Photographers typically keep photos of their clients for a minimum of 90 days and up to a full year as part of standard practice; however, if this is important to you, review the contract and ask your professional.
The best long-term solution for physical photo storage is an external hard drive or a NAS (Network Attached Storage) if you are a bit more technical-minded. An external hard drive connects to your computer through a USB port. Some models require a power source. Others draw their power from your computer.
This is because photographers typically take a large number of photographs during an event or session, and not all of the photographs will be of high enough quality or meet the photographer's artistic standards to be included in the final selection.
A professional photographer will save images from a shoot onto a hard drive, to later edit, and finally, deliver to paying clients. Afterward, they may use their images to submit to magazines, sell as prints, or just delete them to save space.
Basically, copyright law says that when you take a photograph, you become the copyright owner of the image created.
Generally speaking, the copyright belongs to the person who created the image – in the case of a photograph the person who took it (i.e. the photographer.) There are some exceptions to this – for example if the photographer is an employee (for example in a large studio) the copyright belongs to their employer.
Most photographers have their own site to showcase their work to potential clients. But by adding ecommerce to your site, including the ability to accept payments from PayPal or Shop Pay, you can open several more doors for how to sell your photos online, like selling courses, physical products, and services.
Photographers typically keep photos of their clients for a minimum of 90 days and up to a full year as part of standard practice; however, if this is important to you, review the contract and ask your professional.
RAW Archives: The Professional Responsibility
Simply put, yes as a professional photographer I hold onto all RAW “keeper” images forever. Why? Because hard drive storage costs about 5-10 cents per gigabyte these days, and so per-image we're talking about fractions of a penny here.
By hiring a photographer and then asking them to deliver their work unfinished, half complete, you aren't receiving the service they intended. More so, by asking your photographer for their RAW unedited photos it means you don't trust them to deliver an edited image you'll love.
Taking images that are out of focus is a common photography mistake. Images end up blurred because of camera shake, failure to focus on the right spot, or using a shutter that is too slow to freeze the action. If your images are not consistently sharp, you may have an issue with focus.
So why do photographers state that you must not edit the photographs? The simple reason for this is that it misrepresents what they do. When your business is a visual one, you rely on people booking you based on what they can see of your work. If they like the quality and the style they may book you.
However, street photography is legal in the United States as long as you use the pictures for artistic purposes. You can sell prints of them, use them in online articles, and show them in books as you would a piece of art, but you cannot use them for commercial or advertising purposes.
External hard drives are a great way to store your images to ensure your work is protected and stored correctly as a backup. Are there other options than an external hard drive? Yes. Some other options are an SSD (Solid State Drive) which is ideal for travel purposes as well as Cloud Storage.
Use watermarks
This makes it difficult for people to pass your images off as their own work. The image should still be visible, the watermark is merely to deter people from reusing your image without permission. It also clearly identifies the photo as belonging to you, and can be hard to crop out.
Most of the time, clients probably just want to play around with their image or make a few minor tweaks. By politely explaining what a RAW file is, how it differs from the finished image they are given, and offering to "fix" the problem, you can avoid handing out your RAW photos.
If a client were to show these unedited or unretouched images to family and friends, it could severely harm the photographer's reputation. Professional artist only displays their best work. Having raw, unfinished photos represented to others as their work could make a photographer look unprofessional and incompetent.
However, it is important to remember that anything you post online will basically exist forever. Once something is out on the internet, it can be nearly impossible to delete it completely or to take it back.
So you want to make money with your photography? That's great…as long as you're prepared for the bumps, peaks and valleys along the way. In fact, did you know that 85% of photographers fail? According to Dane Sanders in his book Fast Track Photographer: In the 1st year, 60% of photographers give up their business.
If you have turned on Back up and Sync, photos and videos you delete will stay in your trash for 60 days before they are deleted forever.
Full-time photographers can typically make anywhere between $30,000 and $75,000 per year, and some make even more than that. Many photographers prefer to transition into photography part-time so they can get an idea of if it will be financially sustainable as a career.
The national average salary for photographers is $42,494 per year . A photographer's salary can depend on several factors, such as their employer, area of specialty and work experience. Some photographers who specialize in seasonal events, such as weddings, may also earn more money during certain times of the year.