Back at one of my Nightclub events I took photos of last year, I was informed by one of the managers of the club that an incident had taken place out-with the premises, but the Police were interested in obtaining the originals to the photographs, as they believed the individual(s) involved were present in the club earlier, and that I may have taken some photos of them. Whilst this case is ongoing, and I am not able to provide identifying details, I can at least comment on my experience, disseminating where necessary.

As stated, I had taken photos from the night in question predominately from inside the club, which were duly uploaded to the nightclubs website of choice. A short time afterwards, the local police had gotten in contact with the nightclub, I believe to obtain their CCTV from the night, and the manager at the time informed them that I was also on the premises and had taken photos of the night. The wonderful thing about CCTV is that it provides a great top down view of the club, to see where any trouble is emerging, but unless people actually look at the CCTV cameras, you generally don’t get a facial image of individuals. With the types of photos I was tasked with taking that night, that was pretty much the photos they were after, front facing shots of the clubbers.

Whilst it takes a large amount of space to retain the RAW files, I always keep the RAW files from the last 6 months of shooting, as if the police ask for a copy of the photos, it helps to provide the RAW files. As many photographers will be aware, JPEG photos can be the result of a Photoshop, so a defence lawyer can argue that any photos in JPEG form could have been altered. Alteration of the underlying RAW files however is significantly harder to do. Photoshop doesn’t save back to Canon RAW format, instead choosing to save in TIFF or Digital Negative Format.

When I spoke to the police, they said they had seen the photos that I had uploaded onto the club’s website, and wanted the full resolution copies of these. I told them I would provide them these in the JPEG format that they’d seen on the website, but also the original files as they are equivalent to physical negatives. What I actually provided was these files, along with the Adobe Camera Raw settings files. I also explained that whilst the images I had uploaded to the website were not ALL of the photos, I would provide them a copy of every single photo I had stored. During the night, I do in camera deletion of photos which are obviously unsuitable (out of focus, or show too much flesh etc…) but when I return home and process the photos, I further filter these photos down, but I don’t delete the photos I brought home that I don’t upload.

About a month after providing a copy of these photos on DVD’s, the detectives came along to my home to take a Witness Statement, explaining how I was contacted and contracted by the club, and to verify that the DVD’s I had provided were what I had given to them. I may be called further down the line as a witness and get to stand up in court. They did ask if I had printing facilities (which I naturally do), and if I could print off the photos, I did explain to them that whilst I could print photos for them, it would be cheaper overall for them to use their in-house forensic team to print the photos off.

I could have used this as an opportunity to earn more for the business, by charging extra for supplying the DVD’s, or for printing off photos. But I hark back to a post I made last year, which is, Make the Customer feel they are getting a better deal than what they are paying for.

My other lesson from this, keep your Negatives (raw fie or physical) for as long as possible. You never know when you may need them again!