I hadn't had a real portrait taken since high school, I think, so I contacted HR to see if I could get a high resolution copy of the image, and they gave me the photographer's email.

I shot him a friendly email asking his prices, and he said that for $50, I can have a 1350x1800 jpg for my personal use.

How offensive would it be if I tried to talk him down? It would be nice to have a high res version of the portrait, but $50 is about five times too much, IMHO.

I'm assuming he got paid a fair rate to come to the firm and set up his stuff and take all these employee pictures for the phone directory. There was no attempt made to sell us prints as we were getting the pictures taken, so I don't think prints were ever meant to be part of the income stream. I know he's a professional, but my kids' school pictures are similar and cost around $40 for all the prints you would ever want. And he wants $50 to locate the file, attach it to the email and send it to me. No prints at all.

Opinions, please. Foot, I'd be especially curious for your opinion.

Do I politely decline, or do I counter offer?

I guess that he wants to get rich today.

I've talked to Rich, he's completely hetero.

His price makes it seem that he's deliberately discouraging individual requests. He knows this is just a whim; because, it's not a portrait of you in a business suit and he's probably not set up to handle whims proficiently. He's giving up any future revenue on the image (maybe you'll become famous/infamous someday); so, if you simply must have it, ask him if he offers a corporate discount and hope he takes the hint. Maybe he'll take pity (if business is slow).

I don't think this guy is hetero. His mannerisms were a bit gay, and I think he was flirting with me a little.

As he was snapping a few pics of me, he said I should be an actor. And then he clarified that I should be a character actor. And in his email reply today he said he remembered me and hoped I wasn't offended when he complimented me. Maybe I looked offended. I don't think so though. I was just grinning for the camera.

Maybe he tells everyone they should be character actors. :lol.

Anyway, I suppose I should reply to him. I like the corporate discount idea.

You don't think you can duplicate that portrait?

You need a diffuse light source, a camera, and a tripod. Keep your fifty bucks.

$50. isn't that much, really. Sure there's his time finding the file, but there's also the fact that the picture looks 10^9 times better than a selfie. He has to buy gear, now more than ever since cameras don't last 50 years any more. (side note: my buddy's Canon 5D just shit the bed, some chip/sensor related nonsense and to fix it would be almost as much as a new camera ~3,000) In the case of film, I have 70 year old cameras that take perfectly fine photos) Then there's all the frigging softwares, updates, computers and all that other crap that also constantly needs to be replaced (Unlike my 1952 Omega enlarger which still makes excellent prints)

And once he gives you a high res image, that's it. You can copy the shit out of it and print off a trillion copies and give them to every body you ever saw and he won't see another dime from you. Essentially, he is selling you the negative for $50.

But as my dad used to say, "It's a good deal if you get the thing you want at a price you are willing to pay." But then, he was in the advertising business.

My Dad used to say "A good deal is a state of mind."

Oh, an re: the school portraits, there is no comparison. Those businesses hire anybody to shoot the photos according to a set formula with provided gear, no skill required other than having your own transportation and the ability to move the kids along and get it done and get the f out of there. Two schools per day or find another job. Oh, and the pay? About $10 an hour.

I get what you're saying, Foot.
But Glatt is essentially asking for something the photographer has already done and been paid for. And it wasn't a personal portrait, where he was able to choose clothes and angle and background.

A nominal fee is fine, but £25 (ish) is high.

To me it seems like charging people to take food home from a restaurant. The restaurant have to buy in doggy bags or cartons and they pay for them. But the larger cost is for the produce, the cooking and the staff and that is taken into account when they set the menu price.

But then I work in retail, and I hear customers say "just" and "only" every working day without considering the actual cost of their requests. So I accept I could be wrong here.

It also seems like if I were to pay $50, I should get the original image, not a medium sized jpeg. What he's offering me is smaller than the images my 7 year old consumer grade camera produces.

This guy is a pro, and he deserves to eat, but there is no way I'm paying $50.

So he gets nothing. Or do I insult him by giving a counter offer and then he might get something.

Have you ever haggled, foot? Have you heard of other photographers haggling? It it offensive, or all just part of business?

It depends on how it's done. I had a client hire me to shoot a bunch of work by an artist for their product. The artist wanted to piggy back on the client's job without asking the client, essentially, she'd get the benefit of the images without having to pay other than her offering me the cost of film and processing.
this was just one of too many duplicitous things she'd done in my presence and I told her to fuck off.

Another client (The first and last wedding I ever did or will shoot) asked for the negatives after being told explicitly and in our contract that the negatives were not for sale. After dealing with her breaking at least three other terms of the contract, I lost it with her.

There have been other times where I've given people freebies because they were polite or good clients or I was in a good mood.

You could make a counter offer, but you have to remember he is going to spend time sorting through his files trying to find the picture, this could be instantaneous if he is organized or time consuming if not. It breaks his workflow and may be an annoyance if this is not how he is set up to work. Every minute he spends dicking around with a jpeg for you is a minute he's not billing 200 an hour. Consider that he may be doing you a favor even responding to you because he liked you.

Personally, I wouldn't try to talk him down any more than I'd try to talk any other professional down.

As for your comparison to the file size from your point and shoot and his camera, it has nothing to do with pixels. Kind of like saying that you and Barry Bonds are the same height so you should be as good a ball player as him.

Most importantly, Sir, we're not the taco stand

Thanks.
I told him that it was just too much for me and that even though I liked it, I couldn't justify spending so much.

I didn't ask for a discount. We'll see if he even responds.

That's how I'd play it. He might have thought you were going to make a trillion headshots for your nascent character actor career, in DC, that hotbed of film making...

If I reeeeeally wanted that particular photo, I'd offer him $25.