Hi Bill, As said in an earlier message, a copied photo is pretty obvious. But I was talking about film, scanned images on CD, and those images on memory cards.
I mention corporate mentality - and maybe that was not the best descriptive choice of words - but the big operations are the ones with the deep pockets and the ones, as has been mentioned here, that are most open to lawsuits. In addition, at least here, the Wal-Marts and the Ritz and the Wolf camera places have, for the most part, no real personal relationship with their customers, and, from what I've been able to ascertain, no amateur who is serious about his/her work, and certainly no professionals that I know, would use these shops, in part because the staff changes frequently and the quality and service is very poor. And, of course, there's no such thing as custom processing and printing, or making of large prints, or getting custom printing or scanning services. So the only people these places do work for are the home snapshooter and , imo, the low-end amateurs. The places I use know their customers and, perhaps, their customers don't try copying the work of others. I'll ask Mo about this today or tomorrow, when I next see her. I'd like to know what, if any, policy her lab has. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Shel Belinkoff" Subject: Re: Are your photos too good? I'd be real pissed if I brought some work to my lab and Mo said "Gee, Shel, that's better than anything you've ever done. It must have been done professionally, so we're not going to print it." OTOH, maybe one of the advantages of using a small, local "pro" lab is that you don't have to put up with the Walm-Mart (or other such labs) corporate mentality. No one has ever asked me if the work was mine. I do work for a number of pro photographers, and several very good amateurs as well. These guys have self identified themselves, and we have learned what their work looks like. We print their stuff, no questions asked. Would Mo print your work if it was an obvious copy job of a professional portrait? It's not corporate mentality at work, Shel, it's self preservation in action. Any lab operator that copies a professional copywritten image is attempting to get the employment version of a Darwin Award. William Robb
