Quick explanations.

Digital wedding Albums All have pages created from multiple images and printed as a single sheet before it becomes a page.

Pages
Pages refer to the front and back of a single leaf of material. 20 pages mean the Album is made up of 10 individual leaves, bound into a book.

Leaves
These are the individual sheets that have a page either side of them. Leaves are never numbered, pages are.

Contracts and agreements
The words are interchangeable. A contract is an agreement and an agreement a contract. When you sign a contract with us or one of our businesses, you are binding yourself and Ryadia Pty Ltd to an agreement based on what the contract says you will get or we will do.

If anything is not specifically specified in a contract, you will not get it. If no specific size is mentioned, (such as the size of an album or photograph, you must expect to receive the size we feel is most appropriate, not what you would like to have.

Don't presume anything
If the agreement does not say you get it, it is best to assume you will not get it. We are only a phone call or E-mail away. Ask us if you are unsure.

Payment
You don't pay for your wedding photography until 2 weeks before the wedding. Please make sure you can!

Booking fee
When you book any event with us, you must pay a non-refundable booking fee of $250. To ensure your event (wedding) is guaranteed a photographer.

Quality
All our photographers are qualified Professionals. Sure, you may have to pay a little more than for an office worker moonlighting as wedding shooter but it is worth it.

Our obligation
Quite apart from our obligation to clients, we are required to be mindful of rules and wishes of other professionals providing you with services and also be mindful that some people may not want their photo taken. Sometimes you just can't have the list of photos you made  due the this.

Travel, Parking.
Most popular locations are impossible to find parking near, late on Saturday. In Brisbane, we charge a $50 fee to cover our parking and cab fare to your location.

Meals and working conditions
We need to be fed at regular meal times. You can either make arrangements with your caterer to feed Ryadia staff or pay  us an $80 (per person) meal allowance and miss us for 30 minutes during a meal break.

Australian TAXES
As a duly incorporated Australian Company, we are required to pay taxes on our earnings and collect GST on our sales. Currently this is 10% of our quoted prices.

Off Shore travel.
If your wedding is on an Off-shore Island, you or you wedding planner are required to make all the booking and travel arrangements for us at your own expense.

Overnight accommodation
If you wedding is outside 75 Klm radius of Brisbane City and we are expected to be working after 9:00 PM, you need to arrange and pay our overnight accommodation.

Quality of service:
We have little else to sell but our services therefore it is important to us to provide a professional and trustworthy service at all times.

Part of our commitment to quality is often confusing to some people. Put simply... We ensure each and ever one of the photographs we offer clients meets our quality standards for technical excellence and compositional correctness. We do supply "blooper discs" or photos of people in compromising situations.

Hand crafted Brief case and wedding album. Square aspect ratio has lost popularity lately but they sure are impressive!

This is a 'standard' Digital wedding album.
There are 10 leaves with 20 pages. Images are arranged to tell the pictorial story of your wedding day.

The cover is synthetic leather, bound so the pages lay flat when you open the book.

Pages are protected with a matt, water clear laminate which allows them to be wiped with a damp cloth and will resist many household cleaning spray products.

These albums are assembled by the photographer with "photographer's choice" of imagers used. Some packages and contracts may permit clients to approve a proof set of pages and change up to 10% of them before approving the album for print. Be sure to check your agreement for wording such as "client to approve album".  If just the album is listed it does not have any special conditions like clients being able to change images.

Right is a standard "Photo Book" or parents album. They have hard covers with a linen covering. Most usually are provided in A4 size or in special packages may be 125mm x 175mm in size.

If listed as parents albums where a Wedding album is specified, they will be replicas of the Wedding Album except for the front page which will be resized to accommodate to opening in the cover. Options available with these albums include leather look covering.

An explanation of our Wedding Photography and what you can expect.
All our photography is by way of an agreement that in exchange for you paying us, we will give you goods and services listed in the agreement. if it is not listed in the agreement, you have not bought it. The words Agreement and Contract both mean the same thing... You make an agreement and enter into a contract.

Presumptions, implied conditions and 'unwritten rules':
All legal agreements exist to protect the interests of those signing them. In our case the agreements we enter into are intended to avoid any possibility we will be required to provide goods or services not clearly described in the agreement and ensure everything you purchase in the way of photographic services is described clearly so their can be no arguments later.

For that purpose there are some things specific to the photography and Wedding industries that can safely be presumed. There are no innuendos in our agreements.  You should never presume you will get a frame with a canvas print unless it is safe to assume you will get a frame with every print we produce. In other words, what is not clear or stated is not there.

Therefore when discussing or reading about "prints" they are sheets of photo paper or other material with an image on them. Unless specified in some other way, that's all you get. As for sizes, the Photo industry considers the most common "print" to be a 6 inch x 4 inch or 10cm x 15cm print. When you read that you will get X number of prints, they will be the most common size unless stated otherwise.

When buying prints from our on-line facilities, it is safe to presume and expect prints of at least the quality of a professional photo lab and most certainly of merchantable quality for lasting purposes. Just the same, you need to be mindful of the hazards of exposing photographs to certain conditions in the atmosphere and protecting them from UV light rays.

Enlargements too, can be presumed to be a photograph on photo paper. For weddings and portraits, these are always satin or lustre surface and must be described with a size (I.E. 8"x10") or they are not enlargements.

Also unless a size specified enlargement I.E. an 8x10 enlargement is specified as being in a "presentation folder" if will be delivered as a flat sheet. If the description also includes the words 'Canvas' or 'Metallic' this signifies a particular type of print or enlargement different from a normal print.

Bridal preparations; With no other additional information,  Photography of or attendance at bridal preparations means at the place the bride is getting dressed and will leave for the wedding from. It does not mean you can expect a photographer to be with you from 6:00 AM to record everything you do up to the wedding at 4:00 PM.  Industry standard time allowance is between 1 hour and one and a half hours for bridal preparation photography.

Ceremonial location:
When discussing photography, formal portraits or other post wedding photography, the location must be specified. If it is not, then the Ceremonial location is the only location you will have your formal and portrait photography done at. Specify (for example) formals to be at Wellington Point on Moreton Bay and that's where they will take place.

Formal portraits:
Almost all wedding photography allows for the tradition family photography known as 'formals' or formal portraits. If the location for these photographs is anywhere other than the ceremonial location, it must be specified on the contract or it isn't going to be included.

Professionalism:
Ryadia and all the photographer who provide photography under instructions from our Managing Director (Douglas MacDonald) can be presumed to be or expected to be duly accredited photographers and members of the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP). As such you have a right to expect high quality photographs. At the same time, if any photos exist that for technical or compositional reasons do not meet our quality control standards, they will not be available.

Delivery:
Ryadia maintains a Photography workroom and micro lab to process photos and build Wedding Albums. This allows us to provide expedited service and prompt delivery of finished goods. The fact everything we do is done by humans means that time frames may not always be achievable. We try to maintain the following schedules...

Time for viewing of proofs; Between 2 and 4 weeks.
Time for album completion: Up to 6 weeks (longer in peak periods).
Time for completion: Up to 8 weeks plus any time you take to decide on alterations.

Guarantee:
We abide by the Australian Trade Practices Act and Queensland Fair Trading requirements. These guarantee you will receive goods of merchantable quality suitable for the purpose intended. That is, viewing and storage of wedding photography.

We do not offer refunds except for faulty goods or by negotiation. In this fair state, you cannot expect a refund for changing you mind or because someone else offered it cheaper.

Booking fees and refunds:
When you pay us a booking fee you are paying a fee to prevent us committing a particular day and photographer for any other purpose than your wedding. It is not refundable, it is a fee.
We do not offer refunds of any type except for faulty goods or by negotiation. In this fair state, you cannot expect a refund for changing you mind or because someone else offered it cheaper.

Copyright and negatives:
Every Photograph a professional photographer takes is automatically assigned copyright to either him or his employer. In the case of a firm owned by Ryadia, the copyright belongs to the company. We offer several copyright licenses to clients depending on your future use. These need to be negotiated and written into the contract or the copyright belongs exclusively to Ryadia Pty Ltd.

Digital (Camera RAW files) and traditional film negatives have long been the exclusive property of the photographer. The law considers them "work in progress" towards the final product, a photography. It is probably timely now to point out that a photographer's principal product for sale is a photograph. For some this may not make sense but in the context of negatives and digital image files it is highly relevant.

We have a facility available for people to purchase image files that we have already processed ready for printing or web display. Unless the contract clearly states you get delivery of "Full Resolution" or "High Resolution" images, any images we supply you on CD or DVD will be suitable for making normal prints from, not enlargements.

Changing the Contract:
Very clearly it is asking a lot of someone to book a photographer a year in advance and know exactly want you want when you do. For this reason we have a clause in our contracts that allows you to notify us in writing that you wish to change the contract. You must use this method or the contract will not be changes.

What applies to you also applies to us. If we wish to amend or change the contract to bring it in line with any future changes we may make to it, we will do so in writing or the original contract will prevail.

Disputes and complaints:
God forbid we have any but in a case where a client believes they have an entitlement that is unclearly documented or they believe a verbal promise was made and we cannot find any record of it, a dispute resolution process is available. Depending on the nature of your dispute, we may offer to pay for an independent solicitor or industry arbitrator to mediate the complaint.

Clients who are offered this last resort mediation must agree to be bound (as we will be) by the referee's decision. Before ever this stage is reached, we like to think discussion and explanation can solve most disputes. We do not subscribe to the notion "the customer is always right" but we do subscribe to the belief that sometimes we might need to compromise our stand in order to remain friendly and keep our reputation... We expect the same from our clients.