stealing my photos please help

rogerchester · December 26, 2011

I am new in the photography business and need advice on a problem i am having. Some of my customers are stealing my photo proofs before they buy them. I water mark my proofs and keep them to the smallest size as possible. I get on facebook and the photos are posted before they even buy them. (I Love working for free). What is the best way to show my customers their photos without giving them access to them. I like to post them on my web site but I need to sell them first. How do you sell your proofs if they are not on the website for customers to view them? Any help with this matter would be appreciated very much.

Thank You
Roger Prescott

denisegoldberg · December 26, 2011

This isn't an answer to your question, but...

I just looked at your web site, and every gallery that I looked at had the Originals available. If the original is available there is really no need to purchase photos.

Yes, I know, you have right click protection on. That is easily circumvented. See ORIGINALS = a gateway to free photos, & right click protection is NOT PROTECTION.

--- Denise

Art Scott · December 27, 2011

Allow no image larger than Large for viewing.
Denise is correct, right cliking protection is not really protection, once viewed it can be printed or used in most any way.
a necessary evil if you are serious about using your website for making money is watermarking...and with CS 5 available that only slows down the real people dead set on stealing your images.

chrisjohnson · December 27, 2011

Most customers are not that savvy to know the difference between "original" or "large", or about right click, and when they do know and their ambition is Facebook then even small is good enough, neither is a subtle copyright statement in the corner a deterrent.

Blasting your copyright across the image in big letters makes the image unusable for most.

My feeling is that the majority of people are not using Internet much so a lot of your customers are not well served by your posting their photos on the net in the first place. They will need help to look at them, likely from the family geek who then shows off by demonstrating how he or she can rip you off. Perhaps a reversion to old style contact prints, with a copyright graffiti, will serve your business purpose better?

orljustin · December 27, 2011

rogerchester wrote: »

What is the best way to show my customers their photos without giving them access to them.

Go to their home and display them on your laptop. Else, anyone can grab them: http://r-prescott.smugmug.com/Portraits/Tabatha/i-knHXqzF/0/M/IMG4503pp-M.jpg

Welcome to the digital age. People want to share their images. This is nothing new. Charge an appropriate sitting fee to cover your needs and provide images on cd for them.

Mark Dickinson · December 27, 2011

Def set up smaller images, protected, easy sharing and watermarking. Go to my site www.mdpstore.com look in events and Palmer. I implemented a new logo for this., edit right click message and have clients initial or do. Contract and specify copyright use

xposurepro · December 29, 2011

In person sales is the best protection .. it also generates much much larger sales than online sales (even from honest clients). With traditional sales you still need to follow a strict policy to protect yourself from those who would abuse it. Mainly do not send paper proofs home (duh .. but many photographers still do this). Some photographers say "Ohhh but I charge a $150 deposit for them to do this" .. unless we're talking about a $2,000 minimum deposit it's not a valid excuse. Also do not project sales and then leave the client unsupervised "because they want to discuss it privately" .. If they want to discuss it they can step outside or into the waiting room .. because odds are what they re really saying is "Could you leave the room so we can snap copies with our 8MP iPhone."

Glort · December 30, 2011

For sports and cheer do Viewstations at the event or sell CDS that are prepaid. No booking, no shoot. Simple.
vstations are cheap as chips to set up and the hourly rate you'll pay someone to look after it will be returned 50 fold if your doing things right. I don't think a sports shooter can afford to put pics on line these days nor afford not to have vstations and an assistant running the sales side of things for them.

For portraits and the like, have them come to your home/ studio or go to their home.

Frankly, I can't understand why you would just put them online and not do a viewing session with them where you can show them how they could be cropped, give them ideas for layouts, show them retouching and what it can do and who they could buy extra prints for to give as gifts and just do a professional presentation of your work overall.
I would be more concerned about the money you're loosing right here than the online image pinching although they are closely related.
I give my portrait clients a Coffee and some Biscuits in the waiting room after their studio sessions, do a cull on the pics and then do the order within 15 min of the pics being taken while the excitement is high. I'm constantly finding myself amazed at how much more they spend that I would have anticipated despite my expectations continually rising.

For location shoots, since I got back into portraits I haven't any clients not take the images on disk deal yet. I cull and edit a couple of images and always give them a free print so when they take them to be printed, they have a standard to compare the prints to and will automatically know if they are crap who's fault that is.

I don't believe you will ever get any worthwhile return on your time or get near your earning potential putting pics up on the net for sports. It's hard enough making a quid out of it at the best of times, slashing your earnings by 80-90% is just crazy to me.
To me there is NO excuse not to do View stations or disks these days for sports for the simple fact that online is near useless and you will always have problems with image theft and crap sales. If I had to do online only, I wouldn't even think of covering the event in the first place.

I don't go out busting my chops and hammering camera's in the hope of growing better looking, I'm in it for the money.
For others that are happy just to look like a photographer, online sales may fit their needs perfectly!

smurfy · January 1, 2012

Here's a good read on the subject.
http://www.themoderntog.com/the-secret-to-significantly-increasing-your-portrait-sales-strategy

rogerchester · January 2, 2012

Thanks everyone for your help.

johng · January 3, 2012

Let me add to the discussion. Selling on the web or proofing on the web SEEMS like a good idea. It's not. The only time you should use the web for proofing is when they've already paid the full price you want to make. Take senior portraits for example: if they've already paid you $250 and they want to steal a photo to post on facebook with your copyright, so be it. So, you have 2 choices: either change your pricing strategy to collect more money up front so you don't need print sales or stop posting results on the internet for proofing and have a scheduled proof review.

stealing my photos please help

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