There's something disheartening about the "do not post on facebook" clause. I think I understand the reasons for it – or at least, that outside of those specific reasons facebook seems to cause a lot of problems – but the number one thing to me is getting to share my experience of love & union with my partner. This includes the photos, and my compromise with myself is to not dissect the costs of the photographer and photos they way I might dissect some other costs… and I don't even like facebook very much, but I know that it's the only way I'm going to access certain people in my life who somehow made it on facebook but barely even exist in terms of e-mail.

It would be not only a deal-breaker legally and financially, but disheartening on an emotional level to feel like my and my partners concerns as the ones getting married are less important.

I also might have a particularly difficult family, and might be totally reasonable to expect that most people can access photos through other means such as flicker. I just know it would give me a headache to have site-specific restrictions.

Thank you for sharing this information. It's not something I saw anywhere in my paperwork with our photographer, but I'm going to open up a dialogue about it just in case.

From Facebook Terms and Conditions:

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site.

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

This means that photos posted on facebook belong to facebook, and archived copies are made even if material is removed. Many photographers may not want you to post photos to facebook for this reason, even if they allowed for a CC license. It's also a reason many wedding photographers do not allow CC licenses or offer DVDs.

There's a lot of legal sticky ground there where the couple, the photographer, and facebook could end up in a legal tangle if someone thinks their copyright has been infringed. I'll admit that I am no lawyer (I hire someone else to deal with that) but as a rule I make it part of my contract that clients not post photos to facebook. As of yet no legal precedent has been set. I recommend sharing wedding photos through flickr, shutterfly, photoshelter, photobucket, personal blogs, or to link to my site of their specific photos to show others.

I alway say "I've got my own wedding photos, these are yours" Do whatever you want with them.

I know there aren't a lot of shooters who are as liberal as I am, but I feel that once you have hired me and paid for my services, you can do whatever you want with them.

The phrase "personal copyright license" is, I think, what's confusing.

Now, with weddings the concept might be a good idea. Couples like the idea of being able to do whatever they like with the pictures. I would guess, though, that the price of a CC contract would be higher than one where the photographer retains all rights simply because part of the income is expected to come from future print orders. What CC, then, does is shift some of the cost from the print-buying relatives to the couple, but as a photographer I have no problem with that.

The main reason why I am not a huge fan of giving couples the means to make their own prints is quality. As a photographer who lives by reputation I do not want a bunch of low-quality prints circulating as people will associate them with my work. The same, perhaps to a lesser extent, is true for electronic copies. Simply by resizing, auto-contrasting, and resaving as low quality jpegs the image quality can reach a level where I don't want my name associated with the image. Of course, good quality images gone viral through CC or any other license are valuable publicity for wedding photographers. So there is a trade-off to consider as a photographer.

Our photographer explained his rather unorthodox business model to me with the following: "About 10 years ago, we decided to stop fighting the Internet."

What this team of photographers now does is charge a flat rate for their professional skill–their expertise at finding/creating photos as well as doing the editing (blemishes, colors, etc.). Their customers receive all the high res (? or something like that) digital images on disc after they have worked all their magic, along with a list of recommended wholesalers who can do prints/albums, etc.

What is interesting is that after freely giving away their copyrighted material with the understanding that their customers will do whatever they want with those images, their business is actually doing better than a decade ago under the more traditional business model.

I don't think they formally license the uses they obviously sanction–We are from a very rural area where reputation and word-of-mouth recommendation can quickly spread to a critical mass of the community, so wedding vendors don't often try any funny business. In fact, when we asked if there was a contract, they were so surprised since no one had ever asked before! (before y'all start freaking out, they are totally legit–they have been our go-to photographers since I was six months old, and I have the pictures to prove it.)

However I may suggest we draw something up when the time comes. I guess that's the license-reviewing-librarian in me. Thanks again for a great post!

I will probably go through a personal friend photographer for my wedding, but the CC license that you negotiated to would probably be an absolute minimum that I would agree to as a client. I would actually push for a contract that defined the photographs as "work for hire" and granted the copyright to myself, the client. (A contract sort of like the ones big record labels use to own the copyright on the albums they release.) I realize many super-pro photographers wouldn't agree to this, but having complete rights to the photographs to my own wedding would be important to me. I'd pay for it, and grant the photographer a license for the sort of uses he or she would need to promote their own business instead of doing it the other way around. Anyone who doesn't want to work with me on this won't get my business. There are a lot of good photographers out there, with more people learning how to use their DSLR cameras every week. I think that if customers pushed for more rights on their wedding photography, it would not be hard to find somebody willing to accomodate. This copyright is more useful in the hands of the client than it is in the hands of the photographer.