Surely wanting to enjoy the photos in a medium other than the album is not giving them away?
Eitherway it is only my wife and I making use of them in a private setting? Guest comes and views album/guest comes and casually may see a couple of photo's on frame? What is the difference? Surely not the end of his business?
Those inclined to buy from a photographer would still do so, or at least I would anyway if I wanted a physical print.
Please keep your sarcastic comments to yourself.
another way of looking at it is to make a comparison to the old days.
In the old days, you had the negatives, and then the printed photos. Once you have the negatives, you can print as many copies of the photo as you want, as big as you want, from whatever supplier you want.
This cuts the photographer out and means he makes no money from any of the prints. So in the old days, you never got the negatives and just paid for prints of the photos. You never saw the ones that werent developed and didnt proof read them first prior to printing.
Now in this digital age, by asking for the JPEGs, you are effectively asking for the negatives. With the JPEGs you can print as many copies of the photos as you want, give them to as many family members as you want, all by cutting out the photographer. You say you just want to use them on a photo frame, but they all say that. And once he hands over JPEGs, he's got no way of enforcing how you use them.
In order to hand over the JPEGs, most photographers usually want a fee akin to printing their every photo they take. That way even if you do print all of them, the photographer hasnt lost any money. And most will know you will print several of the ones you like, possibly enlargements, and none of the ones you dont, so it will roughly even out.
This fee for printing all the photos isnt usually included in the photographers fees, as you will usually sign a contract with them, which includes a price and a stipulation as to how many printed photos it includes. To have all the photos "printed" ie in JPEG form is obviously going to cost more.
As Raymond has said, he doesnt sound a particularly professional photographer. All of this should have been explained to you at the start. We had the option to buy a photo CD with all our wedding photos on for $400 (we got married in vegas) But that was 121 photos. We didnt actually like all 121 and only had about 10 that we really really liked. We had 8 included in the package, so we bought 2 more 6x4 @ $10 each and two 8 x 10 for $20 each. In comparison the CD was $400 - because they will only hand over the JPEGs if you hand over a large fee, as it gives you unlimited license to print as many as you want, as often as you want, without the photographer earning a penny.
