Wholesome

Wholesome, originally uploaded by tabrandt.

I enjoy taking photos as well as I enjoy giving photos away. I took a series of shots if this young woman, who is a very close friend of our family. I burned all the photos to a CD and on my way over to our friends out I wanted to also give some prints, even if they were only 4x6. Without having a lot of time to send them out to WHCC or one of the other printers I use I just uploaded this shot and 8 others to Walgreens.com and thought I would just the .19 photos so I would have something to give besides just a CD.

Well, at first the young woman at Walgreen's seemed very nice when she complimented "Very nice, they look professionally done" I was flattered and just said thank-you. Not sure if it was tone or the fact that I was humbled by such a nice comment but the next words out of her mouth floored me.

She then said, I am sorry but to protect the copyright of the photographer I am not going to be able to sell these to you. I told her that is not a problem because I was the photographer. She looked at me, paused and then said that she did not believe that I could have taken these shots and I could not have them.

I would like to say that I nicely explained I was the photographer and we were able to proceed without any issues but that was not the way we ended this exchange. To shorten this already lengthy diatribe I asked to speak to the manager and only when it was obvious that I was getting very angry did he relent and just allow me to purchase the photos I wanted to have printed.

But looking back at this exchange I wonder a couple things:
1. Wow, how is that that just looking at me she felt that she could tell that I was not the photographer. Is there a special creative look I am missing?
2. When I upload the photos I would think that the metadata that I included in LightRoom would have come along with the file and if copyright was a concern would not looking at the metadata been a much quicker way to settle our issue. The copyright has my name on it, the same name which I used to upload the photos.

Anyway, problem solved. Don't upload photos to Walgreens.com anymore and make sure that my time is better planned out to have them printed somewhere else.




Listening to: Blind Melon = No Rain