Photo release for a dog?

[RedlinePhotography_2009]

Hi guys,

This is my first post in this section but im a long time viewer.

Heres my story.


My sister has a mini dauschound and there is a facebook based club for them thats been growing for my local area (Melbourne) for a while and they have a meeting on sunday in a public dog park.

I usually go with my sister to our local dog park and take snaps of ralph(her dauschound) and all the other dogs and everyone thinks its fantastic, ive taken thousands of shots and really enjoy it as its different form the norm of shooting cars.

I posted letting everyone know that i will b attending with my camera to take photos for the day of the entire event. As i have a soft spot for the group etc i wanted to do it for free but having everyone show interest posting out discs of the images would be fairly costly. I explained this in my post and informed everyone for a disc of images of the day probably 2-400 images if past outings are anything to go by.

it would cost 15$ which after i buy my hundred rolls of dvds, cd cases, and then spend nearly 5$ on each padded postage bag so no discs get damaged. My profit margin is very minimal. Not even taking into account how much my the gear itself costs which we all know.

And ive had a couple people come back and say 15$ is too steep, i have tried explaining the costs involved also the cost involved in owning the gear i do. And having cleared that up they have now come back and told me that they beleive i should get permission from everyone attending to take photos on the day.


Im at a loss, personally i want to tell them to get stuffed, but professionally i know i cant.

Can anyone offer some advice as to what i should do?

[rick_reno]

i'd stay away, your minimal pricing scheme has apparently ruffled some feathers

[LBaldwin]

Somtimes you try to do something nice and some
Idiot wants to ruin it.. In the US you would need
A property release if you were planning an ad featuring
The pooches. to to charge a fee to cover your expenses I don't think you need a release. What you might want to do is offer away for those that don't want to be photographed, to opt out. in the US in order to sue and win, you have to be able to show that you caused them damages, no damages no lawsuit.

[Meanderthal]

Legal or not, I wouldn't think it worth getting into arguments, making enemies. Life is too short, friends too few. How about putting up a large poster, talking to owners, asking them to tie a nice long red ribbon (yours) on their dog's collar if they wish to participate. Shoot selectively, shallow DOF. Any identifiable dog in the picture without ribbon, and that picture is deleted.

I feel your pain.

[briarlow]

As it was a FB group all you needed to do was post a few photo's on the FB page. I must admit I wouldn't be interested in having a disc but would love to see the photo's on FB as I wouldn't want a load of photo's of dogs that weren't mine, however, nice they are. You could of charged a small fee if anyone was interested in having any copies of their photo's though.