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Is this worth negotiating?
My fiance and I hired a photographer for our wedding and later decided that we wanted to add an engagement package. The photographer has two packages --1 package includes a $100 credit to purchase prints of images and the other package ($200 more) includes rights to all of the images and all images on a disk.
So, long story short, we want to move forward with the first package but request that we receive the rights to 1 image. The photographer says that this is going to cost us $70 for 1 image. Is this industry standard, if so, is this price in-line with purchasing rights to 1 image?
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Re: Is this worth negotiating?
Why don't you just buy the second package for 200 more? I would never hire a photog that didn't give me the print rights.
Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you want the rights to all of your images? Particularly when the price differential is only $200 (well, $300 if you count that the first package gives you a credit), why wouldn't you want unlimited access to everything to do with what you please without the hassle of going back to the photographer every time you want more of something? Maybe your budget is stretched thin and it seems like too much to pay now, but what happens if you change your mind in the future?
For the record, googling photographer price per photo will get you your answer - which is that it varies greatly. I would say the average in my experience is between $100-200 per print though for good, reputable photographers. You're not just paying for the price of printing paper - they have to price themselves to make a living and cover their overhead for the whole year and most of them have an average of one wedding per weekend if they are lucky and maybe they'll book a portrait session per week. And let's face it, they probably aren't shooting 52 weddings a year - there are some months that are probably pretty lean.
Printing rights and copyrights are two different things. It is much easier to obtain the printing rights, like package #2 offers than full copyrights. And if you are public property or have entered private property that states by entering you can be photographed, than you don't have to grant permission to have your photo taken.
You pay them to photograph you, but they own the copyright bc they created the image. An excellent photog is going to charge a premium to surrender their copyright.
I would never hire a photog who didn't sell me full printing rights. I would never expect to get full copyrights tho.
Doesn't matter if we agree or disagree with who owns the rights. The law says the photographer does. It is their product to price and sell. With so many of us who want the rights to design our own albums and print our own photos, I imagine they have all lost a significant portion of their income.
http://205photography.com/2013/11/copyright-vs-print-rights/
2. You also have to remember that it was not too long ago that digital photography didn't exist and you couldn't have just any random person with an iPhone and instagram filters shoot unlimited photos to your heart's content. People hired photographers or went to photo studios, the photographers exercised a great deal of care using their expertise because they were shooting on rolls of film that could only carry 24-36 shots a roll and then developing these pictures in a darkroom. There was only one set of negatives, period. They provided you with a contact sheet or a set of proofs and then you picked which ones you liked best and ordered the number and sizes you wanted. Then the photographer went back in the dark room with the negatives and created those prints for you. If you wanted more at a later time, you had to go back to the photographer and order them. It's why when you asked people what three things they would save from their house in a fire, one of those things was usually a photo album because it was harder and more costly to replace those items (and impossible if the negatives were gone) - their photos were not just digitally hanging out in a cloud somewhere to be accessed from any old computer/tablet/phone in the world. And it's how photographers made their money - by being the keepers of these negatives and being the source of the printed copies and charging for them.
Then, digital came along and we with that we got the ability for any old moron with a color printer to go ahead and alter the photos any way they wanted with whatever software they purchased and print them out - possibly altering the photos enough that it misrepresents the artist's work and taking a large chunk of income away from the photographers who used to be the sole source of your printed photos. So yeah - to protect their work and be able to make a living now that most people want to have the control themselves because they bought themselves a fancy printer, photographers had to start charging for other things in the digital age to compensate for the loss of income that was part of the deal in the film age. It's really not that unreasonable, though maybe if you didn't grow up when film was prevalent it's hard to understand the work and artistry that goes into making quality photos or why things get priced the way they do.
I hope this helps!