A watermark and a "backwards" compliment

My best friend (we'll call her Nicole) was married in August 2007 right around the time I got my first digital SLR.

She had enlisted her uncle, a photographer with 30 years experience, to do her wedding. I was asked by Nicole and her uncle to take the bridal shower pictures as well as some photojournalism-style photos at the ceremony to help round out his staged portraits and ceremony photos.

Two years later and Nicole still hadn't received more than the 30 or so photos in an album where her uncle had chosen the pictures for and the layout of the album, and a few prints of a handful of the dozen portraits he took that day. The reasoning was to protect his rights as an artist.

After much chagrin and going back and forth and no hope in sight, yesterday, Nicole received a couple of CDs filled with her pictures!!!

So Nicole called me at work and she was gushing over the great pictures he took and all the portraits, ceremony and reception photos she never got to see - especially the one of her grandmother who passed suddenly the following year. So she ooh-ed and ahh-ed over her pictures describing the ones she liked the most and said how surprised she was that he was there to take this picture or that picture and how great this picture was and that one was. She was finally happy!

Ten minutes after we ended our conversation, she called me back and said "You know, he didn't send me all his pictures."

I said "How do you know?"

She said "Well this picture and that picture was taken after the dinner, they were gone by then. And this picture was taken before they showed up."

And then it dawned on me, they had given her my pictures mixed in with his without so much as giving her a note explaining what they had done!

Now Nicole doesn't really know if she has all her pictures from her uncle, or if he padded the CD with my pictures!

What I learned from this experience.

• Make a watermark as soon as possible!
  
• Experience doesn't always mean business sense.
• Don't underestimate yourself, the simplest pictures can mean a lot to your clients.
• Take the compliment, the uncle providing the bride with my pictures shows that some were good enough to potentially pass off as his. ;)
• Be up front about what I'm providing to people. Nicole thought she was getting a package comparable to other professional photographers, but her uncle's old school view of client/photographer expectations disappointed her terribly.