'Professional' Photographs

I’ve been having a lot of Boots meal deals for lunch recently. As a result, I have amassed a small collection of discount coupons for photograph processing. So, I decided to send a bunch of photographs in for processing yesterday. I ordered a bunch of 9×6 prints for next day processing. I went to collect the photos today and was told that there were problems with my order. They suspected me of breaching copyright and developing professional photographs.

So, I had to explain to them that I had taken those photographs myself using my own camera. The problem stemmed from the fact that I had embedded my signature brush on all of them. The people working there told me that the photos had a professional logo on it and asked me what it was. So, I had to explain to them that it was my signature and I even had to give them a sample of my signature. After comparing it with the signature brush in my photos, they decided that it was okay for them to release the photographs to me.

Well, that was good. I would have gotten into a fit if they did not release the photographs to me. I’m glad that they took the extra precautions to verify that the photographs actually belonged to me first. I guess that they have to do that with the strict intellectual property laws in the country. I doubt that they would want to be caught in any copyright infringement scandal. I guess that most professionals would not take their prints to Boots for processing.

As for the quality of the prints, I actually went to Boots to experiment. I wanted to see how the prints would come out in real life. As far as I can tell, the prints came out okay. Noise in the photographs were made more prominent in print than on screen. Dust specs on the lens appeared prominently on the photographs, especially against the sky. The colour saturation was just right although they seemed to have stretched the contrast a little.

So, this means that I’ll need to take photos at low ISO settings, and clean my lenses more often. At least, I should be very careful and treat my lenses with tender loving care. Also, I may not want to stretch the contrast of the photos too much. For post processing, I will just increase the colour saturation and correct the white balance. Prints tend to look duller and darker than on screen.

I still have another 5 coupons that I can use, which means that I can order another 75 large prints for a very cheap price. I’ll try to use up as many of them as possible, before I leave for home. It is certainly not cheaper to develop them at home