My friends had a baby. Baby's paternal grandfather is an amateur photographer. He has good equipment, but isn't hired for much at all. It is not his full time gig, more like a hobby than anything. So, he is having fun taking photos of the baby. She is a week old and he has already had two shoots with her.

The thing that is really bugging me is that he is on Facebook, as are two of this baby's other grandparents, and numerous aunts and uncles. This guy is watermarking the photos he posts on Facebook and offering them up for purchase by family and friends.

I think it is tacky. One would think that just to be a nice guy he would allow people to right click and save them. It is not as if he has to print out anything. And he is not watermarking them so they are not taken to use for advertising or something of the like. He is doing it strictly so that people have to pay to have them.

Do you think he is right or wrong?

Yeah. Pretty tacky. About the only thing tackier would be if he charged the parents for taking the pictures in the first place.

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About the only thing tackier would be if he charged the parents for taking the pictures in the first place.

Ha ! I saw the second session, and he was treating everyone like they were hired help and not happy when the parents wouldn't let him do shots he wanted. So, while he wasn't charging the parents, he surely was taking pics he knew would be marketable to extended family.

I think it's tacky. We have a good friend who is a professional photographer, he shot our wedding, all my pregnancy portraits, the twin's first birthday...And he gave me a code to order the digital files off his website for free, but told me not to give the code to anyone else because of bandwidth issues or something like that. Basically the code saved me 1500 dollars so I was happy to respect his wishes!

I can't imagine a guy charging FAMILY for photos...That just seems wrong to me!

RedBedroom wrote:

My friends had a baby. Baby's paternal grandfather is an amateur photographer. He has good equipment, but isn't hired for much at all. It is not his full time gig, more like a hobby than anything. So, he is having fun taking photos of the baby. She is a week old and he has already had two shoots with her.

The thing that is really bugging me is that he is on Facebook, as are two of this baby's other grandparents, and numerous aunts and uncles. This guy is watermarking the photos he posts on Facebook and offering them up for purchase by family and friends.

I think it is tacky. One would think that just to be a nice guy he would allow people to right click and save them. It is not as if he has to print out anything. And he is not watermarking them so they are not taken to use for advertising or something of the like. He is doing it strictly so that people have to pay to have them.

Do you think he is right or wrong?

That's very tacky. What do the baby's parents have to say about this, bet he's not bent on sharing any profits he makes from the photos with them is he? If that were one of my kids I would tell him to take the pictures down. I never understood why people were so casual about putting their small kids images on their Facebook, they treat it like it's the cyber equivalent to flashing a wallet photo of the kids. Not a fan of that at all. I have 3 kids and none of their faces are on the Internet and it'll stay that way for a while.

That sucks big time, tell him to remove them from facebook the family is not interested.

It's beyond tacky. He's exploiting the baby for his own profit.

Well, I am glad to know I was not out of line in thinking it was tacky. I don't like the guy to begin with so I thought maybe that jaded my view on this.

It would be one thing to have his name in the corner, I am all about giving credit where credit is due, but to have it on the photo and charge is just not cool.

I don't know what the parents think, but I am guessing that the baby's mom won't be too happy since she is the one with a ton of family on FB who would love to have the pics. It will be interesting to see if anyone buys any. I surely won't.

Shale, your grandsons were adorable at a young age! I bet they are very handsome young men now.

RedBedroom wrote:

Shale, your grandsons were adorable at a young age! I bet they are very handsome young men now.

I haven't been that close to the oldest boy, but my youngest one did a bit of travelling with me during his mid to late teens (He's 19 now) This was taken at St. Thomas on a Caribbean cruise when he was 17. He actually got irritated at me for taking his pics, but this one is linked from his profile pic on FB. (He also has posted 4 other pics that I took). I don't expect a "thanks Opa for taking all those cute pics of me" Well, you know teenagers.

Oh, that is a very nice photo. If he has it linked to FB, you know he likes it too! Boys are not going to let their friends see pics they don't like! And how awesome that you two got to do such a fun trip!

I have a friend who's in laws take each of the grand-kids on a trip anywhere in the world they want after 8th grade. So far they have done Paris, Disney, and Rome. What a very fun choice for such young children to get to make.

I agree with what everyone else has said, very tacky thing to do. I wonder if he even asked the child's parents permission to plaster watermarked images of their baby on his facebook, and if he intends to compensate them if any of them happen to sell.

Chris wrote:

I agree with what everyone else has said, very tacky thing to do. I wonder if he even asked the child's parents permission to plaster watermarked images of their baby on his facebook, and if he intends to compensate them if any of them happen to sell.

If any sell, he sure should give the parents the money to put into baby's bank account. But I am kinda doubting he will. He is very arrogant about his side business. In my opinion, anyone with great equipment and patience can take decent portraits. It takes skill to do action shots and creative shots. And I personally don't think he has that in him.

ITA that what he's doing is really tacky. If i were the parents, I'd say something to him.