Sneak Peeks, Watermarks, and Filters

When I started out as a professional photographer, there was a lot of little things I had to decide for my business and my brand. Some of those things included, Was I going to watermark images for social media? Send sneak peeks? Allow clients to alter their images with a filter? I've been in the game for over three years now and I mostly do not offer sneak peeks. My proofing galleries are back to clients within 2-3 days anyway. These are the images that I have selected from allllll your images and have done a 'soft edit' on them. I basically tweak the exposure and white balance on those. Then you have a week to choose your final images for editing. My turn around time for final edits is actually faster than my turnaround time for proofing galleries! So no, I don't offer sneak peeks. I know you're excited to see your images, but while shooting I'm showing you the back of camera and I may take a screenshot when I'm uploading your images, so you have something to tide you over for a few days.

I have also chosen not to add a watermark to my images when I post them on social media. No shade to the photographers that do watermark their images though. I have never had an image go insanely viral and I also know how easily it is to remove that watermark. I also don't want a watermark to take away from the beauty that I do capture. Instead of a watermark. I kindly request that my clients tag my business page when they share their images. It's an unobstructed image and still gets the message across about who the artist was being the photo.

When you sign your contract with me, you agree not to alter your images. This includes drastic cropping, re-editing, and adding filters to your images. I have spent years perfecting my craft and style as a photographer and editor and I find it insulting when I see an Instagram filter slapped on one of my images. I know this is a photo of you, but it's also my brand. That filter does not represent my brand. This is the same reason that I don't provide RAW images. If you'd like to purchase a RAW image, I will also provide the copyright and we'd be looking at $1k/image. Am I going to take you to court over an altered image? Probably not. But I will not work with you again.

If I continue to run into this problem, especially with model calls, I will need to start charging for my model calls up front, which I definitely do not want to do. I'm sure that more things will come to light, the longer that I photograph professionally, but those are a few topics that I needed to hash out pretty quickly when making the jump from hobbyist to professional.