Thieving Scumbag Facebook shoplifters- Rant follows

[Rambo]

CH70 you have hit the head on many points there and your experience in IT shows. There is no panacea in terms of a technical solution as there is no bullet-proof way of preventing imGe theft. However, i must disagree with you on one key point....selling something for a pound IS better than not selling something at all...so long as that sale doesn't cost you a pound or more. I would argue that 90% of all the pictures you take have no value...either because the quality is not good, the timing is out, or the competitor just has no intention of ever buying a photo. Surely if you can entice the buyer into parting wiyh something for that photo it is better than nothing !? If not, you have tskrn the photo anyway so you have 'spent' your money on it !? I personally think you need to explore further the concept of a loss leader...for example "Buy an image for £x and for a further £y get low res copies of all the other photo's you wouldn't otherwise have bought". To my mind that is £y gained rather than £z lost

 

[Frances144]

I like that idea. Hmmm.... off to rethink my pricing strategy.

 

[MegaBeast]

What size print is this?

Re the montage print that Showground photography do... I've got one hanging on my wall, think it's either A2 or A3 sized. It's a really nice momento of a horse trial as I've got pics from the DR, SJ and XC all together and the text across the bottom reads "horses name Mount Ballan BE 2009"

 

[mike weeks]

I take it that this print was sent to you later as the largest dye sub print is 12" x 8"

Mike

 

[Pebble101]

Just to add that I rarely buy photographs any more as I have bought so many over the years. I prefer not to have a frame as mine go into an album and I HATE the cardboard frames they tend to be supplied with (and therefore resent paying for it). I don't do Facebook and prefer to remain anonymous on the internet so never post photographs of me or my horses.

I have never bought off the internet - all mine have been purchased at the event. I hate it when you have to look at a computer as there is normally a long queue and I give up waiting so the small prints on the board work best for me (with a look at the computer when buying to crop as necessary).

I now only buy if it is a particularly good one. I won't buy if my position is naff, I am pulling a face, my horse isn't making a nice shape etc.. So although you might get lots of people looking there could be valid reasons why they don't like a photograph, and none of them the fault of the photographer.


Off topic but related ......

A few years ago I went to see an exhibition by the photographer Tim Flach. I was particularly taken by two stunning photographs (they were huge). Had they been of my horse I would have paid a lot of money for one. The price - over £4000 per print (but it did include a frame which was very expensive).

I bought his book with the pictures in it instead.

 

[natalia]

Rambo- Think thats a brill idea, buy one full price print of the pic you really like and say get up to 5 little jpeg images of the less good ones to go on face book etc. for £1 each either emailed or on to memory stick. That way everyone is a winner and you've sold more photos.

 

[Frances144]

Off topic but related ......

A few years ago I went to see an exhibition by the photographer Tim Flach. I was particularly taken by two stunning photographs (they were huge). Had they been of my horse I would have paid a lot of money for one. The price - over £4000 per print (but it did include a frame which was very expensive).

I bought his book with the pictures in it instead.

Tim Flach came up to Shetland to photo our ponies for the EQUUS book. It was him who persuaded me to turn professional!

 

[ch70]

CH70 you have hit the head on many points there and your experience in IT shows. There is no panacea in terms of a technical solution as there is no bullet-proof way of preventing imGe theft. However, i must disagree with you on one key point....selling something for a pound IS better than not selling something at all...so long as that sale doesn't cost you a pound or more. I would argue that 90% of all the pictures you take have no value...either because the quality is not good, the timing is out, or the competitor just has no intention of ever buying a photo. Surely if you can entice the buyer into parting wiyh something for that photo it is better than nothing !? If not, you have tskrn the photo anyway so you have 'spent' your money on it !? I personally think you need to explore further the concept of a loss leader...for example "Buy an image for £x and for a further £y get low res copies of all the other photo's you wouldn't otherwise have bought". To my mind that is £y gained rather than £z lost

Hi Rambo, thanks for the response. I appreciate your view on the selling price and that's the beauty of a democracy, we can all have different views

In my mind, as much as you could argue something is better than nothing (in certain situations that is very true) I still hold the line that the cheaper you offer a product the more likely people are to go for the cheap option.

Let's take an example... You do a show and take 11 images of 10 teenagers and 1 adult. You're usual price for a print is say £10. Now the teenagers are generally internet users and want to slap the photo online for their mates to view and are more inclined to want to do that rather than buy a print. So all 10 decide to buy the "FB" special! That makes you a whopping £10! The adult prefers print and buys 1 print at £10... total of £20 for the day for 11 images sold.

If however you don't have the "FB" special, but instead allow people to wack up a small image as long as they buy one of your prints, you only need to sell 1 to a teenager and 1 to the adult make the same money and the customer still generally feels happy as they have got something for nothing. Now you could argue that maybe no one would buy a print but we could go around in circles discussing the different scenarios that might occur.

Now don't get me wrong, I believe we should embrace the online market, I've been building ecommerce and online systems since the early 90's when the WWW was still in nappies and regularly shop online. However there needs to be a way to do that and make it worth while.

Now each one of us "togs" (I sound like a duvet...) has different pricing schemes, provides different sizes of photo on various media and we do that based on what we have found out works for the type of events and type of customer we have. You will never please everyone no matter how competitive your prices or how many variations you offer. Someone will always complain you're too expensive or they want a 10ftx20ft image immediately. Yes from a consumer point of view it would be great for them if every show they went to the photographers sold the same sizes at the same prices but that isn't practicle for many reasons.

We have a lot of regular customers who are very happy with what they buy and long may that continue. If one person comes up to me at a show and thanks me for a great photo I feel I've done my job

 

[ch70]

Tim Flach came up to Shetland to photo our ponies for the EQUUS book. It was him who persuaded me to turn professional!

Tim has done some great equine portraiture work and is one of those "lucky few" who have made a name for themselves in the equestrian photography world. His abstract images are thought provoking and are in reality "fine art" images you would happily see up on a wall.

However there is a "huge" difference in event photography and studio like portraits. In events we obviouslly get one chance at the shot and have no way to set that up as we might like! That's all part of the fun

 

[mike weeks]

Tim is however in a different market from event photographers (the word tog should be banned) and having been to his studio a couple of times and seeing how he works he has a luxery of time that we do not have and it is totally understandle why his images command the price that they do.

I have however met a few other photographers that also work with a controlled environment to produce equestrian images and again it is a luxery that we do not have. I would understand why many people would want to copy their images from the internet whereas when we are covering an event the market we are aiming for is very small and therefore every stolen image is a loss of revenue. If you steal it you obviously want it and therefore it has a value - what we as photographers must do is find a way of making it pay and for some this means just selling images. Remember photographers are just as much individuals as riders are.

Mike

 

[lifebythedrop]

If photographers at events weren't so greedy then maybe more of us would pay to have photos. If people can download photos or copy paste, get rid of copyright watermarks , enlarge them and print them out and put in a nice frame free of charge then they will continue to do so. I just don't understand how photographers can justify a cost of £8, £9 or even £10 for a single photo, not when there are 200 people at a fun ride or 220 entries at a one day event for example. There are some brilliant photographers around, and some are more reasonable than others. You cannot surely express surprise that people infringe copywright when a) they are given the tools to do so, and b) are continually ripped off by photographers trying to make a fast buck.

I haven't had time to read the entire thread, got top about page 15, but I am afraid the statement above is ridiculous.

My camera cost over 3000 which is nothing compared to the lenses. The camera has an expected lifespan of 300,000 shutter releases (then it will have to be replaced), my insurance is 500 per year for fairly basic insurance. The toner to run the printer for contact sheets costs about 100 per week. That is before all other running costs.

I have stood today for many hours in the teams of rain and will now spend most of the night editing and uploading images. The complaints from people if you miss taking a shot of their horse can be quite abusive, which would lead me to believe they want a photographer on site.

I sometimes receive emails from people asking if there were any more shots of their horse - I email them, never to hear from them again until the images appear on Facebook. By the way we only charge 2 for a low res copy for Facebook - hardly robbery.

No photographer is forcing people to buy their photos - but stealing them is another matter. Are you are suggesting that is people don't wish to pay then it is OK for them to just steal them?

 

[mystiandsunny]

Regarding photos at events, be they SJ/D/whatever - I'll happily have a look at what was taken, but don't need a photo from every event I go to, or the house would be full of them! So maybe one for the first outing of a youngster, one if we do something new/special, but that's it really. I don't think £10 is a lot for a photo, think it's probably fair for a print on the day (convenience and all that!), but have no need for the photos themselves - probably similar to other people! If I could buy the photos that were taken as digital images, I probably would - stored on a computer they don't take up space in the house, and are a record of each competition and our progress. I understand though that I'd be able to print them myself then, if I wanted to, so no-one would buy the prints on-site. You could lump all of them for each horse, for a fee so people paid more!

On another note though, it would help if more photographers were able to take card payment, as on the odd occasion where I have liked a photo, I've invariably run out of cash! Once I'm home, it seems silly to spend £10 on a picture, so I don't bother.

 

[MegaBeast]

I take it that this print was sent to you later as the largest dye sub print is 12" x 8"

Mike

Yes, I ordered it off the internet

 

[walkingman]

How about black and white versions for online before they buy?

Also, terms and conditions to be accepted before continuing to buy, thus helping to educate the buyers to copyright and giving you the comeback of small claims in the event the photograph is reproduced without permission - enlarging etc.

What do you have in terms of notices about copyright both online and at the events? What do you have in terms of advertising what you'll do for the customer? Discounts for bulk buying for example?

Would you be prepared to expand your current income stream and improve the general public's photos for them? For example Photoshop their pictures (where possible), and/or use your equipment to print off their pictures. You'll have access to a high quality resource to do this, which they probably won't.

 

[juliap]

I looked at photos after W Wilts last weekend & not all of mine were up despite my time being 3.45 & I didn't leave until 5.30. I know it does take time & I happened to be the first one on the memory card so I guess it was just the timing.

There was one photo I liked & at £10.00 for 9" x 6" I thought it was a fair price but the £3.50 post & packaging seems excessive. It is £0.66 postage for a large letter. Say £0.25 for hard backed A4 envelope ( easy to find at around 10p each if buying in bulk).

That means over £2.50 for putting photo in the envelope! I emailed & offered to send sae but had no response.

Maybe I'm missing something & am happy to be corrected. there is no option to buy digital image either.

 

[mike weeks]

Yes you are missing the point about postage. It is not generally easy to have a vast range of prices for differing amounts of prints so personally I balance 2 things the actual postage costs and the time it takes to get the order ready and get to the post office.

Consider this; the post office is a couple of miles from me and if I have to deliver just 1 image I have to package, take to post office wait in queue, get a receipt, travel back home - potentially a half hours work and that at minimumwage is £3 whereas if was actually doing photography I could be earning a lot more.

What I am trying to say is that you are paying for the service and not just the actual cost - at a restaurant you dont just pay for the ingredients.

Mike

 

[juliap]

I appreciate it takes time to go to the post office but I doubt it would only be one envelope to post. The prep time would be the same as at the show except for putting it in an envelope.

I'm in no rush & so wouldn't expect a trip to the PO just for my photo. I still feel £3.50 is excessive & the lack of response to email disappointing.

I've had a look at other photographers p&p charges & most are £1.50 - £2.00. Some say order may take 10 - 20 days which isn't a problem if you know the timescale.

 

[mike weeks]

Actually I do get a lot of trips with only 1 or 2 orders to take to the post office but as a further example I get a lot of work delivered from a professional lab where the post is collected from them and they send literaly hundreds of orders per day which reduce their time & effort per order and they are able to buy their packaging much cheaper - and their prices are £5 regardless of order size.

There is another point to this and that is if a photographer is VAT registered they have to charge VAT on this and there is no VAT they can reclaim on the actual postage i.e. 52p of the £3.50 we have to pay to the government and even if the actual postage cost are £1 you are looking at a further 50p in normal tax and then some NI on top of that so maybe you can start to realise how little the photographer is actually taking for providing the service.

Mike

 

[Frances144]

Our most efficient post office (cuts out a day) is 45 minutes away or 25 miles away. I charge £2.99 for postage and that involves collecting the photo from our nearest town (25 miles away) packing it in a brand new cardboard backed envelope and then posting it.

I also offer free collection.

 

[mike weeks]

How about black and white versions for online before they buy?

You can get everything else wrong but dont get the colour of the horse wrong so a B&W preview will not be beneficial.

Also, terms and conditions to be accepted before continuing to buy, thus helping to educate the buyers to copyright and giving you the comeback of small claims in the event the photograph is reproduced without permission - enlarging etc. What do you have in terms of notices about copyright both online and at the events?

Have you not read some of the answers here even when infringers (thieves) have this pointed out to them. Most cant see the big pricing signs so I am sure they would not read a copyright notice.

What do you have in terms of advertising what you'll do for the customer? Discounts for bulk buying for example?

Read above about price signs.

Would you be prepared to expand your current income stream and improve the general public's photos for them? For example Photoshop their pictures (where possible), and/or use your equipment to print off their pictures. You'll have access to a high quality resource to do this, which they probably won't.

I need the time to do my own work and imagine the scenario where I print off somebody elses shot and charge £1 and I charge £10 for my own or can you see Joe Public paying me £10 for printing a 9x6 from their camera phone?

Always good to look at ideas but they have to work.

Mike

 

[Kat]

On another note though, it would help if more photographers were able to take card payment, as on the odd occasion where I have liked a photo, I've invariably run out of cash! Once I'm home, it seems silly to spend £10 on a picture, so I don't bother.

Sadly taking payment by card is a hugely expensive business. I have looked into it time and again for my husband's business as we have lost some very big sales due to not being able to accept cards.

People just don't realise how expensive card machines are to buy/rent and run. We accept cash or cheques so I suggest you take your cheque book to shows just in case you want to make any purchases. We can also accept payment via paypal/google checkout over the internet, and theoretically could accept a payment by paypal in person using mobile internet (although there are transaction charges there too).

Realistically photographers may well add transaction fees on if they do have card machines as it eats into their profits so much.

 

[mike weeks]

Personally I add the £30 a month it costs me to run a credit card terminal into my overall operating costs, all I need is another 3 sales per month. Yes there is a cost per transaction but this is no different from any online sales system such as paypal. I dont charge extra for the PayPal so why do it for credit cards.

This is not a great expense for a professional photographer and I am surprised that you are still getting photographers turning up at venues without such items. At all the seminars I give it is one of the points that I stress - if you dont give the customer the means to pay it is another lost sale.

Three important points for an event photographer;

1. Quality of Image
2. Suitable product
3. Method of payment

I am surprised also that more organisers are not asking the questions.

Mike

 

[spidge]

Sadly taking payment by card is a hugely expensive business. I have looked into it time and again for my husband's business as we have lost some very big sales due to not being able to accept cards.

I guess it depends on your turnover and whatever you determine your payback point is. We have one and to be honest would not be without it. Sure it's £30 a month plus the transaction charges but for convenience and to capture extra sales it's invaluable. Quick, convenient, less agg than schlepping to the bank to pay in cheques, transaction reports, money into my bank rather than my pocket, audit trail is easy for accounting purposes. Plus I think in many peoples eyes it legitimises your business and provides credibility.

 

[Kat]

I guess it depends on your turnover and whatever you determine your payback point is. We have one and to be honest would not be without it. Sure it's £30 a month plus the transaction charges but for convenience and to capture extra sales it's invaluable. Quick, convenient, less agg than schlepping to the bank to pay in cheques, transaction reports, money into my bank rather than my pocket, audit trail is easy for accounting purposes. Plus I think in many peoples eyes it legitimises your business and provides credibility.

It is something we are looking into at the moment. We've been able to manage so far as we have access to a shared one through a collective we are a member of but there will come a point where we have to bite the bullet and get our own. It is expensive especially when some months you may not use it at all. The show we were at on saturday, two people asked about methods of payment, one whipped out a cheque book the other had the cash, no transactions through a card machine (we didn't have one with us but could do them over the phone if necessary).

 

[Kat]

Personally I add the £30 a month it costs me to run a credit card terminal into my overall operating costs, all I need is another 3 sales per month. Yes there is a cost per transaction but this is no different from any online sales system such as paypal. I dont charge extra for the PayPal so why do it for credit cards.

This is not a great expense for a professional photographer and I am surprised that you are still getting photographers turning up at venues without such items. At all the seminars I give it is one of the points that I stress - if you dont give the customer the means to pay it is another lost sale.

Three important points for an event photographer;

1. Quality of Image
2. Suitable product
3. Method of payment

I am surprised also that more organisers are not asking the questions.

Mike

In my experience for the MAJORITY of shows the only question they ask is "can you pay the fee?" preferably upfront six months in advance.

It is poor business but many shows are more interested in filling all the trade space, and getting photographers that will pay them the maximum rather than having any eye on quality. It is only the very popular events who pick and choose. Sad because chosing carefully would help improve the image of their event and in turn increase visitor numbers, but too often we've been stuck on a trade stand next to the rotary club tombola or someone selling made in taiwan tat.......

 

[mike weeks]

These are all useful comments but the one excuse that I have never heard is that I stole the images off of your site because you did not have a card machine with you. At £2 for a facebook image it would not be worth me taking a card.

Mike

 

[Rambo]

Just tried to go onto the Spidge website to look for some pics from Felbridge over the weekend and notice that the site is down / not responding today (it was there on sunday but the galleries hadn't been uploaded from saturday). I've noticed quite a lot recently that the site has been down (it's an error 503 - server may be down, too busy or experiencing other problems.....)...and wonder if it's because you are uploading lots of pictures ? I know you're looking at changing your gallery software / provider so it might not be a problem going forward....but wonder if website availablity has become an issue for some (obviously not for the 'thieving scumbag facebook shoplifters' as they can still get 'their' images....but for other genuine customers). Was hoping to find some nice piccies to splash my £3 or so on and help your pension pot to grow a little

 

[ch70]

Just catching up on the last couple of pages of comments. Proves a point I made earlier, people base their opinions of "all photographers" on their experiences with one or two, i.e. they taint all of us with the same brush whether that be a good or bad experience. There is almost an assumption that we all work the same way, sell at the same prices and offer the same services which of course we don't. Lots of factors dictate what each company can offer and what they need to charge to make ends meet.

The second thing is it's obvious that buyers have a very different "perception" of what the value of an image is. Paying £10 for an image for example isn't expensive at all! The idea that just because there are 200 people at a show means that they will all buy a photo and the photographers will all drive home buried in £10 notes is of course daft, if they did there would be no problems!

As a comparison, my teenage daughter recently had an invite from a studio in London. Some competition she entered gave her the opportunity to have a photo shoot. The preparation, makeup etc was included but the photos were extra, £120 to be precise for a couple of images. In reality I know that some of that money covers the makeup costs etc... as a business has to cover it's costs one way or another. She didn't go, not because I thought it was expensive, I just can't afford to pay that a the moment.

Now a studio has known running costs, can build up a pipeline of planned work and therefore will know in advance that they will have a minimum return of £nnn. As event photographers of any type of event, not just equestrian, the return is unknown, the running costs vary from location to location and there is an inherent risk involved. The reason we do it is there is a demand for on site, instantly produced images to take away.

Lets say you go to a theme park, there you have to pay £10 for a single, slightly fuzzy, automatically taken image from a theme park ride of four people with their hands in the air screaming! Or £25 for a single antique effect image of their family dressed up to look like they are cowboys in a make shift saloon bar. Well yes people will moan, but they will still buy one, why? To "remind them" of that moment. A picture will bring back memories of a moment in time even when you look at it 10 or 20 years afterwards.

Both my daughters ride and have done for the last 7 or 8 years I guess. I understand the costs of running a horse, travelling, show fees etc... I'm an average family man living each month to the limit of financial collapse! Even before I turned professional on the photography we would buy a couple of images at pretty much every show (in fact largely from the company I now work for!). My daughters have a few photo albums each of photos covering the whole time they have ridden, not to mention a wall covered in rosettes! Why do I buy them? Because I want them to be able to look back on them with their children and re-live those experiences in years to come. Something few of us older people can do due to the lack of photograph opportunities when we were younger.

So the value of any photograph isn't the paper, the ink, the sweat and toil involved in taking the image, it's in the memory that it contains that makes you smile each time you look at it...

 

[spidge]

Rambo, re the website Sunday's gallery from Felbridge is now up. By way of innovation we extended the £5 for any clear round picture which we have tried recently to the entire day. We sold double the volume of pictures and ended up roughly where I would have expected money wise.

Reliability wise the web site availability is generally fairly good. I changed the BSJA gallery urls last week to make them unavailable and only available subject to providing name, address etc but then relented and changed them back to the originals. With my new gallery software I will introduce time limited galleries and insist on registration once I can get this in place.

Saturdays pix are churning away now and should be online some time around 6pm today. My gallery software only allows me to add a text watermark in one line in one location so I am having to run a separate process to watermark all images first then create and upload the gallery. Not forgetting to make a backup of the images of course!

So thank you, please be patient and my pension pot contribution will have to wait a short while longer. Sat was an 18 hour day and yesterday about 16 so quite relaxed really.

 

[pinktiger]

spidge< im so sorry you have been subjected to this, it really isnt fair at all!! i think that we all love to see a photographer at events and love to have a look through the pics after, ofcourse, learning a thing or two by way of education through the images we see!! I think a sticky on the horse and hound forum with a reminder that 'if we abuse these good people we will eventually lose them', i for one always buy my pics as i am aware that its against copyright to use the pics without purchase or permission!! But not everyone is aware of this, im sure, and if they had any idea they wouldnt do it, the other ones will do it anyhow and therefor you have to alter your security to protect your business which is a real shame!!!