To watermark or not to watermark?

First off, I dont have much experience selling or licensing photos, and I'm doing a shoot for a nightclub on Thanksgiving Eve, and they are paying although not a lot because I'm giving them a good rate since myself and my friends actually go to this place regularly.

The owner of the club wants to use the photos for promotion of the club on their website, and most likely Facebook as well. Now my question is, since I am being paid to do the shoot, would it still be in good practice to watermark each photo that I provide them with my logo, or provide them with watermark free photos? Either way, I will be drafting up a licensing agreement for the use of the photos.

Generally speaking, unless your agreement with the client is geared toward "co-promotion," sold images are not watermarked by the photographer.

Specifics should be clearly laid out in your licensing agreement.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #11325317
Generally speaking, unless your agreement with the client is geared toward "co-promotion," sold images are not watermarked by the photographer.

Specifics should be clearly laid out in your licensing agreement.

By co-promotion, I assume that to mean I would use them to promote myself independently from the nightclub such as on my website, Facebook, etc. as well? If so, that will indeed be the case.

The way I'm viewing it, is he would be basically be paying for my time, and not necessarily buying the photos or a license, but I will be providing them for free. I'm being paid $50 for the entire night, which is obviously not a lot by any means and really doesn't even provide a profit when you factor in travel expenses, and wear and tear on equipment. So, that's why I'm having a hard time deciding whether to watermark them or not.

I mean that the images the nightclub puts up would carry your watermark if (and only if) they agree to it thereby promoting both the club and your services.

If you sell or license the images to the club, it's their call as to whether or not they'll allow your watermark.

Like I said earlier, if you sell or license images to a client, your agreement needs to spell out the usage.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #11325395
I mean that the images the nightclub puts up would carry your watermark if (and only if) they agree to it thereby promoting both the club and your services.

If you sell or license the images to the club, it's their call as to whether or not they'll allow your watermark.

Like I said earlier, if you sell or license images to a client, your agreement needs to spell out the usage.

Ok, I understand. Thanks for the help.

I think I came up with a good compromise. I don't have a problem with providing non-watermarked photos except when it comes to Facebook, because we all know how people like to steal photos. So, to fix that, I'll put a clause in the License Agreement that states all photos used on Facebook must contain my watermark, but all other uses don't require it. Hopefully the owner won't have a problem with that.

Unless I expect to make more money off a particular photo by selling more copies of it, I don't care too much who "steals" it if I was paid for it already.

cdifoto wrote in post #11325507
Unless I expect to make more money off a particular photo by selling more copies of it, I don't care too much who "steals" it if I was paid for it already.

That's a good point. There's no market for nightclub shots, so I'm not going to be making any additional money off of any of them, so I guess it's not really an issue. It's nice to be able to get your name out though, and so far Facebook has worked fairly well for me.

My clients get watermark free of course, it's editorial and commercial work.

For your deal though I've seen a lot of club photographers do cross promo and have watermarks on their gallery images. They seemed to be giving clients gallery ready images with a watermark and full (edited) images without a watermark for usage in other parts of the site.

As for someone stealing the work, protect your work. If someone steals it for facebook who cares, it's when you see a paper,magazine, another site steal it you take action. Don't care if I was paid already by someone else, that doesn't give a third party the right to steal it. Now if they got permission from the person who paid me, and it was in the agreement they could distribute it to, different story.

not sure if this helps
but i supply all customers a CD with a folder marked High Rez and a folder marked FB friendly which are website address water marked.
My customers sign a contract to say any killer shots are mine to do what i want with and one day soon i'll actually get a killer shot that will buy my house on the Bahamas.

probably

I have a watermark that I apply on all my nightlife photos. I get paid $150/night (generally around 2, 3 venues. Approx 20-25 photos each).

When I was just starting out, I didn't really want to be associated with the mediocre shots I was accustomed to getting, so I didn't watermark. Now, after my process and skills (and comfort level) have improved, I've started to watermark.

This also helps for branching out into different areas of photography. Nightlife photos tend to reach a lot of people. I know I had over 5000 views within a day of posting a gallery.

Just a side note here - depending on the local "value" of the watermark, sometimes it can have an unintended consequence of more rather than less stealing. But, at least you are still getting a little advertisement value.

So what was the end result with what you gave the night club owner?

And watermarking is something to consider if you have something of yourself to promote. I don't see any links in your signature of photography endeavors you currently have. So just putting your name as a watermark isn't going to do much good if you have nothing else going on for anyone to find.

The watermarks you have on gixxer com look great why don't you use those style?