Is it normal to delete your originals (before or after client approves them)?

Question

I am curious to see others take on my situation. I had a family/child photographer shoot my wedding and it was done at a discount (at the time she was trading services for baby items and what not) as that is what was in my budget. I got my images about 2 weeks ago (approx 7 weeks after the wedding) and was not completely pleased with the editing done on the images. The shots were fantastic but in my opinion the editing was not the best. I asked about the originals and was informed she no longer had them. I waited about 2 weeks to say anything to her because I was upset and I also moved across country. Today I sent her another email and let's say she was highly offended by me stating I was not pleased with the editing. In the email I sent I also said that I did not know a professional photographer (myself included) who deleted their original images (especially before the client even approved the work). She responded back with "this is an industry standard" and she checked before doing so. Am I misinformed and waisting space on my external hard drive by keeping originals or is she misinformed?

In my contract with her I do have limited copyright for these images and she is saying it would be copyright infringement for her to give me the originals. I am not asking for all of her originals just maybe the few I am having issues with. I want to say about 80% of my images (I was given 299) were black and white and some of those images are so dark you can not even see everyone in the image. In a few cases the image is so dark the persons eyes look like black holes.

Answer 1

I NEVER delete the originals, for just this reason.



A client can come back and say something like you have and I would negotiate with the client from there.



It sounds like she did some sort of batch processing through PS or Lightroom and then simply copied the images to a disk without review. Any good photographer checks every single shot before it leave the studio for quality control purposes.



Unless I have a contract to the contrary, I retain ALL my shots to use as I need in marketing and/or to offer to the client(s) something above and beyond what the original job was.



This "industry standard" sounds like a smokescreen, as well as the "copyright infringement" nonsense. A contract is a contract. If you have certain (limited) rights, you have the rights (as spelled out in the contract) to use the photos as agreed.

Answer 2

It is NOT normal to delete original files at all - or at least not for a number of years.



You have done business with a rank amateur who should not be in business.



Her comment about copyright for instance is total crap. If she released the originals and gave you permission to work on them then it cannot be an infringement.

Answer 3

No, it is not an industry standard. I still have all my originals as well as edited images in file. She sounds rank amateur.

Answer 4

No, it is not industry standard. I have my original dating back to the 80's.