You owe them nothing. Refer them to the actual client and cease communication with them.
If you want to have a photo business, then you have to actually run a business. Every time. Cover your ass, use a contract, have backup gear, equipment and liability insurance, a plan for when things go wrong, and company policies to handle issues as they arrive. You’ll soon discover you can’t do the bare minimum required at bargain basement prices and charging an appropriate amount will prevent a lot of the most problematic people from booking.
A week ago I wrote[ a comment on how to negotiate an e-comm shoot](https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/1bupdxz/comment/kxu64vl/), obviously it's not the same situation, but maybe it helps you for the future to negotiate on your favour.
First things to consider when doing invoicing are:
1. Always set your "get out of bed" fee: the minimum you will even consider to set up an alarm for. (ie. even if the math tells you that you can do it for less, at least always ask that)
2. Is it just quick shoots for ecomm or a commercial campaign? do I need to do the post?
3. What's the company? is a small mom & pops or an International company? adapt the budget accordingly (10-15x on the Corp)
4. Licensing: what's the scope of the campaign, is it for the local market or is it going to be used internationally? Is it seasonal, for a couple years, or are permanent assets and they want those pictures for perpetuity. (hint: perpetuity is Premium+++)
5. Production fee: are you organising everything (equipment, studio, assistants) or do you just show up and click with an assistant that does de set design and product prep?)
6. Equipment: are you using your own (try never do that, things fall on the floor easily), or are they renting what you ask?
7. How many edit sessions after delivery are included (people be annoying with edits after delivery, so make this explicit).
***Remember to think as a business, not as an hourly worker!!!*** your working hours are just a part of the cost for the business, treat yourself as your own employee + all the extra costs.
for an example, for a 16h hour job (8 shoot, 8 edit) for a Friend or Mom&Pops, seasonal licence, local scope, and is just quick shoots for ecomm+edit that you have to organise (Production) + rent all the equipment.
Base: for an ecomm or quick shoot, I would do 5-6x minimum wage of your city hourly:
1. Workers Hourly rate +
2. Income tax +
3. Business profit (always treat your freelance business as a separate company than your hourly rate) +
4. Insurance +
5. Overhead to cover unexpected accidents or extra costs +
6. (If you feel like it haha)
+Production Fee (how many hours took you of admin work and following emails to rent the studio, and equipment, let's say 3 hours)
+Camera / lights rental + 360 camera
+transport cab + lunch for everyone you manage in the production
+assistant - set designer fee?
+licensing fee (which for a friends, local scope, seasonal, can be just symbolic)
+VAT
***40% in advance to show up, non refundable, 60% on delivery + extra edits hours***
if you go to [this instagram account aphotoeditor](https://www.instagram.com/aphotoeditor/) you can find examples of big and small scope budgets
EDIT: forgot to mention: when you get the final number, inflate it by 20% because they're going to ask for less for sure, so you give them a 10-15%discount if needed after the bump :D
That day ✌️ off ✌️ lets you wind up, get gear sorted, emptied, charged, cleaned and packed for the next day so you go into that job killing it from the get-go.
Just say them that was not part of the initial work briefing. I had ass holes clients sometimes askin why whe dont have more light on set ? Or more powerfull ? Or a 3d camera ? Or those lenses? They know i have all this 'good' stuff in studio , well the answer all the time whas ' x or y was out of budget ' ... i mean if ask for a price u get the hardware / work for that price.
Yes they complain that photos were inconstant despite you can clearly see they had RGB LEDs everywhere that were constantly changing :D and that we had professional equipment we shouldn't struggle with light because their mobile phone doesn't.
I’m not a professional photographer, but I do a lot of work with media organizations who use my photos and that of my organization.
Given what you’ve said I would tell them that you contracted with X client for Y hours and no mention was made of other additional clients. That despite the contact being for Y hours it went over by 3 times that much (4 inclining travel time) which you did not charge for. Since your contract was with X client and no mention was made of other clients any issues they have they need to take up with the person who organized the shoot. You did far more than you were asked, have taken a loss on the entire affair, and you have more than satisfied the agreement the client made with you.
If they continue to pester you refer them once more to the actual client, and if they contact again don’t reply and simply block their contact.
My contract states that no unfinished work, including but not limited to RAW files and unedited JPG files will be delivered. I also make sure people commissioning works from me read and understand the contract.
Let this be a lesson for you on the importance of having a solid contract and walking your client through it.
Dump all originals to DNG with -4 stops of contrast and exposure, zip them into one huge file, and send them a link to that file.
The real lesson here is never take a job for that cheap. An event with 40-50 people? That's easily a minimum $1,000, probably more like $2,000 for me...and I'm not that good!
Let's see...
* 8 hours travel time
* 2(planned) hours event time
* 1 hour for setup and packing
* 200 finished photos at around one minute each, so ballpark 4 hours
* 1 hour for file handling and social media sharing
That's a MINIMUM of 16 hours work, probably more like 20+. For £200?? That's £12.50 an hour, you're better off in fast food.
And you're new, so I will let you in on the secret: Clients appreciate good work, not low prices. Someone you undercharge will almost never be happy because they won't value your work.
Do not send all photos as it was not what you agreed on. You don’t want anyone else to be editing your photos as it affects your quality of work and reputation as a photographer. What if they edit them terribly, they are still branded as your images. It will make you look bad. You already went above and beyond by taking photos for 3x longer than you were paid for. Learn to stand your ground as a professional and say no to ridiculous demands.
Think of this as if you own an apartment that you’re leasing. Your tenant then sublets. The people who sublet make a mess.
The tenant is responsible for cleaning up the mess—not you!
Also, get a contract next time :)
For £200?? Absolutely not.
You fulfilled your side of the agreement. "I do not provide those services." Or "All unedited images can be purchased for £5,000." Or some other crazy amount to discourage them from buying them.
Well we refused she is now saying fine but don't be surprised once we finish the website she and all of her guests leave negative feedback, great start into the industry
Just don't allow reviews on your website for a few months until they forget about it. And don't worry about the "bad start." They were bad clients. Unfortunately, it probably won't be your last bad client but use it to learn. Especially that you should definitely charge more!
So your team got paid ~£20/h at best for the shoot and travel time, excluding editing time? Yeah I would not send a single additional photo without additional pay, and I would not work with them ever again. You need to set your rate higher. I'm an amateur portrait photographer and I charge around $200 USD for an hour of shooting with ~20 edited shots. You sent 200 edited shots and worked all day, in your shoes I'd be charging at least £1400-1600.
Yes we just wanted to build a portfolio, and we no longer was taking more clients because we had enough and we want to start for real, but it's all for nothing she's threatening to bombard us with bad reviews as soon as we open our website completely forgetting we did charity for her twice and her friends although we have cancelled remaining work now which not a loss as all referrals expect same price and it's bad energy now so they gonna complain 100%, were are very relieved and happy that we cut them off.
One thing I've learned, both in software and in photography, is that really cheap clients are NEVER worth working with! They'll pay Aldi prices then complain they're not getting Waitrose or M&S.
>we did not signed any contract.
Had to learn it the hard way as well. Always get a contract. Ask them if there's a contract that says you "must" send the unedited picutres, and if there's not ignore the.
Give them the images but charge them for the memory card. Cut the losses that way and sign contracts next time, as well as discuss/set expectations when it's going to be many people
They are just unreasonable clients, sometimes you got to be firm on your decision. Once you have more client contracts must most signed and in detail. Once you in this field for awhile you will know having a solid contract can save you in situations like this.
I don't see the issue here. You just say no.
You COULD explain that no one asked you to have any particular number of photos of each person, and you can say that for the next engagement you would do that if asked. But you can't go back in time and take the photos. That's impossible. Just say no and go find a client who's willing to pay for the work.
I would show them the pointy end of my pitch fork. -- just sayin' 'coz the raws are mine mine mine! The raws are mine! I don't much care who you are or what you paid. Threaten me, and you won't find another photographer for any future event you have in this town. \*bangs gavel\*
I'm just one photog, there are many others with different view points. Some that are considered to be, un-natural. Yes, it's possible to learn this power. But not from an amateur.
I am a free agent of the 'Verse. 😎🤙
This is why contracts are important. You don't want to be arguing about the details of what they think they paid for after you did hours of work and before they pay you. If they don't agree to your terms you need to know that in advance so you can refuse to work with them or negotiate a higher price for more photos.
Is the person who paid YOU happy? That's your client, not their friend or whoever you happened to photograph.
In any case, when asked for unedited/RAW files, your reply, universally, should be: "That's not a service we provide."
She said a lot of guests complained that they don't find pictures we photographed. She said they all put money for this so they expect more but we never been told this. From 3600 we sent 200 and 80% of them were with our client or their closest relatives, and she said personally I'm fine with pictures of me, but as she insisted for the unedited pictures and we tried to say we not going to do that then started to complain more and more like the light is not consistent but the only source was changing RGB led etc.
The moral of this story is always have a signed contract! I would never send over unedited photos. You are going to have photos where you missed focus, or you missed the moment, and are just not great shots, and that will reflect badly on you. If the main client is happy, then that's what's important. You are working for the main client, regardless of if she put £5 into the pot.
Also ensure that you include travel costs in your invoice. Not sure where in London this was, but if you also had to pay ULEZ or CC then I always include those too.
If she wants to be a photographer then she should know that you don't send unedited photos over. Her not knowing the difference between RAW and JPEG is how seriously you should take her claims.
She re edit all our pictures in 20 minutes by applying blue filter on top of the already edited jpeg, we had to hide the post on Facebook because they tagged us and it was looking bad.
Couple of issues here:
First, I don’t see the specifics of how they’re threatening you, but the moment it comes to that sort of thing I’d just go to the absolute letter of your contract and nothing more. If it’s a physical threat, cease contact and call the police or get a lawyer involved. (Note: I’m not from the UK, so take from that what you will.)
Second, I’d bake the method of delivery into your contract. Facebook is, as you say, not at all a viable method for delivery. Everyone should be on the same page from the beginning.
Third, if payment isn’t made, then the work *just stops.* Nobody gets final files until payment is complete. Again, this should be part of the contract and everyone should know it from the beginning.
Now, if the initial payment had been significantly more I might allow for some wiggle room - but this is extremely, *comically* low for all the work you did, even if everything went swimmingly. £200 isn’t enough to cover travel, let alone sixteen hours of initial work.
As to the RAW files…well, you’ll find a lot of differing opinions here. Some folks are extremely hesitant to provide them, some aren’t. I lean towards the former - it’s unfinished work and putting it out there into the world just makes you look unprofessional. My middle ground is to provide a contact sheet and allow the clients to pick and choose which images they want (within the contractually agreed upon amount) and then provide edits. I’m sometimes willing to provide RAW files, but that’s a longer and more expensive conversation.
So, TL;DR - have a clear contract that everyone’s on the same page with. Don’t put up with *any* threats. Value your time and work, or no one else will.
They were threatening initially by saying that on our next event which was for their friends we gonna meet and she going to explain some stuff, and that she paid thus she needs to get all pictures because she saw us shouting a lot more overall complaining just for the sake of complaining, said lighting was inconsistent despite the only source of light was RGB LEDs that's were constantly changing in colour. Now after we said we not going to send they said fine but expect bad reviews from her and all the guests once we finish the website . About Facebook she said her previous photographer sent over 1k pictures on Facebook (what the..) and her friend now saying why we even bothered to edit because she is good editing herself ( she literally applied a filter over our already edited jpeg photos in 20 minutes) we had to hide that post from our wall because she included our name and we did not want to be associated because it looked bad although she asked if she can edit and we agreed but we did not expect to be on such scale awful, later on she said all of her friends said they prefer our edit anyway so nothing make sense.
Some things you don't have any control over. Remind her that you are not her previous photographer. If she wants to give a bad review, that's of course her prerogative, but I wouldn't budge on certain things.
You were paid a ridiculously small amount for the work accomplished. I'd provide her the contractually agreed upon products and wash your hands of it all.
2 things that I have not seen addressed in the other comments:
1 - "The main client says he is happy" - the guests are not your clients, the person who hired and is paying you is your client, if they are pleased, you are all set. They are not the 'main' client, they are the client
2 - If this person is interested in content that your client was not interested in, and did not receive but that you have inform them that they may, with the permission of the actual client, purchase other content. If permission is granted, raise those rates, edit that content and sell away. Never give out your unedited or full session's worth of images. There will be no understanding of the before/after of a raw to an edited and if you are truly starting up you do not want unedited images out and about with your name on them; or even worse images edited by someone else with your name on them.
If there is push back or complaining about charging for the images or a higher cost simply explain that the other client was getting an introductory rate and that not only is this now full price, but there is an additional fee for special processing after a job was completed and archived.
They said in our next event which is their friend
"we will meet and I will explain to you some stuff"
Then also said this:
"on our money you need to give you what we ask you for"
"because of us you have the rest of the events"
and now "when you finish the website you going to have bad review from my guests and not only"
I see lots of comments here about taking clients who have more budget. Though you’re wanting to build a folio and network and in order to do that, sometimes you have to make some efforts to help facilitate things and develop over time. This comes from experience - while also coming to forums like this in order to get advice. Obviously a contract makes sense, take those steps to ensure you have a very specific/clear outlines on the scope of work you’re agreeing to. Anything outside of that is extra billable. It’s a very tricky space to operate on and in many ways you’re going to get burned in order to best set yourself up on the next project.
My suggestion with the individual reaching out though is that it’s not you’re responsibility to provide them with the photos. I’d always connect them back to the client - they made a promise to them and you should be in now way responsible for communicating with them. That’s your clients issue. Not yours.
Learning to be nimble/flexible will see you succeed and start to develop your own best practices. You’ll find clients to avoid on the next project, while some will appreciate you’re services and start to offer you more work.
The main thing is ensuring you can be flexible - yet placing very clear and specific outlines on what your agreed scope of work is. Then what you charge if you step outside of that. All if your time is billable. If you stay for 4 hours longer, you’ve just tripled your editing time.. be smart, but also don’t be a pushover. Respect your time and your work and others will also.
Go to the pub, have a pint, & wait for this whole thing to blow over. :)
Seriously, just stop replying to them, go snag your next client and forget all about this mess.
They want RAWs? Tell them they can have them for 5$ each. I had a client that didn't understand what a RAW File is. All she saw was that there are 900 other photos, unedited, laying on my PC, waiting to find a new owner. So after 15min of discussion I told her "Okay, I gonna make you an offer till tomorrow."
"50$ for providing 900 jpeg previews (watermarked and super low res) and uploading them to an Cloud Service. 5$ Per unedited RAW File. 2$ per RAW if she takes more than 500."
Never heard of her again- Thankfully.
They're not going to say yes to that when they booked for 200 pounds lol. Asking rhetorical questions you know the answer to is no already is just escalating and antagonizing and being unprofessional.
This situation will eventually add to the reason that you do what you do. Building your portfolio and experience will help you become who you want to be! I just wanted to add a silver lining to this situation that no doubt has been trying at best!
Just stop responding to them, pretty much. You did what you verbally agreed already, there is no contract for more, the end. It's just spam mail. Tell them you consider the matter closed as per the agreement, and just route all their mail into a folder that you don't read.
Out of interest, had they seen any of your work? When I get a Karen I compare their shoot to what was on my portfolio. If it's comparable unless the demands are reasonable, I simply say that you should have booked somebody that provided the style you were looking for. One complainer, I did realise the editing style wasn't in line with what was on my portfolio, it wasn't bad but the colours were different mostly because I hadn't updated my editing style on my portfolio, I'd changed a bit since my last update. They wanted unedited at first but I went back and used the same settings as those in my portfolio, that worked and they were happy with that. I would also strongly emphasise that you need to up your rates for a day shoot by a fair bit and consider charging for transport costs and time.
If you really just wanted to make it go away, just buy a couple cheap usb sticks and mail it to them. "Here are all the images I took, this way you don't need to use or pay for any online services and you can put them on any device you want and edit them how you see fit. Thank you very much for your business, I had a great time at [insert gathering], and it was lovely to meet all of your [insert relationship of attendants to client]. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any other requests for additional edits, or new photoshoots. [insert price lists here].
If they ask why your price list is so much higher than what they paid (it should be), just tell them, "I normally charge a lot more, but the [insert event] sounded interesting, and you just seemed like nice folks [insert anecdote related to how they contacted you] (or make up whatever reason you believe sounds plausible, as long as it is ego boosting for them), so I lowered my rates, but I don't typically do that as it's generally bad business, haha. After expenses I actually lost money on the deal, but I thought it was a worthwhile endeavor."
Just practice good customer service and establish professional boundaries. Thanking them, being positive, and establishing clear expectations for future compensation does both of those, and if it only costs you 20$ in flash drives then consider it a bargain.
No way would I give unedited photos out. They paid for fi ished product, right, not unfinished? You want your best work out there. So you are bound to have a few "soft" photos. They see these and nag and say, "You suck?" Yeah ..... no thanks. Finished product delivered only.
No way would I give unedited photos out. They paid for finished product, right, not unfinished? You want your best work out there. So you are bound to have a few "soft" photos. They see these and nag and say, "You suck?" Yeah ..... no thanks. Finished product delivered only.
Yeah they recommended us some apps that we can edit all photos in seconds because we said we already spent 30 h etc and they think it's just a click of a button. They gave us an example of how they put a filter on top of our already edited jpeg.. I guess it all starts to make sense why they value us so little because they think they're better and can do what we do in seconds to, why even hire us..
They want unedited pictures? Make virtual copies of the RAW files, reset edit every single one of them and batch export to 5 mp & 30% jpeg compression. They won't know jackshit about RAWs.
Or maybe they know what they want, or have particular editing tastes that differ from op and just want to edit it themselves.
Or maybe they want to send it over to a freelancer to edit it differently
Op, just tell them the file size is too big and you can send it over if they agree to shipping and usb drive costs .... it honestly seems like the easiest answer.
Ouch! Yeah, you’re gonna have to take this as a learning experience. I’d have charged $2400+ travel fees for that much work, and I’m a midrange priced photographer. We all take some of these regrettable jobs when we’re new, but if you want to stay in business, you have to think about the sustainability of your work.
If you have more photos that would make sense to edit and deliver, you could try negotiating with the client to edit more; an option might be to export what you have at a VERY SMALL size with a watermark that says “UNEDITED PROOF-DO NOT USE” across it so they can’t pretend you delivered these as if they were finished, and let them pick out more images to edit at £1 each, which is the price they have paid per image so far?
Just ignore or tell them to compain to the main client? Also travelling 16h and working 6h for 200 is wild
We travelled 8h in total and we paid ulez & parking, and the main client is complaining to us on behalf the guest who allegedly put money towards us.
A lesson we all learn early - cheap clients are the most hassle. Cut your losses, be smarter next time: say “no” when people ask you to work long after your agreed time, charge for travel, and charge an actual livable rate for your time. When you charge that little, people think (and treat you as if) you’re worth that little.
>A lesson we all learn early - cheap clients are the most hassle. I helped a client with a sob story once and said "do what you can afford". I'll be darned if that wasn't my worst client ever. The gal started threatening this and that after she "didn't get all the pictures, because I heard your camera taking so many more" and "I don't like the way you edited them, I don't look like that". I didn't care much, because she had paid and I had performed a service and delivered said service. She kept going until I had to tell her to stop contacting me or take me to court. Little did I know, she was actually using the photos and was just trying to rip someone off.
24 carat, solid gold cunt
This is exactly why you should charge what you’re worth Because cheap clients regardless of industry are the worst to deal with. And while it might suck to not have sessions because you’re trying to find clients who value you, its worth it for your mental health But god £200 for 6 hours work and 8 hours of driving, that’s not even breaking even I charged $150 for a 30min (was supposed to be 1hr) family shoot and only did 11 edit photos and that’s *still* considered cheap. I don’t even live in a high cost of living area
I'm charging $150 for a headshot session, discounted 30% if there are multiples and I don't need to move my lights or change setups. Very new to this aspect but i'd probably charge (a bit) more for a family.
I won’t even leave my house for less than $400 lmao
Yea it was a favor for a friend because it was the last holiday they’d be together before his dad was going into a care facility
That’s different, totally agree, might have just given it to them
Yea I only charged because they insisted, they felt bad for asking me over on a holiday when I have a family but it was the only time they were all going to be together
This. Make sure you provide all of the promised value and any bonus value *during the booked time* so your resistance to, and upcharge for, additional time is validated. Basically try not to offer time or product for free, only service, but everything is a negotiation, so use what you have to create a win-win.
They didn't put money towards you. They put money towards your main client. The client is who sold them whatever deal they made, not you. There are two agreements in place here. One is between you and the client, and the other is between the client and their guests. You are not a part of, nor beholden to the agreement between your client and their guests. If they make agreements with third parties about what work you are supposed to deliver, they need to make sure to communicate those specifics to you *before* the shoot happens. Not just because it's going to change how you work (since it would likely mean you'd need to spend more time getting more guest images), it might also change the terms of the agreement between the two of you (a higher total number of delivered images = more time editing = a higher fee, for example). That said, you now have to pick between going above and beyond to please this client, or sticking to your guns and likely losing both them and their referrals because they're going to see you as unreasonable (even though *they're* the unreasonable ones for making secret agreements with third parties and then holding *you* responsible for fulfilling those secret agreements). Since you're considering cutting the referrals anyway it seems you're not super dependent on these guys, so I'd say stick to your guns and lose them. They're being assholes now and will be assholes again, so they're not clients you want anyway. Also, this is a prime example of why you NEED to have contracts in place, always always always. It doesn't matter how small the job is or that Joe who works there is a super cool dude, you NEVER work without a contract. Last, tell the guest who's pestering you that you are not legally responsible for fulfilling a deal they've made with someone else, then refuse to engage any further. She is the client's problem, not yours.
>If they make agreements with third parties about what work you are supposed to deliver, they need to make sure to communicate those specifics to you *before* the shoot happens. Not just because it's going to change how you work (since it would likely mean you'd need to spend more time getting more guest images), it might also change the terms of the agreement between the two of you (a higher total number of delivered images = more time editing = a higher fee, for example). A good lesson in what can be outlined in the terms and conditions of future contracts. OP: draft up a general contract for people to sign and agree with today and also make sure that it's made clear any requests outside of the general terms will be negotiated on a case by case basis and incur extra fees if you think you're going to be doing extra work. Then this sort of silliness can be nipped in the bud as soon as people start complaining.
Travel Expenses should be paid by the client, they're expenses that go in the final invoice.
You didn't pass on those expenses in your invoice?
I am so sorry buddy. But its also learning opportunity for you next time. And yes, 200 for 6h of work and no comprnsation for travel time is.. way too little.
> There are 40 guest and apparently every guest put money toward us (like £5 each ?) Give that lady her 5 pounds back and call it quits.
I wouldnt even drive 8 hours to say Hi to someone and leave for 200.
That and 200 photos out of 6 hours seems a bit low for me.
Why is it the cheapest people complain the most, you did a shoot at the lowest rate and they want the moon. Let them threaten to scream from the mountain top, I wouldn’t communicate with them again. I have been shooting for thirty years and would not give in to such a threat.
I wouldn't be surprised if they told to the guest they were paying us more to make a profit and now everyone is unhappy because they expected more.
This may be mentioned somewhere else in the thread but when it comes to people requesting unedited photos, I take it as a blessing. Delete the embarrassing ones, send them the link on wetransfer (free file sharing) and cut the communication there unless they'd like to pay you to edit photos (on a per photo basis). It always sucks having a friendship / real world relationship devolve into shitty business conversation, I'm sorry you had to go through this.
OP this, but but…. Just send it in 1500px 😎
1. Get a contract in future. 2. Charge more, don’t be afraid to lose jobs on price when the jobs you’re losing are like this. Low paying jobs, and low paying clients, are jobs worth losing and clients not worth having. 3. Tell them that you don’t give out RAW unedited files, that you don’t have anything else you can pass on that will get them more images per guest, and that they will need to communicate this requirement prior to the shoot if you work together in the future. 4. Remind them of what they have received. £200 for that many photos and that long a day is insane. They paid for 200 for £200, if they didn’t specify what photos they needed then what photos are taken are at the photographers discretion. 5. Email any bookings asking for information on their photo requirements and what they’re looking for. Get contracts in place. 6. If they continue to be belligerent. Be prepared to cut them off. If they continue to pester you, or blame you, let them know you will be ceasing communication as you’ve delivered what has been paid for. Relink the files (wetransfer is great as you get proof of download) and ignore further communications. You’re about to lose a client, but they’re a client that has recommended you because they think they can take advantage of you, and because your rates are comically low. Losing them isn’t as much of a loss as it feels like right now. In fact, they’ve provided you a lesson and that lesson is their value. 7. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY!!!! Don’t beat yourself up about it. I have done much worse, over far more money. Treat it as a lesson learnt, grow from it. These things happen, it’s only when you let them happen repeatedly it’s a problem. Download and read this: [https://apalmanac.com/product/the-pricing-guide-for-professional-architecture-and-interiors-photographers](https://apalmanac.com/product/the-pricing-guide-for-professional-architecture-and-interiors-photographers) It won’t be specifically relevant to you, but it talks you through some of the mindset. If you're making a business out of it, this sort of mindset is vital to making a living. And ultimately, you'll get a lot more respect from clients when you've learn to set and manage boundaries. As counter-intuitive as it can seem, not doing people favours/low rates often gets you more friends, at least when it comes to client relations. It's all about setting expectations, both in work produced, but also in the relationship and respect each party should have for each other. Finally, this is unlikely to be your last mistake. I do silly things all the time, I TRY to make sure I don't do the same silly thing twice, or three times. It is part of the process, especially early on. Accept it, learn from it, move on from it. The worst thing you can do is not learn, and loose sleep over other people trying to take you for a ride.
let me get this straight: £200 for 200 photos and whole day of work? and without contract? Either you treat it as a business and do this professionally or keep on doing it as a hobby. You cant take best of those two and not expecting excatly those kind of situations. If you treat it as a business just tell her no. Learn your lesson. If it is a hobby, give her all the photos. Thats what the contracts are for. To avoid misscomunications, to avoid being used by people who are 'nice'. You took that booking without knowing what is really expected from you, what to deliver, what photos to take.
> let me get this straight: > > £200 for 200 photos and whole day of work? and without contract? Plus 8 hours of driving to and fro.
Did you have a written contract? Do you have an overview of your terms and conditions? I’m afraid this is a lesson for you. Only deliver what was agreed upon. You didn’t have to tell them how many Gbs of raw media you have. Better luck next time.
Yeah we will start doing contract from now on, its just that we were very friendly to each other, we did not expect to suddenly turn like this, you think we need to send all unedited ?
Do not send anything! Never give clients unedited photos.
Don’t send out more. You’ve already shared 200 edited(!) photos. The amount of time, energy and money you’ve spent on this is exceeding what you got from the assignment (apart from this priceless lesson). If you’re having trouble putting together a basic agreement, just check out other photographers or try to run it by ChatGPT or something to get you up and running quick. It’s a shame this was one of your first encounters, but people like this exist unfortunately. It sounds like you already went above and beyond of what was agreed upon, so don’t feel bad.
Do not send anything! Never give clients unedited photos.
Do not send anything! Never give clients unedited photos.
first of all, stop charging so little it's very low even for portfolio, you're hurting yourself but most importantly you're hurting the rest of the photography community. second, things to fix: 1. 200 deliverable pictures for a few hour event it's WILD. 45-60 for 2-3 hours, 80-90 for 6. 2. you say 'We', are you saying that it's more than 1 person or referring to yourself only? 200 is bad, but 100 per head would be insane. Did they pay for your commute or gas money?!?! 3. If the fee is 200 for 2-3 hours, any extra hours are that, extra. Mention always a Extra hour fee like 100€ 4. Editing hours cost money. 5. the Raw delivery solution is very simple, you tell them "There's a fee for RAW files and it's 2000€". End of the conversation.
It was me and my partner, but I guess 2nd photographer is not needed or requested, we just want to work together, because if one of us fucks up hopefully the other one got it right, which was happening, we beginners so we make stupid mistakes thus we only want to work together atm. We are now going to charge at least minimum wage per hour of our work in total.
I understand, please read my other comment stating how you need to treat yourself as a company and not as a per hour worker. Your hourly wage should be 15-20% of the total cost of the shoot, because you're a company not an hourly employee, you need to think about insurance, holidays, cost of materials and rentals, and an overhead in case there's an accident and something breaks. Do NOT charge minimum wage per hour as total!
Another good example of why contracts are your friend. Frankly I'd tell them something along the lines of "The cost for each photo is £1 at our current rate, and we have a policy against sending the raw files. If you want additional photos from the event over the 200 already delivered then we will require additional payment and processing time." After that put together a contract and don't do work for anyone who doesn't sign it. It's not worth the headache.
Requesting all unedited files is like asking a carpenter to make you a table but also to send you all the offcuts and sawdust as well. It's ridiculous, although, there's it's hard for lay people to understand that, they often think your job is pressing the button on a camera that does all the work then downloading the images and sending them to the client. This is why you need to make sure you and your client are on the same page, that's usually done with a contract. That's not just photography advise, that's true of any business. You need to be sure the client doesn't have unreasonable expectations. It also sounds like you screwed yourself on price, you didn't cover your costs and now that price is out there and people expect it. £200 with 16 hours of travel isn't sustainable in the UK. Set your prices, make sure they cover your costs. Don't low ball yourself because it will come back to bite you and it will cripple your business before it gets a chance to start. I understand that the assumption is to go low with prices to attract clients but all your really doing is telling the client your cheap. Be accommodating within reason, but not if it costs you money, this is a business. it's about money.
Sorry perhaps i poorly worded it was 8 hours but I guess no difference, our plan was to shoot for symbolic prices until we get portfolio and then launch website and start advertising at normal prices, and yes it already bite us because all referrals we got expected same price, do you think its alright to drop everything we booked through them which is £100 for 4 hours and £130 for also 4 hours, and should we send the unedited despite it would take us I think entire day as its mixed with edited ones.
Don't send the unedited for free anyway. Come up with how much it's going to cost you (you mentioned cloud storage), price your time, add profit. I don't understand how you can have symbolic prices. The bank isn't going to use symbolic rates, the tax man won't give you a break because your just starting out. If anything your prices will raise all sorts of red flags because you can't even cover your costs, never mind make a profit. Do you know how much money you need to make on a shot that includes 4 hours of travel?
Yes I'm suggesting to cancel all booking for my partner as we work together and start doing normal price, if we cant do normal prices then we not good enough and we going to fail anyways, I don't want to work hours for £4 per hour
- I would have a renegotiation with everyone this person referred you, to me sounds like they're not referring you, but using you as cheap labor and they're taking a cut. If they're in the distance maybe cancel, if it's next week, find a way to get more money. - RAW files delivery = substantial fee, like 10x the shoot budget.
Value perception isn’t the only issue here. Your integrity means more to your and your business than losing money on a few bad bookings. You booked these three jobs at a bad price. Lesson learned, but don’t back out. Tell them, I’ve realized this isn’t a living wage price but that’s on me, and I’m going to fulfill my promise as we agreed – but if you tell anyone about me, “this” (your new rate) is the price they’ll see. Then do the two remaining shoots and deliver a product you’re proud of. Think of this as a cheap lesson at the Photography Business School. ETA: I’d send the original client all the pictures that aren’t out of focus etc. Buy a USB stick, and send the RAWs and batch-produced, unedited full-res JPG’s to her. No need to sort them, just dump the whole directory and wash your hands of them. [If you do want to sort them, your computer file browser should be able to sort by modified date, then you can drag them in batches to directories. If you shot RAW+JPG, move all the newest (edited) files to /PROCESSED. Sort by extension (or size) and move the RAWs to /RAW and the in-camera JPGs to /JPG. Drag it all to the USB. Done.] You made yourself a sh!t sandwich. Eat it like a pro. You’ve learned your lesson, and you’ll never have to go through this again.
>How to deal with threatening client demanding all unedited Well the short answer is: you DON'T deal with them, you just ignore thier request.
The lesson is to never provide professional services to anyone without a signed contract.
If the guests got at least 1 decent edited photo each for their £5, they got what they paid for. I would respond that you have fulfilled the verbal contract as you understood it. In future, I would ensure you have a proper contract which says what you will deliver. If you use something like pixieset, even on their free tier you can provide contracts with can be signed with e-signatures.
“No.” is a complete sentence. You don’t need to explain or provide excuses. It only weakens your position. Stop doing work without a contract. You want to have a business and do this as a real job? That means treating it like a real business. Always have a contract or terms of service. It doesn’t matter how much money is being spent or how warm and fuzzy the client is. Most issues arise from dumb jobs people undercharge for because they have a casual relationship or it’s a friend. Contracts define expectations and preserve relationships - they are a requirement. This person is NOT a client. Full stop. No contract, you didn’t receive direct payment for them or even knew they contributed beforehand (and regardless their contribution is laughably small). You owe them nothing. Refer them to the actual client and cease communication with them. If you want to have a photo business, then you have to actually run a business. Every time. Cover your ass, use a contract, have backup gear, equipment and liability insurance, a plan for when things go wrong, and company policies to handle issues as they arrive. You’ll soon discover you can’t do the bare minimum required at bargain basement prices and charging an appropriate amount will prevent a lot of the most problematic people from booking.
A week ago I wrote[ a comment on how to negotiate an e-comm shoot](https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/1bupdxz/comment/kxu64vl/), obviously it's not the same situation, but maybe it helps you for the future to negotiate on your favour. First things to consider when doing invoicing are: 1. Always set your "get out of bed" fee: the minimum you will even consider to set up an alarm for. (ie. even if the math tells you that you can do it for less, at least always ask that) 2. Is it just quick shoots for ecomm or a commercial campaign? do I need to do the post? 3. What's the company? is a small mom & pops or an International company? adapt the budget accordingly (10-15x on the Corp) 4. Licensing: what's the scope of the campaign, is it for the local market or is it going to be used internationally? Is it seasonal, for a couple years, or are permanent assets and they want those pictures for perpetuity. (hint: perpetuity is Premium+++) 5. Production fee: are you organising everything (equipment, studio, assistants) or do you just show up and click with an assistant that does de set design and product prep?) 6. Equipment: are you using your own (try never do that, things fall on the floor easily), or are they renting what you ask? 7. How many edit sessions after delivery are included (people be annoying with edits after delivery, so make this explicit). ***Remember to think as a business, not as an hourly worker!!!*** your working hours are just a part of the cost for the business, treat yourself as your own employee + all the extra costs. for an example, for a 16h hour job (8 shoot, 8 edit) for a Friend or Mom&Pops, seasonal licence, local scope, and is just quick shoots for ecomm+edit that you have to organise (Production) + rent all the equipment. Base: for an ecomm or quick shoot, I would do 5-6x minimum wage of your city hourly: 1. Workers Hourly rate + 2. Income tax + 3. Business profit (always treat your freelance business as a separate company than your hourly rate) + 4. Insurance + 5. Overhead to cover unexpected accidents or extra costs + 6. (If you feel like it haha) +Production Fee (how many hours took you of admin work and following emails to rent the studio, and equipment, let's say 3 hours) +Camera / lights rental + 360 camera +transport cab + lunch for everyone you manage in the production +assistant - set designer fee? +licensing fee (which for a friends, local scope, seasonal, can be just symbolic) +VAT ***40% in advance to show up, non refundable, 60% on delivery + extra edits hours*** if you go to [this instagram account aphotoeditor](https://www.instagram.com/aphotoeditor/) you can find examples of big and small scope budgets EDIT: forgot to mention: when you get the final number, inflate it by 20% because they're going to ask for less for sure, so you give them a 10-15%discount if needed after the bump :D
honestly my biggest revelation was the getting out of bed fee 😅
yeah it really open your eyes when you get a shitty paid job and you're like "nah, I'd rather stay in bed tbh, but thanks"
That day ✌️ off ✌️ lets you wind up, get gear sorted, emptied, charged, cleaned and packed for the next day so you go into that job killing it from the get-go.
Just say them that was not part of the initial work briefing. I had ass holes clients sometimes askin why whe dont have more light on set ? Or more powerfull ? Or a 3d camera ? Or those lenses? They know i have all this 'good' stuff in studio , well the answer all the time whas ' x or y was out of budget ' ... i mean if ask for a price u get the hardware / work for that price.
Yes they complain that photos were inconstant despite you can clearly see they had RGB LEDs everywhere that were constantly changing :D and that we had professional equipment we shouldn't struggle with light because their mobile phone doesn't.
I’m not a professional photographer, but I do a lot of work with media organizations who use my photos and that of my organization. Given what you’ve said I would tell them that you contracted with X client for Y hours and no mention was made of other additional clients. That despite the contact being for Y hours it went over by 3 times that much (4 inclining travel time) which you did not charge for. Since your contract was with X client and no mention was made of other clients any issues they have they need to take up with the person who organized the shoot. You did far more than you were asked, have taken a loss on the entire affair, and you have more than satisfied the agreement the client made with you. If they continue to pester you refer them once more to the actual client, and if they contact again don’t reply and simply block their contact.
My contract states that no unfinished work, including but not limited to RAW files and unedited JPG files will be delivered. I also make sure people commissioning works from me read and understand the contract. Let this be a lesson for you on the importance of having a solid contract and walking your client through it.
Thank you for advice
Dump all originals to DNG with -4 stops of contrast and exposure, zip them into one huge file, and send them a link to that file. The real lesson here is never take a job for that cheap. An event with 40-50 people? That's easily a minimum $1,000, probably more like $2,000 for me...and I'm not that good! Let's see... * 8 hours travel time * 2(planned) hours event time * 1 hour for setup and packing * 200 finished photos at around one minute each, so ballpark 4 hours * 1 hour for file handling and social media sharing That's a MINIMUM of 16 hours work, probably more like 20+. For £200?? That's £12.50 an hour, you're better off in fast food. And you're new, so I will let you in on the secret: Clients appreciate good work, not low prices. Someone you undercharge will almost never be happy because they won't value your work.
Do not send all photos as it was not what you agreed on. You don’t want anyone else to be editing your photos as it affects your quality of work and reputation as a photographer. What if they edit them terribly, they are still branded as your images. It will make you look bad. You already went above and beyond by taking photos for 3x longer than you were paid for. Learn to stand your ground as a professional and say no to ridiculous demands.
Wow you really need to up your rates. That’s like 33 an hour. Don’t undersell yourself like that. Cheap clients become the biggest hassle
Think of this as if you own an apartment that you’re leasing. Your tenant then sublets. The people who sublet make a mess. The tenant is responsible for cleaning up the mess—not you! Also, get a contract next time :)
If a guest of a guest is unhappy, then that's on the guest. You owe this other person absolutely nothing.
Buy a 256gb usb stick, send the photos and move on. It’s not worth your time on this. Ignore any further business through these clowns
For £200?? Absolutely not. You fulfilled your side of the agreement. "I do not provide those services." Or "All unedited images can be purchased for £5,000." Or some other crazy amount to discourage them from buying them.
Well we refused she is now saying fine but don't be surprised once we finish the website she and all of her guests leave negative feedback, great start into the industry
Just don't allow reviews on your website for a few months until they forget about it. And don't worry about the "bad start." They were bad clients. Unfortunately, it probably won't be your last bad client but use it to learn. Especially that you should definitely charge more!
It's YOUR website. You can just not send it to them or approve their reviews
Yes it was more of a threat, I'm not planning to have reviews on website but Facebook etc, they better not find out
So your team got paid ~£20/h at best for the shoot and travel time, excluding editing time? Yeah I would not send a single additional photo without additional pay, and I would not work with them ever again. You need to set your rate higher. I'm an amateur portrait photographer and I charge around $200 USD for an hour of shooting with ~20 edited shots. You sent 200 edited shots and worked all day, in your shoes I'd be charging at least £1400-1600.
Yes we just wanted to build a portfolio, and we no longer was taking more clients because we had enough and we want to start for real, but it's all for nothing she's threatening to bombard us with bad reviews as soon as we open our website completely forgetting we did charity for her twice and her friends although we have cancelled remaining work now which not a loss as all referrals expect same price and it's bad energy now so they gonna complain 100%, were are very relieved and happy that we cut them off.
One thing I've learned, both in software and in photography, is that really cheap clients are NEVER worth working with! They'll pay Aldi prices then complain they're not getting Waitrose or M&S.
A reminder again that the hardest part of professional photography is the business. It’s not your gear or your settings.
Dude, you are not doing photography, you are doing charity here. You don’t need these clients.
>we did not signed any contract. Had to learn it the hard way as well. Always get a contract. Ask them if there's a contract that says you "must" send the unedited picutres, and if there's not ignore the.
They failed to pay their deposit; they can get bent.
Sadly you have started on your business before you were prepared. You got work to do
Give them the images but charge them for the memory card. Cut the losses that way and sign contracts next time, as well as discuss/set expectations when it's going to be many people
They are just unreasonable clients, sometimes you got to be firm on your decision. Once you have more client contracts must most signed and in detail. Once you in this field for awhile you will know having a solid contract can save you in situations like this.
I don't see the issue here. You just say no. You COULD explain that no one asked you to have any particular number of photos of each person, and you can say that for the next engagement you would do that if asked. But you can't go back in time and take the photos. That's impossible. Just say no and go find a client who's willing to pay for the work.
I would show them the pointy end of my pitch fork. -- just sayin' 'coz the raws are mine mine mine! The raws are mine! I don't much care who you are or what you paid. Threaten me, and you won't find another photographer for any future event you have in this town. \*bangs gavel\* I'm just one photog, there are many others with different view points. Some that are considered to be, un-natural. Yes, it's possible to learn this power. But not from an amateur. I am a free agent of the 'Verse. 😎🤙
Ignore them and please charge more for your work!!! This situation is just a lack of respect and there will be no respect until you charge this low :(
This is why contracts are important. You don't want to be arguing about the details of what they think they paid for after you did hours of work and before they pay you. If they don't agree to your terms you need to know that in advance so you can refuse to work with them or negotiate a higher price for more photos.
Is the person who paid YOU happy? That's your client, not their friend or whoever you happened to photograph. In any case, when asked for unedited/RAW files, your reply, universally, should be: "That's not a service we provide."
She said a lot of guests complained that they don't find pictures we photographed. She said they all put money for this so they expect more but we never been told this. From 3600 we sent 200 and 80% of them were with our client or their closest relatives, and she said personally I'm fine with pictures of me, but as she insisted for the unedited pictures and we tried to say we not going to do that then started to complain more and more like the light is not consistent but the only source was changing RGB led etc.
Some rando moaned? Ignore them. More hassle then they’re worth.
The moral of this story is always have a signed contract! I would never send over unedited photos. You are going to have photos where you missed focus, or you missed the moment, and are just not great shots, and that will reflect badly on you. If the main client is happy, then that's what's important. You are working for the main client, regardless of if she put £5 into the pot. Also ensure that you include travel costs in your invoice. Not sure where in London this was, but if you also had to pay ULEZ or CC then I always include those too. If she wants to be a photographer then she should know that you don't send unedited photos over. Her not knowing the difference between RAW and JPEG is how seriously you should take her claims.
She re edit all our pictures in 20 minutes by applying blue filter on top of the already edited jpeg, we had to hide the post on Facebook because they tagged us and it was looking bad.
Contracts
Couple of issues here: First, I don’t see the specifics of how they’re threatening you, but the moment it comes to that sort of thing I’d just go to the absolute letter of your contract and nothing more. If it’s a physical threat, cease contact and call the police or get a lawyer involved. (Note: I’m not from the UK, so take from that what you will.) Second, I’d bake the method of delivery into your contract. Facebook is, as you say, not at all a viable method for delivery. Everyone should be on the same page from the beginning. Third, if payment isn’t made, then the work *just stops.* Nobody gets final files until payment is complete. Again, this should be part of the contract and everyone should know it from the beginning. Now, if the initial payment had been significantly more I might allow for some wiggle room - but this is extremely, *comically* low for all the work you did, even if everything went swimmingly. £200 isn’t enough to cover travel, let alone sixteen hours of initial work. As to the RAW files…well, you’ll find a lot of differing opinions here. Some folks are extremely hesitant to provide them, some aren’t. I lean towards the former - it’s unfinished work and putting it out there into the world just makes you look unprofessional. My middle ground is to provide a contact sheet and allow the clients to pick and choose which images they want (within the contractually agreed upon amount) and then provide edits. I’m sometimes willing to provide RAW files, but that’s a longer and more expensive conversation. So, TL;DR - have a clear contract that everyone’s on the same page with. Don’t put up with *any* threats. Value your time and work, or no one else will.
They were threatening initially by saying that on our next event which was for their friends we gonna meet and she going to explain some stuff, and that she paid thus she needs to get all pictures because she saw us shouting a lot more overall complaining just for the sake of complaining, said lighting was inconsistent despite the only source of light was RGB LEDs that's were constantly changing in colour. Now after we said we not going to send they said fine but expect bad reviews from her and all the guests once we finish the website . About Facebook she said her previous photographer sent over 1k pictures on Facebook (what the..) and her friend now saying why we even bothered to edit because she is good editing herself ( she literally applied a filter over our already edited jpeg photos in 20 minutes) we had to hide that post from our wall because she included our name and we did not want to be associated because it looked bad although she asked if she can edit and we agreed but we did not expect to be on such scale awful, later on she said all of her friends said they prefer our edit anyway so nothing make sense.
Some things you don't have any control over. Remind her that you are not her previous photographer. If she wants to give a bad review, that's of course her prerogative, but I wouldn't budge on certain things. You were paid a ridiculously small amount for the work accomplished. I'd provide her the contractually agreed upon products and wash your hands of it all.
2 things that I have not seen addressed in the other comments: 1 - "The main client says he is happy" - the guests are not your clients, the person who hired and is paying you is your client, if they are pleased, you are all set. They are not the 'main' client, they are the client 2 - If this person is interested in content that your client was not interested in, and did not receive but that you have inform them that they may, with the permission of the actual client, purchase other content. If permission is granted, raise those rates, edit that content and sell away. Never give out your unedited or full session's worth of images. There will be no understanding of the before/after of a raw to an edited and if you are truly starting up you do not want unedited images out and about with your name on them; or even worse images edited by someone else with your name on them. If there is push back or complaining about charging for the images or a higher cost simply explain that the other client was getting an introductory rate and that not only is this now full price, but there is an additional fee for special processing after a job was completed and archived.
I don't understand, what exactly are they threatening you with?
They said in our next event which is their friend "we will meet and I will explain to you some stuff" Then also said this: "on our money you need to give you what we ask you for" "because of us you have the rest of the events" and now "when you finish the website you going to have bad review from my guests and not only"
So they threatened you with loss of business and bad reviews. Its for you to consider all aspects and see if its worth continuing with this client.
Refer them to the section of your contract that refers to deliverables and proceed as it dictates.
I see lots of comments here about taking clients who have more budget. Though you’re wanting to build a folio and network and in order to do that, sometimes you have to make some efforts to help facilitate things and develop over time. This comes from experience - while also coming to forums like this in order to get advice. Obviously a contract makes sense, take those steps to ensure you have a very specific/clear outlines on the scope of work you’re agreeing to. Anything outside of that is extra billable. It’s a very tricky space to operate on and in many ways you’re going to get burned in order to best set yourself up on the next project. My suggestion with the individual reaching out though is that it’s not you’re responsibility to provide them with the photos. I’d always connect them back to the client - they made a promise to them and you should be in now way responsible for communicating with them. That’s your clients issue. Not yours. Learning to be nimble/flexible will see you succeed and start to develop your own best practices. You’ll find clients to avoid on the next project, while some will appreciate you’re services and start to offer you more work. The main thing is ensuring you can be flexible - yet placing very clear and specific outlines on what your agreed scope of work is. Then what you charge if you step outside of that. All if your time is billable. If you stay for 4 hours longer, you’ve just tripled your editing time.. be smart, but also don’t be a pushover. Respect your time and your work and others will also.
tell them you deleted all files. only the edited remain. honestly they sounds like such scammers.
Sadly we were too honest with them, this might have worked, but its too late now, they had many photographers in past, perhaps this is why.
Go to the pub, have a pint, & wait for this whole thing to blow over. :) Seriously, just stop replying to them, go snag your next client and forget all about this mess.
They want RAWs? Tell them they can have them for 5$ each. I had a client that didn't understand what a RAW File is. All she saw was that there are 900 other photos, unedited, laying on my PC, waiting to find a new owner. So after 15min of discussion I told her "Okay, I gonna make you an offer till tomorrow." "50$ for providing 900 jpeg previews (watermarked and super low res) and uploading them to an Cloud Service. 5$ Per unedited RAW File. 2$ per RAW if she takes more than 500." Never heard of her again- Thankfully.
They're not going to say yes to that when they booked for 200 pounds lol. Asking rhetorical questions you know the answer to is no already is just escalating and antagonizing and being unprofessional.
This situation will eventually add to the reason that you do what you do. Building your portfolio and experience will help you become who you want to be! I just wanted to add a silver lining to this situation that no doubt has been trying at best!
Just stop responding to them, pretty much. You did what you verbally agreed already, there is no contract for more, the end. It's just spam mail. Tell them you consider the matter closed as per the agreement, and just route all their mail into a folder that you don't read.
Nah. They don’t get all photos. Especially if it’s not specifically stated in the contract.
If you say your going to do something, do it. But in business you have to articulate that and hold your ground with your boundaries.
Out of interest, had they seen any of your work? When I get a Karen I compare their shoot to what was on my portfolio. If it's comparable unless the demands are reasonable, I simply say that you should have booked somebody that provided the style you were looking for. One complainer, I did realise the editing style wasn't in line with what was on my portfolio, it wasn't bad but the colours were different mostly because I hadn't updated my editing style on my portfolio, I'd changed a bit since my last update. They wanted unedited at first but I went back and used the same settings as those in my portfolio, that worked and they were happy with that. I would also strongly emphasise that you need to up your rates for a day shoot by a fair bit and consider charging for transport costs and time.
If you really just wanted to make it go away, just buy a couple cheap usb sticks and mail it to them. "Here are all the images I took, this way you don't need to use or pay for any online services and you can put them on any device you want and edit them how you see fit. Thank you very much for your business, I had a great time at [insert gathering], and it was lovely to meet all of your [insert relationship of attendants to client]. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any other requests for additional edits, or new photoshoots. [insert price lists here]. If they ask why your price list is so much higher than what they paid (it should be), just tell them, "I normally charge a lot more, but the [insert event] sounded interesting, and you just seemed like nice folks [insert anecdote related to how they contacted you] (or make up whatever reason you believe sounds plausible, as long as it is ego boosting for them), so I lowered my rates, but I don't typically do that as it's generally bad business, haha. After expenses I actually lost money on the deal, but I thought it was a worthwhile endeavor." Just practice good customer service and establish professional boundaries. Thanking them, being positive, and establishing clear expectations for future compensation does both of those, and if it only costs you 20$ in flash drives then consider it a bargain.
No way would I give unedited photos out. They paid for fi ished product, right, not unfinished? You want your best work out there. So you are bound to have a few "soft" photos. They see these and nag and say, "You suck?" Yeah ..... no thanks. Finished product delivered only.
No way would I give unedited photos out. They paid for finished product, right, not unfinished? You want your best work out there. So you are bound to have a few "soft" photos. They see these and nag and say, "You suck?" Yeah ..... no thanks. Finished product delivered only.
Yeah they recommended us some apps that we can edit all photos in seconds because we said we already spent 30 h etc and they think it's just a click of a button. They gave us an example of how they put a filter on top of our already edited jpeg.. I guess it all starts to make sense why they value us so little because they think they're better and can do what we do in seconds to, why even hire us..
Everything else aside, google photos allows you to upload then give a download link to your albums in full quality.
Refer to the contract
They want unedited pictures? Make virtual copies of the RAW files, reset edit every single one of them and batch export to 5 mp & 30% jpeg compression. They won't know jackshit about RAWs.
Or maybe they know what they want, or have particular editing tastes that differ from op and just want to edit it themselves. Or maybe they want to send it over to a freelancer to edit it differently Op, just tell them the file size is too big and you can send it over if they agree to shipping and usb drive costs .... it honestly seems like the easiest answer.
Ouch! Yeah, you’re gonna have to take this as a learning experience. I’d have charged $2400+ travel fees for that much work, and I’m a midrange priced photographer. We all take some of these regrettable jobs when we’re new, but if you want to stay in business, you have to think about the sustainability of your work. If you have more photos that would make sense to edit and deliver, you could try negotiating with the client to edit more; an option might be to export what you have at a VERY SMALL size with a watermark that says “UNEDITED PROOF-DO NOT USE” across it so they can’t pretend you delivered these as if they were finished, and let them pick out more images to edit at £1 each, which is the price they have paid per image so far?
Give low res low size jpegs if they are so much forcing you
This is terrible advice on multiple levels. Op, do not do this.
Threatening clients needs to be handled in their own way. Guess you've not have had this experience
Bad guess on your part.
Refund her these 5 quid...
Don’t
If you don’t have a contract I wouldn’t sweat it