Can a wedding photographer do what they want with the wedding photos

Dacelonid

This conversation came up at lunch today, because a friend is in a semi dispute with a wedding photographer over the use of her wedding photos.

She was walking through town and saw photos from her wedding in a shop window. She then checked his photo stream and saw all the photos from hers and others weddings there. As an aside she saw that the photos were posted before she even got back from honeymoon, so other people got to see the photos before she did. Obviously she was a bit upset, so she contacted the wedding photographer to see what the story was. He basically told her, that the copyright was his and he could do what he wanted.

Now to us this seemed morally wrong, even if it is even legally right.

Doing a little research (admittedly not much) has led me to.
http://visualartists.ie/advocacy/resources/infopool-2/legaltechnical-guides/copyright-and-the-visual-artist/ (posted by someone on boards) and http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=64477664 which seems to imply that the photographer had no right to do what they did without written permission.
Is that the correct interpretation or have I misunderstood it

And what about uploading photos to Facebook (or Flickr, or whatever), regardless of the outrage at your photos being made public, doesn't uploading photos to Facebook transfer the ownership to Facebook and again surely the photographer would need consent for that

PopeBuckfastXVI

The photographer owns the copyright, that doesn't seem to be in dispute.

If there was no written agreement otherwise then I believe the photographer has the right to use the images as they see fit, with the following exception...

The images in which your friend is identifiable could not be used in a commercial context (e.g. advertising a brand of drink) without your friends written permission (a model release).

I'm not sure what that means in terms of advertising the actual photographers services, but I imagine (given no written agreement to the contrary) that they can display the images as an example of their work.

As for the last part of the question, posting an image on facebook doesn't transfer the copyright to facebook. It does grant facebook rights to publish the image in certain contexts, but the photographer retains copyright. However, the point is moot because if the photographer did want to assign copyright to a third party he wouldn't need the permission of anyone appearing in the photo to do so.

eoglyn

More than likely your friend signed a contract with the photographer, which would have had something in there about the photographer retaining copyright and the right to use them to advertise his or her business.
When we got married we found and chose the photographer through her online presence that showcased an extensive collection of her work. I guess I considered pictures from our wedding being used for future promotion of the photographer's work as part of the cost of hiring her. In any case we were proud of how they turned out and delighted that a wider audience got a glimpse of our amazing day - we're usually very shy, honest .

I do think its a little unusual and a bit bad form that your friends didn't see them before they were included in promotional work. Your friend might let it be known how she felt at that, but that's about as far as it can go IMO.

Either your friend had a spectacularly long honeymoon or she had an EXTREMELY efficient photographer. Post processing usually takes months, even though with a good workflow set up in lightroom and photoshop i think there's no real excuse for that anymore.

Wabbit Ears

A lot of photographers I know post the odd preview of a batch of images of weddings they are working on, They're promoting their business and this is perfectly normal.

Unless they has exclusive first view rights to the photos which Ive never heard of anyone doing then the photographer isn't breaking any normal or implied agreement.

eoglyn

Your right the odd preview of one or two photos online would be fairly normal and expected - but photos in the window of the shop and all of the photos online as the OP said, IMO is a bit much.
That said the OP's buddies should have had an idea of the photographer's MO when hey hired them.

Wabbit Ears

yea, I missed that, ALL is not cool, a small sample of the best work is ok IMHO

sumo12

No one will see a set of wedding pictures that I shoot before the couple see them. Even at that, I wait a fortnight or so after I have delivered them before I would publish a chosen few on my website or Flickr or FB or wherever I have a presence. My contract includes a clause allowing use for promotional material and model release excluding financial gain which the couple will sign. One couple wanted this removed from the contract which I was happy to do.