Client images on Facebook - opinions?

Phil V said:
No I never...
I clearly said Simon was old fashioned.

But if you want to make s*** up for the sake of an argument, knock yourself out.
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I am quite happy to be thought of as 'old fashioned'. I suppose I am a product of my schooling, my parental upbringing and the remainder of my environmental influences over the course of my life. I have seen an erosion of standards, in many sectors of our lives, over those years and I don't think it is for the better. Relaxation of rules, players' behaviour on the field of play in various sports, the sense of 'fair play' in all walks of life, where now a gentleman's handshake is no longer a seal of agreement, but 'if you can get one over' is seen as being clever.

Anti-social media has eroded community, not enhanced it. Just watch couples out for an evening in the pub or for a meal. How many are sat with their heads bent over the mobile phone things, tapping out messages to everyone but the loved one sat across the table? It is disappointing to see and I, thankfully, won't be around to see the full consequences, but I do know the impact on society as a whole is not going to be favourable.
 
Interesting debate for weddings we used too always share an image on Facebook the day after the wedding. Just one though, then because of Facebook page reach being what it is, we switched to only sharing an image when we where friends with the couple on Facebook and could tag them. Then with all the concerns over GDPR etc we switched to only sharing an image on Facebook after the wedding when we get permission from the couple first.

Since we changed to asking for permission it has surprised us how many people say no straight away, that they don't want an image shared on Facebook etc. This could just be our clients though we photograph a lot of weddings for teachers and they always seem to have concerns about their students seeing their images. We have also photographed quite a few weddings for members of the security forces and because it's Northern Ireland we can understand their reasons for not wanting images online of them and their families.

Pretty much every person who does agree asks for the image to be sent to them to be "approved" before it gets posted any where. For us it's unfortunate as it has an effect in terms of how active we can be on social media, but at the end of the day keeping the clients happy is much more important than a few likes on Facebook.

For portrait work we have never really posted images to Facebook etc. as we have always been overly concerned where children are concerned about images going online. Every now and again we get asked by the client to put an image on Facebook after the session but we never ask them about it as portraits isn't something we are overly worried about promoting.

We also do some commercial stuff but we don't have any social media accounts for that side of things. As we like to keep that separate, we have never posted commercial images on any of the social media networks.
 
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@f/2.8 interesting comments in there bud

I find Police, teachers and especially same sex teacher couples to be the most secretive, even to the extent of not using their real names on Facebook to avoid being 'found' by pupils or parents thereof!

I get far more people asking for their Tasters than objecting, so as you say its probably more a different market or maybe just how its positioned with them. I tend not to post where the couple aren't already Friends on Facebook anyway and I now find the sharing & comments from them sharing their own photos gives a far better reach than my Page does now

Dave
 
DG Phototraining said:
@f/2.8 interesting comments in there bud

I find Police, teachers and especially same sex teacher couples to be the most secretive, even to the extent of not using their real names on Facebook to avoid being 'found' by pupils or parents thereof!

I get far more people asking for their Tasters than objecting, so as you say its probably more a different market or maybe just how its positioned with them. I tend not to post where the couple aren't already Friends on Facebook anyway and I now find the sharing & comments from them sharing their own photos gives a far better reach than my Page does now

Dave
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Yes Dave we have noticed that ourselves with teachers etc. using "nicknames" or there names spelt in an odd way on Facebook in particular. Not sure if this is something they are advised to do or not. We did ask one of them about it and they just said that they have to be careful with social media as students and ex students target them for abuse. The world we live in. :(

From our point of view it can be frustrating as obviously we would like our best work to reach as many people as possible. As one example we photographed a wedding recently at an amazing venue that we hadn't worked at before, the couple where very attractive and we felt that it was probably our best work to date. We would have loved to have shared their photos all over the place as it would hopefully help with us getting more bookings for the same venue as their isn't a lot of other stuff for it online. Unfortunately for us they opted to keep everything private so there is nothing we can do about it and even our begging and pleading wasn't enough to make them change their mind. To be fair they did have genuine reasons for opting not too, that we understood.

We are looking to change tact slightly after getting advice from another photographer in terms of how we approach asking the client. Hopefully asking them in a more round about way will put future couples a little more at ease in terms of giving us permission.

We sometimes feel that some of the couples have chosen to keep their images private just because the option was there rather because of a specific reason if that makes sense.

Absolutely agree about interaction being much better when couple's sharing images on social media themselves we posted a photograph from a wedding a couple of weeks ago and from memory it got around 25 likes or something like that on our Facebook page, the same image shared by the bride a day later got over 600 likes and too many comments to count. We booked another wedding direct from her post. Facebook posts on pages seem to really struggle now unless you pay to boost the post.
 
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Agree with all of this ^^^

I've only had two couples enquire for new "must have" venues and I offered both a decent discount on the understanding that I could market the Hell out of their photos, thankfully both agreed - phew

One of my coolest urban couples were blokes, one of whom was a teacher too, and sadly they asked not to share which was gutting but you just have to accept it :)

Dave
 
Under the new(ish!) GDPR (or whatever way round the initials are) rules, do couples have to specifically opt in to having their shots shown on social media or is slipping a paragraph into a contract enough?
 
Nod said:
Under the new(ish!) GDPR (or whatever way round the initials are) rules, do couples have to specifically opt in to having their shots shown on social media or is slipping a paragraph into a contract enough?
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They must give a yes or no
 
Nod said:
Under the new(ish!) GDPR (or whatever way round the initials are) rules, do couples have to specifically opt in to having their shots shown on social media or is slipping a paragraph into a contract enough?
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The GDPR makes no difference to this, photographs per se are not considered data, despite some odd advice from certain quarters that suggests otherwise.

It’s a CDPA issue (Copyrights Designs and Patents Act), and as a general rule, if you have copyright to a photo, you can publish it wherever you like*.

*specific exceptions would include harassment etc, and that if images are shot for a private commission, the customer has to give explicit consent.
 
DG Phototraining said:
Ha - well that's not confusing then is it :D

One saying YES its a problem, another saying NO its not

No wonder so many are confused by this - and why I've taken no interest or action on it at all

Dave
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Nod said:
Under the new(ish!) GDPR (or whatever way round the initials are) rules, do couples have to specifically opt in to having their shots shown on social media or is slipping a paragraph into a contract enough?
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It’s not confusing you just have to give them the option of saying yes or no for every use. It isn’t enough to have a vague paragraph in the contract. You can’t even ask is it okay to use on social media yes or no. You have to ask is it okay for Facebook, Instagram, website etc. and an individual answer is required for each. That is my understanding anyway and this is how everyone following the law is working.
 
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DG Phototraining said:
Ha - well that's not confusing then is it :D

One saying YES its a problem, another saying NO its not

No wonder so many are confused by this - and why I've taken no interest or action on it at all

Dave
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Not confusing at all...
However
f/2.8 said:
It’s not confusing you just have to give them the option of saying yes or no for every use. It isn’t enough to have a vague paragraph in the contract. You can’t even ask is it okay to use on social media yes or no. You have to ask is it okay for Facebook, Instagram, website etc. and an individual answer is required for each. That is my understanding anyway and this is how everyone following the law is working.
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This is covered by the CDPA (as it has for the last 30 years) and has nothing to do with GDPR.
 
I thought GDPR had been covered sufficiently on the forum.

The conclusion being that if your business was fully DPA compliant, and you have a sensible attitude to computer access etc. The only change you had to make is to ensure you have explicit consent for using data you collect in direct marketing.

As ‘most’ wedding and event photographers do little to no direct marketing, it’s no big deal. But portrait studios, commercial studios and ancillary businesses would have been seriously affected.
 
Glad that's clearer now then ;)

I'm still happy to ignore GDPR based on an interview I saw with the head of dept for implementing it where he made it clear they were after the big boys abusing client data, and even then they were more inclined to 'educate' rather than fine. As a Wedding tog, who only replies to clients asking me to and posts online with their knowledge and permission, then unless you're an idiot, you're never going to have a GDPR issue that's going to cause a problem

Dave
 
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DG Phototraining said:
Glad that's clearer now then ;)

I'm still happy to ignore GDPR based on an interview I saw with the head of dept for implementing it where he made it clear they were after the big boys abusing client data, and even then they were more inclined to 'educate' rather than fine. As a Wedding tog, who only replies to clients asking me to and posts online with their knowledge and permission, then unless you're an idiot, you're never going to have a GDPR issue that's going to cause a problem

Dave
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That's probably very true Dave to be fair.
 
Phil V said:
The GDPR makes no difference to this, photographs per se are not considered data, despite some odd advice from certain quarters that suggests otherwise.
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I absolutely agree with your posts in general about the GDPR. One thing the GDPR makes clear is that something can be data in some instances, and not in others. For example, if I photograph a car driving down a road, it's not data, if the traffic enforcement camera takes that photograph it's immediately data. The purpose as much defines whether it's data as the content.

So again, totally agree with everything you've said, and there's a further nuance that we mustn't forget that for some purposes photographs are data, but that's very unlikely to be true for any purposes an amateur or professional photographer would use a photograph for.*

* one immediate exception would be a photograph stuck on a model release form. That photograph _is_ data. Even if it's exactly the same photograph that you whack on social media, which then _isn't_ data. :) Fun times.
 
Phil V said:
The GDPR makes no difference to this, photographs per se are not considered data, despite some odd advice from certain quarters that suggests otherwise.
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AS a standalone file, possibly not. The ICO is still unclear and giving mixed messages on this.

HOWEVER, once you combine the image with details of the wedding, which you guys love to do for SEO reasons, it most certainly IS data.


Likewise, if, on your website, you have an image of the venue that allows identification (church notice board etc) and then, say, a photo of the table plan, that then becomes regulated data by jigsaw identification.
 
Phil V said:
as a general rule, if you have copyright to a photo, you can publish it wherever you like*.

*specific exceptions would include harassment etc, and that if images are shot for a private commission, the customer has to give explicit consent.
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Is a wedding a "private commission"? I would say it probably was (at least from the official photographer's PoV).
 
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