Bride wants all photos

I did a wedding for a friend as a favor. They paid my expenses (lens rental and gas), and just to get something out of it, I charged them $30 for the cd with high res photos. Well, when I asked for their address on myspace, the groom asked me how many photos I was going to give them. I told him I was going to include about 200 retouched, and he responded by saying that his wife wanted all the photos no matter how they came out. I took about 600 in total. My question is should I give them to him? Since this is my first wedding, there were a lot of "test shots", and I don't want any blurry, or just some bad picture to give me bad rep. How would you respond?

No. Do not give them everything. Sort out and retouch the ones you think should be included. You do not know what they will think if/when they see your test shots or who else will see them. It is just unacceptable.

the 200 retouched shots IS all off them.

That's what I was thinking, but I guess I brought this upon myself. While at the reception, I can't remember who, but someone asked me how many pics I had taken and I told them 600. I'm regreting that now.

Thanks for the quick replies.

If someone says "well, you told so and so at the reception you shot 600" just smile and tell them you were exaggerating or engaging in hyperbole They should be over the moon with 200 images!

"Sorry but I flush my crap."

Haha, I like that cdi.

kja, I thought 200 was a lot too. It's actually more like 255!

if its your friend just give em' all, and edit like 5 or 6 ... you're doing to much

If it's not a paid gig, and you're not losing income regardless, what's the problem?

They're your friends, so give them all the files.

You can't agree to do a 'favor' and then hold the files hostage.

I do feel as though I am doing to much, and his comment irritated me a bit. After declining to do the wedding three times, I finally agreed. I drove four hours to San Antonio, called him that I had arrived (Thursday). We had agreed to meet Friday morning, but he asked me to go to the church where the ceremony was going to be because he was going to preach (he's a pastor). Since I hadn't been to the church before, and my grandma needed a ride to go, I went. After, he said his fiance was waiting for us at a restaurant to talk about the wedding. We arrived at 10:30pm and I got back to my grandma's house at 1:30am. I went to the rehersal Friday at 6pm, and he asked me to take a picture of them to put in a program he was going to make. I took the picture, went home to fix it, and gave it to him that night at 9pm where the rehersal party was eating. He didn't invite me, remember, we're friends. He ended up not even making a program. I told them I was going to make a slideshow for the reception of some of the day's pictures, and he gave me about 30 pictures to "fix" for the slideshow. Then the bride wanted me to burn a cd with all of the pictures at the end of the reception, which I didn't do after explaining to them why. All of this, + 255 retouched photos for basically nothing.

mizuno wrote in post #3753113
If it's not a paid gig, and you're not losing income regardless, what's the problem?

They're your friends, so give them all the files.

You can't agree to do a 'favor' and then hold the files hostage.

This was the flip side of the coin for me. The groom is actually a friend of my dad, and more of an acquaintance to me, but nevertheless, I see your point.

Live and learn, I guess.

I'd just toss the blinkies and testers, burn what I had done already plus any others that are just fine and call it a day. I didn't read into your posts that you weren't going to give them their disk, just that you didn't want the total rubbish in there. Tell them that you are honored that they respected your talent so much and that you are pleased to be able to offer them such a unique gift of memories for them to cherish forever.

Real friends wouldn't make a fuss or try to take advantage - real friends tend to look beyond themselves at least sometimes

Oops, just saw you edited that they are not really your friends. Then I'd drop a hint or two about how you'd be pleased to do some work on them and offer them as prints they could buy And you charge $200/hour but as they're dear friends of Dad you'd be happy to do them for $125/hour

kja wrote in post #3753159
Live and learn, I guess.

I'd just toss the blinkies and testers, burn what I had done already plus any others that are just fine and call it a day. I didn't read into your posts that you weren't going to give them their disk, just that you didn't want the total rubbish in there. Tell them that you are honored that they respected your talent so much and that you are pleased to be able to offer them such a unique gift of memories for them to cherish forever.

Real friends wouldn't make a fuss or try to take advantage - real friends tend to look beyond themselves at least sometimes

Oops, just saw you edited that they are not really your friends. Then I'd drop a hint or two about how you'd be pleased to do some work on them and offer them as prints they could buy And you charge $200/hour but as they're dear friends of Dad you'd be happy to do them for $125/hour

I was going to give them the cd all along, just wasn't going to give them the doubles/triples of group shots/formals. I responded to him telling him that I was going to add 50 more, and that the others were just multiple photos of the same poses.

As a minister in a small church, he doesn't earn much, so I'm not going to charge him for the time spent in post processing. I'll mark it up as practice.

I did tell him that I was honored he would think of me though.

Sounds like you've come to terms that you're happy with - good job!

You got not paid for the job unless expenses you had for gas & renting gear. $30 is nothing for editing 255 shots.
Let them know how much others charge per hour for editing images. Just recently I saw a web site where it's $120 per hour, but you get quite good results too.

If I were in your situation, I would give the remaining shots to your friend, best as RAW files for the later best possible quality , and let him know how much time is to spend for editing just the shots you did already.
Maybe that he realizes now how much time you spent for this and knows the value of your work.

If they see only $30 for 1 CD then look for another friend.