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spidge

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Riders I need your opinions please. As a busy equestrian photographer based in the south,I see thousands of my equine images on Facebook pages that have been shoplifted from my website without permission, with my logo across the image. This happens, despite albeit fairly discreet notices on my web site, saying please do not do so. Some of Facebook pages belong to riders/customers who buy images from me, some regularly, some never at all.

Everything has a price point in life. My suspicion is that more and more photographers will give up equestrian as simply not profitable any longer. I do not wish to be one of them, but I do need to understand the market forces at work here.

So my question is how cheap do the images need to be to persuade the riders who currently shoplift the copyright marked images to pay for a clean image that does not include my company web site address and company name? I am suggesting a low resolution image suitable for display in a digital photo frame, Facebook page, on a computer or Blackberry/iPhone etc.

£10, £5,£4,£2,£1 ????

I'd love to hear your thoughts.
 
Ha ha! We were at the Area 10 event on Sunday so have looked at our images. Whilst in theory I don't think the prices are bad as a one off picture, I don't know how bad a 'bad resolution' copy is. Also, as we were taken going through the double of offset brushes we have 5 continuous pictures plus the other camera image, so would be looking at £30 to have a 'bad' resolution copy of the 6 XC images, which in my opinion, is too much. I'm not too sure what I would pay to be honest, whilst it is lovely to have the copy on the computer, I know my printer certainly wouldn't do justice any decent pro picture.

Would be interested to know other peoples views. Perhaps the e-mail version should be cheaper, but then also offer a reasonable priced print too. Or if you buy a print, you can have the e-mail copies of any others for a nominal figure (please)! I didn't visit your stand, just relied on the website, and I'm sure you do a 'deal' on the day, I just couldn't seem to see any small print prices - but I am a bit dim on the computer!
 
i'm not sure about pricing, but if they are getting the photos off your website cant you block the "right click" function?

I've seen alot of photography websites with this on - this might help, along with very obvious watermark across the picture?

Edt - and very small thumbnail pics?
 
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there is a photographer who is local to me who sells a low resolution copy for you to download at £2.50, we have just brought one, I think it is great as I love buying pictures, I usually cannot resist but it is not cheap, so I have had to resort to only buying really good pictures, also I am running out of space! This means I can buy more pictures and then share them with my friends, which I really like doing! I would be prepared to pay upto £5 for this option :)
 
Ally_F said:
i'm not sure about pricing, but if they are getting the photos off your website cant you block the "right click" function?

I've seen alot of photography websites with this on - this might help, along with very obvious watermark across the picture?

Edt - and very small thumbnail pics?
Click to expand...

Trouble with blocking right click is people just take a screen shot of the pic and crop away the extra stuff you don't want. :(



clipcloppop said:
why not make the watermark something offensive... eg 'i'm a theiving scumbag who has stolen this image'
Click to expand...

That is brilliant :)
 
Spidge, have just re-checked your site, and the box with the prices in doesn't seem to go down, but looks as if it should, if you see what I mean. I now see you do a 6x9 image AND the low res image as a package, how about the print and the other images as a low res, I would only normally buy 1 print sized picture maximum from an event (or each phase of an event).
 
If I could buy low res images suitable for fb, I'd be happy to pay £2.50. For higher resolution copies, that I could print off myself and frame in C5 size, I'd be happy to pay £5.

The photograpers at shows I've been to only sell hard copies, which for me is less appealing and I'd rather just buy digital copies personally.
 
why not just include the copyright image in the cost of a photo instead of as an add-on?

common sense says that once you have sold the rider/owner the print of a horse (at lower levels particularly) no-one else is going to want to buy it so why not have the copyright included?

as for people stealing watermarked photos they haven't paid for, more difficult.
But i like the idea of having an insult as your watermark!
 
I think that it makes excellent financial sense to sell the soft copy images, in addition to protecting your copyright.

The way I see it, your time, the camera, fuel to get to the venue etc etc are all sunk costs these days with digital photography so every penny (or pound) will go some way to generating a profit.

I LOVE getting photos of me & B. I really do, that said, I simply cannot afford to shell out the £80 it would cost to get all the photos from one event.

However, were there an option to buy the digital copies (even if these were lower res), that would be fab. It wouldn't stop me buying the prints, as I could get one of these too, but it would mean I could get all the pics I want.

I just bought a £10 pic from the jumping this weekend. They did an option to have 4 (or 6 I can't remember) pics on a DVD for £30 but that's too much IMO. I'd happily pay £2 for each, and this would be in addition to getting the print, so you'd end up selling way more pics and getting more income overall.

If this were the case, I would have bought the one best print and also several of the digital versions, and spent £24 rather than just the £10.

I think you should do it!

(I also love the idea of the accusatory watermarks...)
 
Sophiesmum you have the choice to buy a low resolution image (not really suitable for printing without loss of quality), a 6x9 print, on it's own, 6x9 print plus the jpeg image, or a high resolution, suitable for printing to A3 size plus other print size options. All now with free postage! How good is that??http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/images/icons/icon7.gif

These are by far the most common choices in my experience.

Does that help?
 
It's a fact of life that people will nick the images if they can get away with it. Right click protections works to some extent but it's easy to get round if they want, however, if they are downloading watermarked images make sure the watermark is your website address and look at it as free advertising!

I watermark my thumbnails and the fullsize images and it's bright purple, not a discreet one!
 
I am a serial photgraph purchaser! (I will buy a phot from every comp, even if they are rubbish! lol)

Around me its normally £10 for a print (6x4 or 7x5 or whatever) but like others I would like to buy the digital print, to show on forums or FB etc, I would pay up to £5 depending on the resolution.

A company near me does offer digital prints but they are full resolution, and you have to pay £15 for the disc and then £5 for every image on there, which is pretty expensive! I could understand then saying that I must buy x number of images to make it worthwhile, but charging the flat £15 for the CD is alot as far as I am concerned.
 
Clipcloppop if I used your idea I guess I would certainly see a massive reduction in my copyrighted images being used without permission or payment on for sale adverts either at venues, tackshops and online sales sites like Horsemart!

I have started to call it shoplifting, in the sense that the shop is my website.

How about "Shoplifted from www.blahblah.co.uk as I'm to tight to pay for the image"

Thoughts?
 
My problem Spidge, is that you have taken 6 XC pictures! I simply don't budget to pay 6x £5 for the small resolution images, as I would want a print of 1 as well that would bump it up to £40. I think my problem isn't so much the price, if there were only a couple of XC images, but the fact you took too many decent XC pics! And then there are the 6 SJ pics too..............
 
A place near to me will put all your prints for the day on a CD for £10. A have a CD here with 20+ images. That is a good price and alot of people were going for this deal. If ppl wanted extra photos printed then that was more but if I was a photographer I would be happier selling fewer prints but loads more CD's.
 
I love to buy pictures at comps but like most I have to figure a way of buying just one cause they are expensive but would be very happy for pay a fixed price (if reasonable) for say 6 images on disk copyright free. I;d prob end up buying the disk and the "best pic" as a quality high res print to... therefore giving more money than i would normal to the photographer
TBH low res pics wouldnt appeal to me as I love to print piccys and change my frames at home on a regular basis.
 
Keeley, next time tell them to check out USB memory sticks. Cheap as chips to buy in bulk, we are talking a couple of squid for a 256mb memory stick with company branded logo on.

Fast and simple to drop images onto at a show.

Or are they still using a tripod and have a puff of cloud appears each time they take a picture coming from underneath the black cape?
 
I have the similar thread running, well spotted Sophiesmum. Your prize is a free jpeg, mail me your choice and I'll email it back.
 
I like the memory stick idea as well. If you could have x digital copies on the memory stick for £10 I would nearly always get one even when I wouldn't have got a pic.
 
I know some people who offer the memory stick and I nearly always buy it. You get something like 10 photos for 15pounds, or similar anyway. I LOVE it :D

Also agree with the watermark idea that you suggested, spidge.
 
We have an equestrian photographer that comes to our show and we always get a couple with them aslong as they are good which they normally are and for i think maybe a 7x10 or bit bigger lol £10 for one, " for £15 or 3 for £20 - and i think thats resonable as they are lovely pictures and would be more than willing to pay that amount. :) x
 
our local pic company sells the digital full resolution prints at 15 pound each :O

you can buy the pics at less and scan them.lol

not the same quality but tbh quite good with decent quality scanner.

when you say low resolution, how low ?

id want 1024 x 760 min and i think 2 - 3 pound would be a good price.

as for people taking the watermarked images, they are unlikely to buy them even if cheap tbh so you have to live with it.
 
I've been doing low resolution at 1600x1063 so obviously I'm being too generous.

Everyone has their price,whether your Harrods or a pound shop. The trick is too make it work in the market your in and the customers you are selling too.

Thanks for the input, it has made for very interesting reading.
 
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