Imagine:
you give 50 original 4x5" slides to a calendar publisher for production of two calendars. calendars are done, you get paid, but customer tells you the slides got lost. Customer also tells you, 'no problem, have the digital files I printed from, so no harm done, eh?' (files are between 7 and 30 MB, CMYK, sharpened etc...) No satisfying compensation offer is made.
What do you do? (No, it's not so very easy to get guns here in Austria!)
Georg
Posted by Rick Lundh on August 15, 2007 at 5:25 PM
SUE! Bet they'll find them then.
Posted by Ron Niebrugge on August 15, 2007 at 5:29 PM
O man Georg I feel your pain!
Does your delivery memo or invoice address lost images? Ours states that we will be compensated $1,200 for each lost or damaged image and unfortunately we have collected on this in the past. That clause makes it pretty cut and dry, without such language it might be a tougher fight. Good luck!
Posted by Steve Foss on August 15, 2007 at 9:09 PM
Oh no. Oh bloody no. You can't depend on anyone but yourself. Good luck, my friend. I'd also file suit. Do you have an invoice with inventory your sent them? Even if there's no contract, you should have some recourse, though the fight will not be pretty.
Also, please tell us and as many other photographers as you can who the company was and which calendar. That will prevent others from making the mistake of submitting original images to a company that doesn't care enough to keep track of them. Such publicity might also light a fire under the calendar publisher to try to staunch the flow through a leaking dike. I mean, it's bad enough if they can't find one or two images. And I mean bad. But to lose FIFTY????? One of my freelance contracts is as a manuscript editor and photographer for a publisher who prints a very popular Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness calendar annually. If that publisher lost my original images, I'd immediately sever contact and file suit.
And if you're sure of your facts, submit a letter to the editor of the nearest major newspaper naming the company concerned. Want to flush the game? That'll do it! Careless bastards.
Just for the record, I've never offered original slide or negative images for consideration, just digital files from scans.
Posted by Mel Ladewig on August 15, 2007 at 9:43 PM
Georg, sorry to hear about your situation. I'd be furious too.
I would think legal action might spur them to look a little harder for those slides.
Oh that's a real bummer. I'm so sorry.
Are dupes not readily available there? From what I've seen most publications in the US seem to prefer scans and dupes to originals. Some even refuse to take originals for liability reasons.
Guy
Posted by David Senesac on August 15, 2007 at 11:05 PM
Georg, that's the most painful nightmare of story I've heard from any photographer in several years. Given the superb body of work you have put together, that is utterly criminal. In the old days any serious photographer that used to send originals in for prints or commercial use dreaded damage to or loss of originals and would not stop worrying until they returned. One would have to believe they are not lost but rather stolen. Receiving those puny print files versus the 4x5 originals is hardly compensation.
Maybe your best strategy is to convince your police to thoroughly investigate the situation. If you alone deal with the company they may just give you the run around. If you need a reputable body of other photographers to emphasize to the police how uniquely wonderful some of those images are as originals, I'm sure there are a number of members here on NPN that could offer words of importance.
Hope this is not theft and merely misplacement that they manage to locate.
...David Senesac
Ouch ... that one hurts. Well, I would think about suing them ... but the publisher losing 50 slides sounds very fishy to me. I wonder if there is some hanky panky going on.
50 originals? Ouch that hurts badly. Some good advice in previous posts. From their reply it's clear, that they don't care for film. So some pressure should make them look harder, but if that fails, I'm sure there is a black market for guns in Vienna.... .
Well, thanks for the replies.
Good news is, that we are over this mentally, as we are in the 3rd year (!) file suit about that..
Sometimes one starts to wonder, whether it really was the best thing to sue, so I wanted to get some feedback on what you folks think. If there is interest I keep you all updated as things will unfold.
More Infos on this: yes we would have told everyone about that company, but they do not exist anymore. At least not in the way they did back then. That's how it happened: It is a company producing strictly industry calendars (calendars that are produced directly for clients, such as large companies for christmas presents etc.) They insisted on slides (as most calendar producers still do) but were very near to us, so we personally brought them the slides and would have picked them up ourselves again. After the calendars were made, we heard the company was sold to another large publisher, who just hours after signing the deal, cleared up all inventory left by the previous owner, including our images, which were still in the office... (at least that's the official version) Sure we have a signed delivery memo and all that.
About slides being stolen and sold somewhere else. It is interesting that some of you mention this also, because that is sg coming up when speaking with many people in the industry. we would have never thought of that!
Guy: we do have thousands of slides circulating worldwide, making dupes of all of them is just way too much in cost and time, as crazy as this may sound. we use scans as much as we can, though!
Good thing was, that at least there WAS a new owner and the old company wasn't just being flushed down the gully... Just turned out the new one is a BIG player, so it's David (us) up against Gloiath. One wouldn't believe, but we really had to prove in court, that a 4x5" tranny is superior to a 10MB CMYK file... Next thing will be to have sy find out how MUCH the slides were actually worth, which should be quite interesting!
I do not name the one company we actually file suit against, because they weren't the ones who lost the slides, they just happened to get our file suit on the their desk.
let us know what you think!
That is such a bummer.... especially with 4x5's! A number of years ago I had 17 images in the Audubon Birds Calendar including the cover. It was taking a long time for the slides to come back. Then when they did arrive 13 of them were scratched pretty badly. They tried a similar line about scanning and "repairing" the scratches and making new trannies...(this was before digital was widely accepted so me having dupes from scans was not acceptable at all!) It took me a couple of years but I finally received a check for the $6,500 as the limit with them at the time was $500 per slide. I do hope that you get an acceptable outcome from this and I hope you have in camera dupes or close of these images but I know that's less likely with 4x5's. Good Luck!
Posted by Kent Staubus on August 16, 2007 at 9:59 AM
On the railroad photographer/writer forum I also hang out on, one of the book publishers returned historical slides to someone all scratched up. They claim they aren't liable. The group of photographers with the kind of material they need is rather small and relatively organized. The word got out how the company treated a couple of guys and now none of the rest will send them any material. Word is now that they will settle up. There is another famous RR book writer who has a bad reputation about not sending back slides he has borrowed. I think the guy is just disorganized and loses them in the rat hole he calls a house. Same thing has been done to him (no one sends him anything) and now people are turning up the heat by complaining to the magazine that employs him!
Starting a few months ago I began submitting my images digitally to the magazines instead of sending slides. I too will be curious as to how your trannies are valued. I've been very careful when I send my few good 4x5s out and have checked around about the reputation of the place. I too suspect your trannies weren't thrown away but are possibly on file somewhere, to be sold. Hope things turn out well for you.
Kent in SD
Posted by Ron Niebrugge on August 16, 2007 at 11:16 AM
I would be interested to hear how this turns out. Good luck! It might be a good thing a larger company purchased the small one when it comes time to collect.
When I was paid $1,200 U.S. for a lost transparency the art director told me the other photographers were receiving $1,500 as that was the amount in their delivery memos. My image had already made over $2,000 - so it would have been easy to support a higher number, but I thought it was only right to stick with the figure in the delivery documents. I have always thought those numbers were low - as I'm sure you know, a good image can make much more then that over its entire lifetime. Good luck,
I think you were right to sue. I had something similar happen also. The printing/publishing/design company that I work for landed a contract to produce a full color brochure for the local chamber of commerce. Since we are a full service provider we were also going to handle all the photography and I got the job. I made an agreement, in writing and legal, that I would have full ownership of all photos that I made during that assigment and my employer could use them for an agreed licencing fee. My employer processed the seps and films for the printing press himself and when he finished he took my slides home. That night his 4 year old got hold of them and destroyed several beyond hope. He was not authorized to take my slides home and I sued him and won $1000.00 per slide.
Judging from the experiences you all had, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel. who knows, maybe we will be compensated at the end. Right now it just costs tons of lawyer fees etc, but we feel we had to sue anyway, no matter the outcome. You just can't let sy get away with that!
Georg
Hello you two! Not that I can add anything constructive here, I just can relate to your pain. One of my biggest fears when coming home from a vacation that the images on the card get lost somehow before I can upload them. It is even more painful in your case because your business and income depend on it and finally you lost physical objects instead of just bits and bytes. Further more given the travelling and effort you put into the "making" of the photo's.
Austrians are known to be a bit sloppy, but thats just unbearable. I hope this gets cleaned up - good luck!
Discussion
16 repliesyou give 50 original 4x5" slides to a calendar publisher for production of two calendars. calendars are done, you get paid, but customer tells you the slides got lost. Customer also tells you, 'no problem, have the digital files I printed from, so no harm done, eh?' (files are between 7 and 30 MB, CMYK, sharpened etc...) No satisfying compensation offer is made.
What do you do? (No, it's not so very easy to get guns here in Austria!)
Georg
Does your delivery memo or invoice address lost images? Ours states that we will be compensated $1,200 for each lost or damaged image and unfortunately we have collected on this in the past. That clause makes it pretty cut and dry, without such language it might be a tougher fight. Good luck!
Also, please tell us and as many other photographers as you can who the company was and which calendar. That will prevent others from making the mistake of submitting original images to a company that doesn't care enough to keep track of them. Such publicity might also light a fire under the calendar publisher to try to staunch the flow through a leaking dike. I mean, it's bad enough if they can't find one or two images. And I mean bad. But to lose FIFTY????? One of my freelance contracts is as a manuscript editor and photographer for a publisher who prints a very popular Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness calendar annually. If that publisher lost my original images, I'd immediately sever contact and file suit.
And if you're sure of your facts, submit a letter to the editor of the nearest major newspaper naming the company concerned. Want to flush the game? That'll do it! Careless bastards.
Just for the record, I've never offered original slide or negative images for consideration, just digital files from scans.
I would think legal action might spur them to look a little harder for those slides.
Are dupes not readily available there? From what I've seen most publications in the US seem to prefer scans and dupes to originals. Some even refuse to take originals for liability reasons.
Guy
Maybe your best strategy is to convince your police to thoroughly investigate the situation. If you alone deal with the company they may just give you the run around. If you need a reputable body of other photographers to emphasize to the police how uniquely wonderful some of those images are as originals, I'm sure there are a number of members here on NPN that could offer words of importance.
Hope this is not theft and merely misplacement that they manage to locate.
...David Senesac
Good luck
Marko
Good news is, that we are over this mentally, as we are in the 3rd year (!) file suit about that..
Sometimes one starts to wonder, whether it really was the best thing to sue, so I wanted to get some feedback on what you folks think. If there is interest I keep you all updated as things will unfold.
More Infos on this: yes we would have told everyone about that company, but they do not exist anymore. At least not in the way they did back then. That's how it happened: It is a company producing strictly industry calendars (calendars that are produced directly for clients, such as large companies for christmas presents etc.) They insisted on slides (as most calendar producers still do) but were very near to us, so we personally brought them the slides and would have picked them up ourselves again. After the calendars were made, we heard the company was sold to another large publisher, who just hours after signing the deal, cleared up all inventory left by the previous owner, including our images, which were still in the office... (at least that's the official version) Sure we have a signed delivery memo and all that.
About slides being stolen and sold somewhere else. It is interesting that some of you mention this also, because that is sg coming up when speaking with many people in the industry. we would have never thought of that!
Guy: we do have thousands of slides circulating worldwide, making dupes of all of them is just way too much in cost and time, as crazy as this may sound. we use scans as much as we can, though!
Good thing was, that at least there WAS a new owner and the old company wasn't just being flushed down the gully... Just turned out the new one is a BIG player, so it's David (us) up against Gloiath. One wouldn't believe, but we really had to prove in court, that a 4x5" tranny is superior to a 10MB CMYK file... Next thing will be to have sy find out how MUCH the slides were actually worth, which should be quite interesting!
I do not name the one company we actually file suit against, because they weren't the ones who lost the slides, they just happened to get our file suit on the their desk.
let us know what you think!
Verene & Georg
Starting a few months ago I began submitting my images digitally to the magazines instead of sending slides. I too will be curious as to how your trannies are valued. I've been very careful when I send my few good 4x5s out and have checked around about the reputation of the place. I too suspect your trannies weren't thrown away but are possibly on file somewhere, to be sold. Hope things turn out well for you.
Kent in SD
When I was paid $1,200 U.S. for a lost transparency the art director told me the other photographers were receiving $1,500 as that was the amount in their delivery memos. My image had already made over $2,000 - so it would have been easy to support a higher number, but I thought it was only right to stick with the figure in the delivery documents. I have always thought those numbers were low - as I'm sure you know, a good image can make much more then that over its entire lifetime. Good luck,
Bob
Georg
I may keep digital files of all the slides if people insist on originals.
Austrians are known to be a bit sloppy, but thats just unbearable. I hope this gets cleaned up - good luck!