Professional photos - somethings not sitting right. Yes or no??

[Heaven]

He appears to have HEAPS of work around so people must like him.

He doesn't even advertise his business - everything is through word of mouth and I had to really search for a website.

He is obviously good, he has people who value his work and are willing to pay a lot for it, and he is booked out. He doesn't even need to advertise. So as long has he has people who are will to pay he can charge what he wants. Unfortunate for you, but it was free and you get a free canvas out of it, that's pretty great. $270 for a canvas print is reasonable. Lots of photographers don't give out digital images and if they do they are expensive because if they give you that then they will never make anymore money from that image, you could print a thousand of them for next to nothing. And also you will get them printed at a normal print lab, not a professional one, which won't make them look as good and then hang them on your wall and tell people who took it, you know? Not great for the photographer.

There seems to be lots of people thinking that photographers prices are unreasonable these days but you are not just paying them to snap a pic and put it on a disc. They need to set their prices to pay for their business expenses, insurance, time, travel, gear, etc etc. You really get what you pay for.

Anyway, I'm sorry you had a bad experience but you know for next time to check prices before. I really hope you find someone who has a package that suits and you can get some great photos you love in the future.

[Livinthedream]

He prob only does canvas so that you can't scan it.
I guess you have look at it like art, would you pay $500 for a painting that you loved? I would and then some.
At the end of the day, you get a free canvas and he has spent the time $ and effort ( a lot longer than the hour session by the time he sorts through the pics) AND he has to pay for the canvas. He will end up quite a bit out of pocket.
I don't really see a problem with it, sounds like a good deal to me.

[BrightSparkles]

I guess the way that I was looking at it was that if I have $350 (or any other amount) to spend on photos, then I would like to get it printed the way I want print/frame/book/canvas etc.
I was also a little disappointed that at no stage during the intial contact and booking was I told that pics were only printed on canvas - to me, that would have swayed me a little. Like I said, all the other pics I've had done, I could get prints of and then if I wanted canvas/book/etc I could have paid extra.
Yep - my fault for not asking further and assuming.

In regards to price, yep - i totally get that whole "you get what you pay for". It just doesn't sit right with me to not be upfront about pricing structures before the photos are taken and then waiting for you to like the photos before you say anything. Again - my fault for assuming.

At the end of the day, yes, there will (hopefully) be some nice photos, but I will only be getting the one. We cannot afford to pay anything else to get other photos printed. Figured the whole thing was free so if I don't like them, no harm done.

thanks for the opinions

[Heaven]

Oh sorry you also said about only seeing 20 images? Just wanted to let you know that that is normal too. The photographer is only going to show you his absolute best work. Editing photos takes a lot of time and he is not going to edit them all when you're not going to buy that many anyway iykwim, you're only going to buy the best

[BrightSparkles]

Oh sorry you also said about only seeing 20 images? Just wanted to let you know that that is normal too. The photographer is only going to show you his absolute best work. Editing photos takes a lot of time and he is not going to edit them all when you're not going to buy that many anyway iykwim, you're only going to buy the best

Yeah I can appreciate that. I guess at the same time, some of the other photos that he might think look crap to him I might love beacuse I may see something different in it that he doesn't. That happened with both lots of other photos we had done. The photographer didn't like them for whatever reason and DH and I both loved them because we saw something different and unique in them.
I just like to be given a choice and in control