Note to all you folks taking pictures of your projects- If you take photos that look too good, Wal-Mart won’t print them. The clerk said the photos looked like a professional had taken them, Helmick said. And no matter how much Helmick protested that she, an amateur, had snapped the shots of her son, she said the clerk wouldn’t budge. Wal-Mart sells high resolution “professional” quality cameras in their stores, just remember to take crummy low res photos! [via] Link.
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I’ve always found that copying prints relies mainly on how much the person working there cares or not. What i’d reccomend is going to price chopper (at least the one near me has it, not sure on wal mart’s set up…) where they have the station where you can put in a cd, disk, various memory cards, or even scan a print. The final step on these is the person behind the counter hitting the button. Not to hate on my frineds who work there, but when you have an 18yo high school kid working the counter, they can probably care less whether the print is professional or not.
I think what Wal-Mart is doing is excellent and wish more labs would take similar precautions. As a professional photographer my work is often stolen via methods just like this. If you’re taking images that look so great as to appear “professional” take it as a great compliment!
The article mentions: “She had used her photo-editing software to add his name, information about him and even her own copyright to make the image look more polished, Helmick said.” Now think about it, she added a copyright, a statement saying it is illegal to print, copy, or use the image without permission. If they printed it they would be ignoring the copyright she created!
She simply should have printed a similarly professional copyright release ahead of time, taken it with her, and they would have completed the job with no questions asked. Getting angry with the clerk and scribbling out a quick “note stating that she had taken the photos.” certainly wouldn’t give the “professional” appearance the photograph may have had.
I just emailed this article to Lee Friedlander. Perhaps he’ll start shopping at Wal-Mart out of sheer gratitude.
Stefan
This has happened to me twice at Walmart – VERY frustrating. I do appreciate the compliment, but seriously, they basically accused me of lying. I won’t go back.
Wow, that’s pretty amazing that they would do this. Shame on Walmart.
The real problem isn’t how professional the pictures look. The real problem is they won’t have your pictures ready in time, so any excuse will do.
Working with a retail establishment that does photo processing. It’s not very lucrative at those low margins.
Uh, just don’t go to Wal-mart.