Good photographers keep their negatives because they predict that satisfied customers are more likely to come back for reprints, while unsatisfied customers would only throw away the negatives or not use them anyway if they were able to buy them. Less proficient photographers sell their negatives because they don't expect to make any money on reprinting mediocre pictures. Selling the negatives helps make up for the loss incurred when customers don't come back.
A photographer's willingness to sell the negatives or to provide bargain reprints is a signal of the poor quality of the pictures he takes. Similarly, a customer's desire to buy the negatives could be a signal to photographers that the customer doesn't value the photos being taken enough to pay a premium for reprints, and thus may be less likely to buy lots of prints in the first place. Another explantion could be that the customer who wants to buy negatives is like the person who buys things on layaway--he wants the good, but prefers for some reason to put a little down now and pay the rest later. So he pays for the sitting and the negatives (lower profit items for the photographer), and takes the negatives to the drug store next month to by prints. The unwillingness to sell negatives and the practice of charging high prices for reprints could be a way for photographers to weed out the cheap-skates who might otherwise eat into their profit margins by not buying many prints or not returning for reprints. Sadly, my own experience with my wedding photographer provides anecdotal evidence for Mark Steckbeck's theory that photographers who sell their negatives might do so to compensate for the inferior quality of their photographs compared to photographers who won't sell their negatives. Eric M. McDaniel University of Tulsa [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > On Behalf Of John-charles Bradbury > Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 12:11 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Photographers > > > > How about asking some photographers? > > > > Armchair economics is not a contact sport. > > JC > _________________________ > John-Charles Bradbury, Ph.D. > Department of Economics > The University of the South > 735 University Ave. > Sewanee, TN 37383 -1000 > Phone: (931) 598-1721 > Fax: (931) 598-1145 > E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > >
