Tony,
you're right about Canada -- they definitely do things differently there . I just had a response to my survey from an exhibitor/breeder/webmaster who lives in Canada. She stated very strongly that she would never purchase an image she couldn't copy for the web or for advertising.

The fact is, the Canadian photographers do it differently than we do: they deliver on-site and deliver both prints and a CD with the original file. They also charge more.

It's a good concept except they're essentially delivering the images straight out of the camera with little or no PhotoShop work on them. Whenever we've used them for magazine ads, I've had to work on every one of the images to make them acceptable for magazine reproduction. I like the concept but I don't believe in delivering a schlock product.

We're still dealing with a film/print mentality in this particular segment of the profession where the photographers knew nothing about who was scanning their prints and were happy it was somebody other than them cuz they didn't know how to. Geez, most are still shooting film with Hasselblads! Today!!! It boggles the mind.

It's hard to go from that mentality to one that says a print is a print, a file is a file, and you've only bought rights to the print. Folks flip you the finger and go right ahead and scan it.

My objective is to maintain image quality in whatever form it gets used while still making a decent revenue from the process of shooting a show. BTW, based on the early survey returns, most folks want that print. What does that tell you?

Jim