Printing Boudoir Photographs

I was recently asked for advice on whether it is OK to use the online printing services for printing boudoir photographs, and I realised that this was a glaring hole in my website! Now I have never had any problems personally, but I contacted the major names in online printing to check my facts...

I'm happy to say that I didn't get any surprises and better still I was able to get some clear guidelines which may help you.

Prohibited Content

Most online services have a 'prohibited content' clause in their terms and conditions. Prohibited use is usually defined along the lines of "abusive, deceptive, pornographic, obscene, defamatory, slanderous, offensive, or otherwise inappropriate". A Snapfish representative went on to say that "nudity is not a problem, though pornography is". As such, boudoir photographs will be printed without a problem.

Specific Exclusions

The Snapfish representative also went on to say that though "Even in the US Supreme Court, pornography is difficult to define, as a general guideline we will not print any depictions of sex acts nor any images with close-ups of genitalia". So there you have it!

Privacy

One other concern you may have is how many people are going to see your photos. There are two elements to this; the printing side and you're online gallery. The online gallery part is usually down to you - you need to send people invitations to see the gallery, so if you don't invite anyone then it should remain private.

These days the printing side is almost completely automated but that does not preclude some human involvement. Most sites have a privacy statement like this one from Shutterfly: "In order to provide quality products, the Shutterfly employees and third-party service providers fulfilling your order or providing Customer Support to you may see your pictures."

Copyright

One thing that I feel I should point out is that you can only make prints of work for which you own the Copyright - i.e. photographs that you took yourself or that you have been legally granted rights to by the Photographer.

User Feedback

Adoramapix.com has had some good feedback on the weddingbee forum for an 8"x8" hard cover book containint 38 pages. At $43 this represents pretty excellent value and the process of uploading the photos and creating the layout was very straight forward.

If you have any feedback (good or bad) to add then please contact me.