Free from 9 to 5 Chronicles of people and ideas to inspire and achieve freedom from a 9 to 5 job

Hostage taking business model

Business models that depend on hostage taking really irk me.

Last week, my fiance and I took studio portraits for our wedding later this year. I got a package that contained 2 portraits, a big album, 2 small albums and various other sundries, but I could only choose 30 photos out of the 150+ that were actually taken that day. All the photographs were great; it was hard to choose 30. After 90 minutes, we got it down to the final 30 that would be professionally touched up and used in our package.

We felt these 30 were the best. But I still would have liked digital copies of all the others, but the studio charged up the nose for each additional shot. $40! To get the other 120 would cost $4800! Granted, that would have included professional touch-up, but the studio refused to consider releasing them to me untouched-up. I asked for low resolution copies, so that I would have to come back to them for the high resolution originals in order to print them out properly. Refused, as well. I asked for a proof sheet where each photo is a tiny 1″x2″ on regular white paper. Refused again.

I understood the package I signed up for, but what are they going to do with the other photographs of me and my fiance? Annoying your customers like this is apparently the status quo among photography studios. But as Dan Sherman has also experienced and written about before, there is a business opportunity here.

Update: I totally agree I should have negotiated more upfront to get the original digital copies of all the photos. Lesson learned.