Photographers love when you share their photos, BUT...

There's always a "but," right? I know, I know...that's probably annoying to hear as a client or friend or some sort of recipient of a professional photographer's work.

But I'm just trying to help everyone here! See, that "but" was positive! :)

So I'll get straight to the point...photographers love when you share their photos, BUT:

If we've asked you to tag our work, please make sure that you do.
Clients who pay for my work (aka true clients) co-own the rights to the photography, so they can do whatever they like (except sell the images, for example). Some of these clients do tag me (so kind!), but they aren't asked to do so. The only clients who I ask to tag me are ones that are getting free work (pro bono clients, friends, etc.). These preferences vary among ALL photographers, so just make sure to have a conversation with yours.

It's pretty obvious (at least to us) when you screenshot our images.
Screenshotting images prior to posting them (rather than saving the hi-res file you just paid big money for) actually highly reduces the quality, and that's very visible. Want to learn more? Visit another blog post I wrote all about this topic.

I think I can speak for all of us here...we don’t like when you use Instagram filters.
You paid us to create images for you. We often ask lots of questions to make sure we're getting the type of images you want, we also spent time editing, and even often offer a free round (or rounds!) of edits. If you want the images to look different, we'd love for you to ask us, rather than editing them yourself. Plus, when you edit an image yourself, and then post it and tag us, it's kind of no longer our image. I'm not interested in being tagged on an image that doesn't match my actual work. More thoughts on this here and here.

I don't want to speak for all photographers, but I've had conversations with lots of them in the past five years, and I don't think they'd disagree.

If you have questions, always feel free to reach out to photographers you know - including me! :)

Happy Friday!
Autumn