The basics of Copyright and Licensing

I’m getting asked about this more and more so I thought I’d blog a simple answer for people to find
(or me to point them to 😉 )

Typical question:
"I have no idea where to start with licensing etc. I don’t honestly care what the client does with the images, as long as I can also use them in my portfolio. So how does that work?"

Scenario: A client asks you to take pictures for them. Product, commercial, event, whatever.
You do the job to the brief and you make the pictures and you ‘own’ all those images under creative commons copyright law.

For your client to use the images for their intended purpose, they also need to purchase a license for the selected images. Photographers will license for time, usage and exclusivity.

Time.
This can be from 1 day up to unlimited time.

Usage
From 1/4 a subpage on a website, a book cover, a billboard or broadcast on TV.
The potential usage is extremely broad and is normally grouped into braoder definitions

Exclusivity
Normally images are either non exclusive or exclusive to an industry sector only. Very rarely are they exclusive across the board and it’s effectively locking the image down for the client’s use only. But you still have the copyright.

If a photographer sells or signs over the copyright then the new copyright holder canuse and re-sell or license the image as much as they like.

For Photographers AND clients:
To get an idea on expected basic licensing costs, go to a stock library, select a picture and choose the advanced licensing options.
Select a Rights Managed scenario to see how much 1 picture licenses for.

And that’s the very basics.
There’s a lot more to it such as how to relicense and building contracts or working with selling/working in the media and if you want to earn from pictures then you need to know it fully.
[subliminal message]buy BTL ….. buy BTL[/subliminal message]

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Footnote: The question included "I don’t honestly care what the client does with the images".
We should. One of the main reasons the industry is falling apart is because the uneducated are ‘giving away’ their pictures for virtually nothing.

But there’s a simple fix:
https://www.callumw.com/blog/it-only-takes-30bucks-to-make-a-profit-from-photography-and-save-the-industry-at-the-same-time/

Get the book
Read the book
Know your rights
Protect your business and more importantly protect your clients 🙂