POLICIES

AVAILABILTY
Any of our photography services and packages may be booked up to three months in advance of your secured date. Weddings are the exception and may be booked up to 1 year in advanced.
 
We book our sessions for primarily Saturdays and Sundays. However, we do have some exceptions and options throughout the year that may open up more during the week.

SECURING YOUR DATE
Upon booking your date, you should understand our financial policy. To secure your date, we will need a non-refundable retainer. You can read more about financial responsibility in the next section below.

ACCEPTED FORMS OF PAYMENT
An invoice will be sent to you where you can make a form of payment online at your convenience, or you pay us in person.

CANCELLATION BY CLIENT WITH CONTRACT + RETAINER
We totally understand that situations come up and sometimes clients need to cancel their contract with us. If you need to cancel your contract, you will need to sign a cancellation agreement. We will keep your non-refundable retainer as liquidated damages.  At the time that the cancellation notice is received and any balance due to Katie Strzelec Photography, LLC is received, the contract shall be canceled.

RETAINER
A  non-refundable retainer (%percentages may vary depending on the service) is required to reserve any photography service. Your retainer will be applied or session is not canceled. At the time your retainer is received and validated, the date agreed upon will be reserved. A retainer is non-refundable, even if the date is changed, event is canceled, or you cancel our agreed upon session.

For events or sessions over $300, a contract will be made for both parties to sign. For weddings, or photography services over $500.00, your remaining balance is due 30 days prior to your event date. For all other photographic services under $500.00, remaining balance is due on your contracted session date before the session begins.

In the event that you don't make your final payment on time or by it's due date, it is considered a material breach of our contract. This means that we do not have to fulfill any other obligation under the contract, including shooting your event, wedding, or other photography session. If we do not receive your final payment on the due date, we will send an email and call if you cannot be reached. We appreciate you taking care of your final payment on time. 

PAYMENT TERMS
You may choose to pay in advanced, or the day of (before) your session. Your photos will not be released until payment has cleared, this includes sneak peaks. 

ACCEPTED FORMS OF PAYMENT
Cash, card, or check. Let us know in advanced if you would prefer credit, as arrangements will need to be made.
 

IMAGE DELIVERY
We know how much you want to see your photos! A teaser collection of photos from your session will be posted within one week on our Facebook page and website blog. You will receive your photos within 2-4 weeks, but we try to deliver in a much shorter time frame! When your images are complete, we'll deliver your images to you via email in an online gallery and provide you a pin number so that you can download your images in a zip file.

CULLING
Katie Strzelec Photography retains complete control over the culling process. During this careful culling process, images are selcted that meet our high standard of quality. This means that images with eyes closed, unflattering poses, test shots for lighting, images below our standard of quality, and duplicate images are permanently removed following this culling process. Quality is more important than quantity, although we do not delete images just to "hit a quota." We do not guarantee a number of images, as every session is different. Generally, though, for an hour session day, clients receive between 150-300 images.

EDITING
Katie Strzelec Photography retains complete control over the editing process. The images that are delivered to you in your gallery are put through an extensive editing process in Adobe Lightroom where we color correct, make adjustments to exposure + contrast, sharpen, crop, and straighten the images as needed. Clients may not requests changes to our editing style, unless its from color to black and white or vice-versa. Clients requesting retouching will incur a fee of $30 per image per round of revisions, or $100 per hour for extensive photoshop work on multiple images.

RAW IMAGES
Under no circumstance will Katie Strzelec Photography, LLC release to you the RAW images. We select the best representation of the images taken during your session. No additional images can or will be released following delivery of your gallery.

BACKING UP YOUR PRODUCT
Your images will be delivered to you via digital download in an online gallery. You will need a PIN code to download the entire zip file onto your computer. You are contractually responsible for your images once they are delivered. We suggest backing them up to at least three places: one external hard drive at your home, one external hard drive or flash drive off site (in your car, in a safe deposit box, or at a loved one's home), and on the cloud (e.g., Amazon Cloud Storage). Due to the size of our files, we do not permanently archive the RAW images.

COPYRIGHT
All of our images are protected by Federal Copyright Law. There is a difference between copyright and a release for personal reproduction. We always retain our copyright, and we do not sell the copyright to our images under any circumstance. We do, however, always give our clients a release for personal reproduction. This release allows you and your friends and family to print your photos, share them on facebook, etc. It does not allow you to make money off of your images, edit your images., or submit your images to blogs/magazines for publication.

IMAGE USE
We reserve the right to use our favorite photos from your session on our Facebook page, our blog, our website, in online advertising campaigns, in printed marketing materials,  unrestrictedly.. As all of our business is word of mouth, advertising with previous client images is critical to sustaining our business.

SUBMISSION OF IMAGES
Your images may be used or submitted to national publications or those those alike. 

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER IMAGE USE
If there is another photographer at your wedding, that photographer is an independent contractor. As part of our agreement, that photographer has permission to use the images they have taken during your wedding in their portfolio (which may include their website, blog, Facebook page, etc.). 

RELEASE
By agreeing to our services, you grant us permission to use and release the images on our Facebook page, our blog, our website, in online advertising campaigns, various publications, as well as, in printed marketing materials. 

CLIENT USE OF IMAGES ONLINE
You are more than welcome to use your images online for personal use.
On social media, we do ask our clients to give us image credit.

Katie Strzelec Photography, LLC
Website: www.katiestrzelec.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/katiestrzelecphotography
Instagram: @katiestrzelecphotography

CANCELLATION
Just like we understand things come up in your life which may cause you to cancel the contract with us, we have to be prepared for that to happen to us. Reasons that we might have to cancel the contract include, but are not limited to, finding out we're expecting a baby within a few weeks of your wedding or if we feel like we are not the best fit for you but do not discover that until after the contract has been signed. In the event that we have to cancel the contract, we will notify you via phone call and send you a cancellation agreement. We will refund your retainer and any other payments we have rendered at the time of cancellation, except where a service has been provided (ex. engagement session, you will be responsible for that fee). It is extremely unlikely that we would need to cancel a contract. If we do decide that we need to cancel a contract, we will do our best to help you find a photographer who is of the same level of talent and skill and who will hopefully honor the same pricing we had originally agreed to. This is not a guarantee that it will be possible, but it is what we strive to do in this unfortunate circumstance. 

SUBSTITUTION
In the unlikely event that we are unable to complete the responsibilities of our contract due to illness, death, fire, Act of God, or other event beyond our control, we do have policies in place to make sure that you are taken care of. We do not anticipate this ever having to happen, but we do recognize that there are emergencies that come up. Our couples are extremely important to us, and we will never miss a wedding if we can avoid it. In the event that we are unable to make it to your session, and it is unable to be rescheduled then we will (1) arrange for a substitute photographer of the same level of talent and skill, and/or (2) an adjustment to the total collection amount or contents of your collection. In the event that you do not accept our substitution offer, you may elect to cancel the contract. As always, you will be responsible for the various value of the services we have provided up to the moment of cancellation. If that amount is less than your non-refundable 20% retainer, we will refund the difference. If it is more than your 20% retainer, you will be responsible for the excess amount. If we are unable to make the necessary arrangements in time due to death, serious illness, or insufficient time, our liability is limited to a refund of all payments made, including the retainer. 

LIMIT OF LIABILITY
We represent that we take reasonable care with respect to capturing, developing, processing, storing, and delivering your images. However, in the event that we fail to comply with our contract for any reason, our liability will be limited to a refund of all payments made. The limit of liability for a partial loss of original images shall be a prorated amount of the exposures lost based on the percentage of total number of original images. If we fail to capture certain requested images, such omissions shall not be a breach of our contract and we will not be liable for any compensation to you, as we do not guarantee specific images.