I put out my offer, but never heard back from her.  I have a feeling she found someone else willing to do it for a lower price.  That's okay, I thought it would be hard to keep everyone happy anyway.

Absolutely not!  She hired you, it's your work, your creativity, your art.  I can't believe another photographer would have the gall to even ask for RAW files!  IMHO. 

sure... but they would have to pay WAY MORE than if they purchased the packages... by giving up your RAW images, you are loosing control of your copyright.

Walt and I were discussing this today... this is why we will sell prints, not images.

good luck

gini

I dunno about all  the "copyright" stuff.

On the one hand, you're right. Not a lot more sales from prints. I've seen some folks say that they still get print orders because the B&G don't get nice prints at the big box outlet, or, they got such good service. So just price it so you make more than you usually would, net of the costs and drive on.

Really though, how much do you real wedding photographers sell after the first 3 months after a wedding? Is it worth the trouble to dig up the files, verifiy the verification, upload, print, wait for your delivery, then deliver to the customer for a few 8x10s?  I freely admit I'm ignorant of the post wedding business truth.

Maybe you get around the "I don't want my images printed and looking like crap" by providing them with a top notch album so they know what it should look like, and what they'll look like when you do the printing. If they want a $1.19 8x10 after that, more power to them.

I'm thinking if you build it into your model to get fully paid for the days work, then you can focus on the next wedding, and the next. You set it up so the profit is the same, but the work is less. You build repeat business by marketing to them for their anniversaires, births, maternity...

You still retain the copyright, but, other than some promtional brochures, how else will you monetize that asset?

Dave