The Baby Photography Scam

A photographer's job is to take pictures.  Am I right? You pay them to perform a service, the service of taking pictures. Why do the photographers retain the rights to images of me or my child?  They then ransom additional copies of those images to you.  Images that you have already paid him or her to take.  Some may sell you the rights [to print] (for an additional charge) to those picture, many will not.  Wal-mart and many other photo labs require a letter granting you authorization to reprint YOUR photos taken by professional photographers.

Everyone wants pictures of the biggest events of their life, which usually includes their wedding and their children growing up.  My wife and I had a photographer at our wedding.  The photographer was part of our wedding package.  I didn't learn the  photography business model until after the wedding.  You can pick out a few pictures as part of your photo package. If you want additional copies of those pictures or prints of any of the other pictures taken, you must order them from the photographer. Most wedding photographers will refuse to sell you the negatives until at least a year after the wedding.  Baby photographers have a similar model, but most will sell you the negatives or digitals when you purchase their premium-est of packages.  For this reason, my wife and I have mainly avoided baby pictures taken by professional photographers.

Admittedly, this type of arrangement may have made since before digital photography and before you could have film developed at the grocery store.  Unless you had your own dark room to develop film, the photographer was the obvious and often only choice to obtain copies of your pictures.  Holding on to the negatives/originals just facilitated things.  Film costs money, so does photo paper and the chemicals used to develop film and make prints.  However, with digital, there is no film. The cost of storage for each pictures if marginally zero.  Anyone can take their pictures to FotoMat (just kidding, there hasn't been a FotoMat booth in probably two decades) or have them printed from online.  This is even if one wants actual prints instead of just the digitals, which can be posted and shared on Facebook or other social media sites or placed in digital picture frames.

I have a programming background.  If you're hired for a contract job or have a long term employer, whatever you produce while on that job, including the intellectual property (IP) rights, belongs to the company that paid you. You were paid to perform a service (creating a program or code). You don't own it, the employer does.  If you use a Realtor to find a house, she doesn't get to maintain possession of the house and charge you rent to live there.  She was paid for the service of finding you a house only.

Product Review: Ear Peace

Recently, the Dads had the opportunity to try out an interesting new product (new to us) called Ear Peace. 

I hate to admit it, but I'm getting old, not "grown and sexy," mind you, just old. If you don't know what "grown and sexy" means, ask your Black friends. However, If you're reading this, I probably am your Black friend*. So try urban dictionary.  The signals abound regarding my descent into old age. Two outstanding examples that come to mind are the last time I attended a live concert (Skull Candy Pool Stage @ The Hard Rock Hotel) and the last time I went to a dance Club (Rain @ the Palms Casino).  Both events brought the same thought to mind: "Boy, the music is really loud.  You think they could turn it down a bit?  Maybe we should leave early!"  Classic sign of "oldmanery."  

Back to Ear Peace, cute name, right?  Sound like something you put in your ear, so you can ignore your family and anything else that annoys you when you get home from work. The Ear Peace is technically a set of ear plugs, but to be be cliche, "not your father's ear plugs."  You do place them in your ears, but that's where the similarities stop.

Traditional ear plugs block sound, they're ostentatious, and far from aesthetically pleasing.  The Ear Peace doesn't block sound, it dampens it, but not in the same way as traditional plugs.  The sound you hear isn't muffled, it's transformed.  What you hear is more vivid, cutting out "noise" and distracting background sounds, focusing on what you're trying to hear.  I'm not an ear science major, so I don't know why or how they work, but they do make what you're listening to sound better.  They don't block annoying sounds (crying babies, noisy neighbors, etc.) but makes them sound far less annoying. 

The Ear Peace is smaller than traditional ear plugs. They are easily inserted and removed from the ears. Ear Peace comes in three different shades (vanilla, caramel, and chocolate) to match your complexion, instead of the usual white and construction orange. They blend in and can probably go unnoticed to the unobservant, unlike most ear plugs.  Ear Peace also comes with a sleek carrying case, which is way better than a paper towel, which most people use to carry their ear plugs.