Copyrights & Licensing: When, Why, Who and How?

For commercial individuals please also reference this blog article here.

The Who?

The who is simple, licensing and copyright usages are specifically designed and to be used by commercial individuals/entities/companies and NOT non-commercial individuals such as wedding/senior/private parties/etc. clients. So when do you know you are using images for commercial purposes? Basically ask yourself, I'm I going to earn any revenue of any kind directly and indirectly from the images. If yes, then that is for commercial usage. Such as professional headshots will be sent to a talent agency where that talent agency uses it on paid/professional advertising and that advertises the model (you maybe) and other models within the agency plus the company as a whole earning the company more exposure. Hence why I generally do not work with agency models due to this plus they never want to pay for licensing (models and the agents).

Working with Commercial Photographers: Copyrights

*I'm not a legal professional nor this is legal advice*

A lot of photographers work very differently. Some commercial freelance photographers, especially the non-professional photographers, do not charge for licensing or copyright usage. And some, especially the professional photographers, charge for using their intellectual property (IP), aka copyrighted images, of their work. 

Each shutter (time when the button is hit on the camera) is a creation of a copyrighted image from the person whom owns that camera. In the U.S. there are basically 2 different types of copyrights, 1 that is registered with the copyright office and another that isn't. Both have very different protections, and obviously the one that is registered has a lot more protection of the cases there are any infringements.

Important Facts: Hiring a Commercial Photographer

1. Equipment: When hiring a photographer equipment can or cannot tell you how well the images will come out. Such as if any person who buys $10,000 worth of photography equipment does not mean they will produce very high quality images. It only means they have the opportunity to create high quality images. You will need to know based from the portfolio images presented that is the quality you want to hire for, so you will need an experienced eye to help you hire the right commercial photographer. 

2. Education: Honestly in the photography industry we have “officially” educated and the “non-officially” educated, both are irrelevant because it comes down to skills shown in a portfolio. It is only relevant when photographers hire other photographers for some photography studios. 

3. Rights: 

                  a. When hiring a commercial photographer it is understandably assumed you’d “own” the images as you hired them to do a job. Unfortunately that isn’t true unless it is clearly mentioned in a written contract before the production of the photos. But in most cases is you hire for the labor and production of the photos and then talk about rights. Automatically when a photographer clicks the button on their camera they own the copyrights to that photograph. That photograph, either worthless or worthy images, is considered intellectual property (IP). Just like every other uniquely designed pieces in the world, like car designs, buildings, a person’s face, a logo, or sketch and many, many other types of art. Some photographers could care less about their IP, but the serious photography businesses in the photography industry takes rights very seriously when its mishandled especially when it’s their own work being abused.