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A Picture's Worth a Thousand... Dollars?

Posted Thursday, March 13, 2008 5:56 PM

Last night we ventured off to our appt with the photographer. We stopped off first, got some dinner, and I was feeling pretty good, ready to get this thing done finally.

So let me give you some background on our package with them... we got a "free" engagement session (where i ended up buying way too many pictures)... we have a 10x10 leather album, with a lucite photograph cover. all the pages will be a high gloss finish printed with metallic ink. we hired 2 photographers for the day of (2nd photographer was an added expense of course) and they "threw in" a 24x30 ginormous print. we also got 2 parent albums. his mom's is 5x5 and my mom's is 7x7. oh and we get 60 images with our book and the parent albums are identical. all the albums are that sort of scrapbooked look. All of this for the low low price of.... $7,000 (can you tell i'm being sarcastic?)

OK, so all that is fine and dandy... the only thing which i mentioned yesterday that i was going to be scared about was narrowing down the 990 pictures down to 60. Yeah, well that didn't quite happen... after FIVE hours of sitting with the guy, we narrowed it down to 150 pictures... basically 90 pictures OVER what our package includes! and at $40 per picture additional, i almost died when he said to add all these pictures would be another $3k... now i KNOW that pictures are priceless and you only do this once, blah blah blah... but i basically said to DH, either we upgrade the album and have a gorgeous album, or we have more money for our future house. not to mention this would be charged on the cc and i dont want to ADD debt, im busting my butt trying to SUBTRACT the debt... do you girls agree? or would you spring for the album?

after all was said and done, we took our 150 photos home to try to weed through them some more... i will go back once we narrow it down and let the photographer know. also, we are upgrading his mom's album to 7x7 (same as my mom). this is fine with me, as i originally was planning on doing that. DH made a fuss, told me his mom didn't care... and has since changed his mind, which i said a very nice, sweet but gloating "i told you so"... that is gonna cost us $400. so however many we choose, we add that fee on off the bat. i told DH this morning, max we add on is 25 pictures x $40 = $1,000. after that i need to draw the line. and if we can get away with less, that's what we need to do...

i guess i just keep thinking how much are we going to look at this album, show it off, love it? since the cover will be so pretty it will be a "coffee table" book on display, so at least it will be out. But are these pictures worth an additional thousand dollars???
 

Posted by ShayLynn
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Comments

re: A Picture's Worth a Thousand... Dollars?

I feel for you here.  I'm a photographer and yes I work weddings.  I don't charge no where near those kinds of prices, but I do it more because I love it, not to make a living.  That makes a huge difference.  

Maybe see if you can work something out with your photographer that since you're spending a ton extra money with them, maybe they could sell you the CD of images.  Rather than spending $3K on those additional 90 prints you love, ask if you can purchase the CD from them for around $1,000.  Then you could just use the limited number of prints for the album but have the others on CD to make 4x6s of or something.  Some companies will never sell you the copyright to their work, but some will, so it can't hurt to ask.

Posted by edmo    Thursday, March 13, 2008 12:55 PM


re: A Picture's Worth a Thousand... Dollars?

In $7000, does this include digital negatives with a copywrite release?  Maybe if you had that, you could narrow it even further and decide with some of those pictures you really want, just do some simple Kodac quality prints.  More on pictures, it is crazy how much pictures are.   Since I've had my album, I showed it off in the beginning,  I've looked through it maybe 3 times total in 6 months, and I haven't looked at all recently.  I don't get sad about the pics I don't have.  I just love the pics that I do have.

Posted by MandyE-worth    Thursday, March 13, 2008 1:27 PM


re: A Picture's Worth a Thousand... Dollars?

Good luck with the photographer.  I am with edmo on this, try to get them to sell you the cd with the copywrite release. I had a photographer that was in love with photography and was given all 10,000 picture files. It is hard to narrow down to just a few dozen. Remember to be patient and enjoy this experience, knowing that you won't have to do it again.

Posted by MrsDestroyer07    Thursday, March 13, 2008 11:18 PM


re: A Picture's Worth a Thousand... Dollars?

WOW!! $7000!! We got everything you got plus CD's of all the pictures that we could print out at Walgreens for $3000. This also included our photogrpahers travel because we got married in Houston.

Posted by bwenzel624    Friday, March 14, 2008 9:42 AM


re: A Picture's Worth a Thousand... Dollars?

Hi there.  I have never spoken to you before, but your Blog caught my eye on thenest opening page.  

I am not going to tell you that we paid so much less so you can find it, etc. mostly because I think that really depends on where you live and all.  But I am going to tell you that I dont think its worth it.  Our photogs price (1350) included an engagement session, 2 photogs for the entire day, 200 prints, and 3 CD's with over 4000 pictures on them, copyright released to us.  I made mypublisher books for the entire family for Christmas, and made us one.  Honestly, I've looked at it maybe once, but I did make it.

What I am trying to say is that I do not think spending that much money is worth it.  You cant wait to see them once they are finished, but after that, its about it.  I think if you are going to spend any extra money at all, it would be to get the copyright released to you.  That way you can do what you want with the pics, without the added expense.  HTH - and good luck on whatever decision you may make.

Posted by Mrs.Henson    Friday, March 14, 2008 6:48 PM


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About ShayLynn

Let's see... i hate trying to describe myself... yet alone in a "short sentence"... who can do that... i'm 29, happily married to a great guy, have 2 dogs, art director for a medical communications company. We're in the process of trying to sell our condo and move so DH can open his own business.


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