This is a cautionary tale about a recent experience with Amazon. For Christmas I was the lucky recipient of a Pentax K-5 — a gift from a family member who bought it from my Amazon wish list (Yeah me!). Unfortunately, unwrapping was the last happy moment in this tale.
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You know that feeling of extreme excitement when an Internet package arrives in the mail? That’s what a guy named Jalal felt recently after ordering a Canon 5D Mark III and 24-105mm f/4L kit from Dell.com. Unfortunately for him, what he received wasn’t quite what he had expected.
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Wedding photographers are supposed to stealthily document unique moments, not become part of them. Unfortunately, the latter is what photographer Jacki Bruniquel did last month while photographing a wedding in South Africa. As the bride walked down the aisle with her father, a wedding photographer’s worst nightmare unfolded for Bruniquel: her head got too close to a burning candle, kindling a small blaze in her hair. In a few short seconds, the entire room was staring and gasping at Bruniquel rather than the bride.
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The Consumerist writes that a guy named Nate recently had a negative experience with Amazon’s Trade-In program. After sending in his Canon Digital Rebel and not being satisfied with the quoted trade-in value ($62), he asked for it back. What he received was “an invisible camera”:
It was all the manuals and CDs for my camera. There was NO CAMERA. The reason I didn’t connect the dots when UPS came was because the box was not even large enough to hold the camera! [...]
Luckily for me, I was able to get [Amazon] to give me the $97. I felt bad for Amazon since it’s a third party company who takes the trades and stole my camera. But what would have happened if I would have been trading a MacBook or iPad worth several hundred dollars? Would they have been as willing to give me the credit? I’m afraid to trade anything in now!
The original Digital Rebel was released back in August 2003, and was the first DSLR to have a price tag under $1,000 (it cost $899 for the body only). Amazon is willing to buy them now for $97 if in “Like New” condition, $62.25 if “Good”, and $20.50 if “Acceptable”.
Amazon Trade-In Trades My Camera For Invisible Camera [The Consumerist]
Thanks for sending in the tip, Phil!
A photographer’s worst nightmare happened to YouTube filmmaker Casey Neistat recently. After taking a taxi after a long 18-hour work day and flight, Neistat accidentally forgot all of his luggage — and $13,238.86 worth of camera gear — in the back of a New York City taxi cab. Among the equipment lost was a Canon 5D Mark III kit ($4300), a 24-70mm lens ($1600), and about $550 worth of memory cards — equipment necessary for Neistat to make a living.
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If you need to print some photos taken by someone else using print services at places like Walmart, be careful: if the photographs look “too professional” some places will require a written copyright release before allowing you to pick up the prints — even after you’ve paid for them. The Consumerist has a story of a woman named Jessica who ran into problems at Walmart after collecting photos from a couple pro photographer friends for a friend’s funeral:
See, Jessica’s friend was a professional photographer, as is her friend’s husband, who had e-mailed Jessica the photos to have printed. “So even their candid pictures appear professional,” she explains to Consumerist.
[...] In addition to those photos, Jessica says that Walmart wanted copyright info on a couple of shots that had been taken at a pro studio like Olan Mills back in the ’70s.
“There was no mark on them to indicate where they were taken, and my friend’s mom had sent me those,” writes Jessica. “She paid for them back in the day when they were taken, and she scanned them for me last week. How am I supposed to get written copyrights for every single picture?
Jessica had also checked a box affirming that she had permission to print the images while on Walmart’s website. Protecting copyright is a good thing, but having employees make decisions on whether photos are “too professional” after they’ve already been printed and paid for doesn’t seem like a very good system.
Walmart Spoils Memorial Service Because They Think My Photos Look Too Professional (via ALTFoto)
Image credit: Walmart by matteson.norman
Regardless of how bad photographers’ rights seem to be in your country, here’s a story that will definitely make you appreciate them at least a little bit more: a photojournalist named Sithu Zeya may spend 18 years of his life in prison after being arrested for photography. Zeya, who’s only 21 years old, was arrested in Burma last year after getting caught photographing the aftermath of a grenade attack that killed 10 people in the country’s largest city, Yangon. After being sentenced to 8 years in prison last year, a Yangon court decided to tack an extra 10 years onto his prison sentence yesterday for posting online material that could “damage tranquillity and unity in the government.”
Suddenly those stories you hear of photographers getting harassed by police don’t seem nearly as bad, eh?
Photographer Nasim Mansurov’s friend recently ordered Canon 5D Mark II from online camera store AjRichard for just $2,350, but was then called by a sales rep and told that the battery and charger weren’t included. The final order came out to $2,629, which included some unneeded accessories and 3-day shipping. When the order finally arrived in 2 weeks, he found that it was a 5D Mark II + 24-120mm kit box with the lens removed.
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