Trying Not to Be Mad at Photog...Please Help Me Put Things In Perspective!!

[Destination Scout]

We had this concern as well. We knew there were shots that he took that he didn't pass along. When we asked him about them he let us look at thim. He had left them out on purpose because they were not quality photos. Someone had gotten in the way of the shot, I was squinting, there were a ton of reasons. My photographer had sent us the good pictures, and in the end I was comfortable with that. Over 4 days we got about 100 pictures that we really love. That in itself was fantastic. I really only expected 10 amazing pictures and I got 10 times that amount.

[rodent]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gail I must say I was disappointed my photogr stopped adding music which I think makes A BIG DIFFERENCE. I have been trying to put that in perspective myself. Did you ask about the shots you are missing?

Did you ask why you didn't get music? was it on your contract that the slideshow would be set to music?

Photographers need to use royalty free music, but a lot don't. People are getting more serious about the music laws and a lot of photographers have stopped adding music to slideshows or their website.

They can purchase royalty free music, though. it just won't be a song you alredy know. Any time you hear popular music on a website or slideshow, it's likely not legal. In some cases they were able to get a license from the artist. Typically they did not.

[Dmitri_Markine]

Here's a view of a photographer.

 

1.79mb is not how you tell whether it's a hi-res or low-res image. it just tells you the size of the file. Right click on the file,properties and go to Details. What does it say in the Dimensions line? It should say something like 3200 x 2000pix Multiply those number and you will get the actual resolution of that photo.

I've printed billboards from 6mp images in the past. I've printed 30x40 canvases from 5mp files.

I am shooting with 21mp cameras right now and deliver 9-11mp images to my clients. Those files are between 1.90mb-14mb in size,depending on how much information is present in those images.

 

Getting 400 images from a wedding is not uncommon(well,maybe not from a 3 day event and 2 photographers present...),but you should've talked to them prior to know how many they deliver. I have that information on my website as well and typically shoot 60-80 images an hour. Some photographer deliver as little as 150 images per wedding.

Some do shoot-burns with as high as 3-4K!!

Get in touch with your photographers and talk to them. Ask about those missing shots.

[rodent]

OK I just checked the size of what I call high res & it's about 1.2MB. The dimensions are about 3000x2000.

 

I never pay attention to the MB size, but if my 3000x2000 image is 1.2MB yours might be large enough. Check the dimensions.

 

Some are just 300kb. It's all over the place. Must be depending on how much I cropped.

[Ana]

I feel like there are alot of issues at play here. If the photographer was not a wedding photographer though is a big reason why perhaps you are not happy with the photos, and in that case I don't think you can really have such high expectations of him and his assitant. They would be out of their element.

 

As far as the amount goes, I don't know if the number means much. I agree that less is more in some cases. I would prefer 400 amazing and edited images to 900 reg images.

 

Juan shot our wedding for 8.5 hrs, and we received 900+ images, edited. He is a wedding photographer though, who invests time and effort into perfecting his craft. He knows what brides want, he knows how to get the right shots. I don't think a boudoir photographer is capable of the samething. So expectations need to be managed perhaps.

[SunBride]

I received over 2000 photos on discs but my photographer only deleted the really bad ones (i.e. eyes closed) and gave me all the rest, which included a lot of repeats of the same shot , as well as several hundred black and white or other color editing versions of the same pictures, so I probably had closer to 1000 unique photos. Many photographers will only give you one version of each photo (i.e. each "pose") so that you only have the best one, and so that all the images you receive are unique. Different photographers have different editing styles.

 

This inluded wedding, TTD and vacation photos.

 

I think 400 sounds a bit low, even if the photographer does provide only a limited amount of photos, you should still have gotten more like 500-800 photos considering the number of events and that there were 2 photographers. But what concerns me more is that you don't like almost half of them.

 

Likely the photos you are thinking about, which you didn't get, probably didn't turn out well.

 

I would just talk to the photographer, let them you know you thought you were getting a larger number of pictures, and you want to know what happened to the other photos you remember them taking. No need to get mad or be rude to them, just keep the questions simple like that and see what they say.

[Kits55]

My photog is actually a wedding photographer and has been for many years. He did my boudoir photos as part of our trade but my boudoir photos were only his second time doing boudoir. Soooo, he's a wedding photographer. DH and I looked at his wedding pictures (1,000s of them) before we booked with him so I was expecting what his past work looks like based upon the images that we saw.

 

I will definitely be contacting him about the missing images but it's hard when I live half way around the world now. The internet can be very unreliable and we have no home phone except for Skype. He tried to be artistic but in doing so he has changed and washed out almost all color from all of the resort photos and many of the ceremony photos. I told him up front that we loved his use of light and the brilliant colors in his OTHER outdoor wedding pictures so I know what he's capable of doing.

 

I understand about the resolution now so thanks for the clarification that. It just makes a difference because when I upload pictures to be made into postcards, etc it always says my resolution is too low. I ordered them b/c my photog said they were fine for a 4x6 but sure enough they came out grainy and rather blurry.

 

It's not necessarily the sheer number of photos that I did or did not receive but when he shot for three days I would have expected more than that. I understand that he doesn't want to give us photos that make him look like a poor photographer. But in trying to make photo albums for our parents and not having enough appropriate images to choose from (he gave a lot of TTD pics that are NOT appropriate for our friends and family's eyes) is frustrating. And if I'm going to be paying more than $1,500 for our album I want to make sure that there are pictures in there that represent the entire experience and not just part of that time. I was really hoping to be able to tell a story with our pictures.

 

I have been told before about how photogs just trash the photos with weird faces, etc but those are the ones I tend to treasure the most (depending on how bad it really is). I actually prefer having multiple pictures of the same shot because it gives more variety to choose from and I dabble in Photoshop myself and would prefer to have an array of photos to choose from. Sunbride, I like how your photog gave you the same picture with different effects (B&W, sepia, etc) and I guess that is also at the heart of my problem. There are ones that I really love the image but HATE what he did to it. If I had the images multiple ways then I'd be much happier.

 

Thanks for the input!

 

Thank you to whoever it was that suggested that I ask to see the rest of the pics and ask how many they took in total. I think I will do that.

 

Thanks for the support everyone.

[rodent]

Oh, i thought he was strictly a boudoir photographer.

 

And it sounds like he didn't give you the style you hired him for. I'd talk to him about the edits, too. I don't care for the washed out vintagy look. It's fun for a few pictures, but I want the true colors of beautiful mexico.

 

I also think that you should get a picture from all the main events (like mother son dance & the sparklers). Even if it's not technically perfect he should give you at least one he shot.

[Kits55]

Thanks Morgan! I also like the washed out vintagy look for SOME pictures but even DH thinks the ones of the resort being washed out is too much. Every single one of the resort looks like that. It actually almost looks like a negative because the water looks black in all of the pictures.

 

I will definitely ask him about getting at least one picture from each main event. That would make me happier even if I had to do some Photoshopping myself to make them "book" ready for our parents.

[Kits55]

Morgan and Dmitri: the res on most photos are around 2300 x 2230 or so. It still seems a bit on the small side but I guess we could always ask him later if we wanted to get a really large print. Thanks for the resolution info!