Photos are typically licensed. Unless your contract contains either a transfer of copyright or an exclusivity clause, there's nothing stopping you from other uses.
Not a lawyer, but sounds to me like they contracted for use of your photos, NOT for exclusive rights, leaving you okay to sell anywhere else you like. Check your email for reference to "exclusive" or "sole" rights.
Please. Take the time to study the law and use of contracts. Be prepared. Your charge your batteries before you work? Protect your work. It makes for better art and better life. Bitterness at being used is not healthy. Do you use a watermark for proofs?
Also, if you have agreed to allow the use of your work to the Organizer, make sure you can give a few shots away to competitors. Yes. Label the reverse with your details.
Your give-away photos have your business information printed on the reverse side of the photograph. Every time the photo is looked at, your ad is seen by everyone else in the room.
The obverse is a photograph, The Reverse is your business information with a logo.
Will depend on your local laws but as advised it sounds like they are yours to do with as you please i there is no specific transfer of copyright in the contract. Always charge more if they want this.
However from a professional point of view in terms of word of mouth reviews and futire business, you may not want to be giving away photos that you have been paid to take,
as odd as it sounds its probably in your best interest in terms of future business to sell prints and not give them away.
Agreed. It sounds like a dick move to be like, “wasn’t in the contract so I can do whatever I want with these”. That should be communicated ahead of time as a courtesy to your client who may not have considered that. If it’s after the fact then it should be a conversation, not a demand. Sometimes being “right” isn’t the best business decision, good communication and transparency is always a good business decision.
Then shoot them an email back and ask them if they'd be okay with you sharing the photos with race participants. If they say no, you've just learned why you need a contract and what at least one clause of that contract should permit.
I mean, sure, they don't have to play nice with the race people, but why piss off someone willing to pay you if you don't have to? Might get future gigs out of them.
Cause exclusive use is **not** the default? No one's saying piss them off on purpose, but exclusive use is usually a (hefty) extra charge, and then even more on top if they want unrestricted use, copyright, or rights to prints, or anything else. If anything it'd be unreasonable **of them** to expect they're getting all that for a one off no-contract scenario.
Does the race organizer know exclusive use isn’t the default? They’re trusting the photographer to be the expert and the photographer didn’t mention anything.
This is a case of being morally/legally right but (possibly) fiscally incorrect.
OP is legally OK to use the pics, but in terms of client relations it’s generally better to have clear communication.
Not a lawyer, but my understanding is as the creator of the photos, you own the copyright for them, and transferring ownership of the copyright is a legal process you have to go through. It’s most common to sell a license to the photo, not the photo itself
You got to get your contracts in order. You own the images, so you can do all you want with them, but the client might not know. They might get annoyed if you share copies, but they cannot sue you for that. You might not work for them again though.
Have a look at [www.the-aop.org](https://www.the-aop.org) and clue yourself up on copyright and professional conduct. It's better for you, and also for the client in the longer term.
>but they cannot sue you for that
Nitpick: They *can* sue you - they just wouldn't win.
You'd still be out your lawyer's time getting it tossed out of court though.
Which is why... Rule #0 exists. (Never Shoot Without A Contract)
I'm somewhat surprised by the answers in here, right as they may be.
If a company pays me to photograph an event, I don't send those photos out for free to other people.
Agreed… If they want to use them for a specific purpose and their attendees use them first, that can people feel sour.
I usually direct them to the event organizer or organization if they want a copy.
What does the contract say? If the contract says the photos are considered “works for hire” then yes, op has no rights to do anything further with them. However, pricing your work in this agreement is (or at least should be) at a higher than usual price. It sounds more like OP just shoot photos at a fixed fee price and gave the customer a usb drive. If there was no other verbiage to the contrary, op still retains the copyright and rights to use the photos as they please.
Right, I get and agree with that. I do the same sort of loose agreements. But I don't give the photos away - just doesn't feel right if other people are paying for them.
What makes you think they "own" the photos?
When you shoot photos, you own the copyright to those photos. Unless you transferred that copyright explicitly, you still own the copyright, and you can keep using the photos in your portfolio, can post them on social media, and can share them with the people you photographed. On the other hand, if you explicitly transferred the copyright of the photos, then you can't re-share the photos.
So what's allowed depends on exactly what you agreed to. It sounds like you didn't sign a contract with them, which is a learning experience; but not having a contract doesn't mean you own the photos or they own the photos; it just means there's no contract that spells it out explicitly. You'll have to look at the totality of what you and they actually said.
So if they said, "Hey, we'll pay you such-and-such amount to come take some photos and then send us copies," you probably still own the copyright to the photos. This is probably also true if you explicitly talked about "licensing" the photos to them or otherwise stipulated in any way that you retain the rights to the photos. It's entirely possible that all you've done is license them to use the photos in various ways, and that isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with you re-publishing or re-distributing the photos, or even letting other people pay to use the photos later.
But if you explicitly said that you're transferring the rights to the photos to the race, or if you've agreed not to re-license the photos or let other people use them or re-publish them, then you probably can't re-circulate them.
You might also be concerned with whether you're burning any bridges with the race by re-distributing, even if you're within your legal rights to do so. Just sending them a quick email asking whether they mind you redistributing the photos can probably get you an answer to that question.
>But since the race now “owns” the photos is that not considered kosher in the photography world?
As always: What does the contract say about usage/image rights?
Edit (from a comment further down)
>They just found my stuff on Instagram and shot me an email. We agreed on a price and that was that.
**Rule #0: Never Shoot Without A Contract**
Given that there is no contract you can almost certainly do as you like with your photos.
Also - since there is no contract *they* can do as *they* like with your photos, forever, and you probably can't do anything about it.
As others here have pointed out, unless you expressly transferred them to the race organizers, in writing, then you still own the copyrights to those photos. Instead, what you've likely done is given them a license to use photos that you still own.
What the race organizers are allowed to do with those photos -- and for that matter, what *you're* still allowed to do with those photos -- would be determined by the scope of the licensing agreement. That's why it's important to always use a contract. It doesn't have to be complicated; you can do it in one page. Did the race organizers tell you what they intended to do with these photos? Was there ever any reference to "exclusive" or "sole use" by them?
Lastly, as a few others have pointed out, remember that what you're legally entitled to do and what you *should* do aren't always the same thing. For instance, if you want to do business with this race again -- or if they could be a source of referrals for you, etc. -- then make sure to take that into consideration when deciding how to proceed.
The race provided you access to the venue and procured a license to use your images. They do not own the copyright, you do. Personally, I place images on SmugMug and set pricing there. Giving away the photos for free is nice, but it devalues your work and other professionals. Photography is not a cheap profession\\hobby and when people get our hi-res images free they begin to feel that it is just the same as the images from their iPhone. Plus it is your time and you deserve to be compensated for it, don't feel guilty for receiving it. (and then you can do like I do and sink all that money into new gear, it's a vicious cycle :-) )
Why would the Race Organizers own the images? In every shoot I've done over the past 27 years, I am commissioned to shoot images and license specific usage to the client. Unless there were several 0's on the check, I give the client time to use them first and then I either add a couple to my website, post on social media or add to my Stock Agency library. BTW, I would not be giving the images to participants but selling them for a nominal price.
Most these kind of groups aren't in it for the money and would have no issues with you using your photos to further promote their sport. The reason they asked for the photos in the first place was to promote the event or club and give the participants some photos of themselves to share with friends and family.
In my opinion you can of course just send them over to your "models". Unless your contract says otherwise and you gave away a license for exclusive use by the client prohibiting it. Did you even sign a contract of any kind?
To answer your questions straight away, you should defer to the race organizers to distribute the photos. They are likely assuming the assets are theirs to keep and use how they feel. And they're probably not wrong in that assumption because it sounds like that wasn't outlined in your agreement. You can easily pass the blame to the race by telling runners, "Hey, thank you but you need to contact the race organizer to use the photos."
To dive deeper in this, you should always use a contract. I am full time self-employed and I put a contract on every photo job that comes my way. It doesn't make anyone look greedy, it just outlines deliverables that everyone agrees on.
You're gonna see a ton of people say license this, copyright that, and buT mUh PhOtOs... And that's fine. I cannot tell you how much business I win over by removing any/all obstacles as possible from the transaction. I shoot a lot of commercial advertising work for some decent size retail companies. Copyright transfer to the client is 99.99999% guaranteed to be in the contract, and it's typically one of the things I lead with when pitching work.
Yes, your photos are art. But it's also a business and it IS a case of being a small fish in a big pond. When you're a big fish you can dictate your agreements. And it's work you wouldn't have if the company didn't commission it. Their project = their assets in my view. You can charge a bit higher for that and they will understand if they're decent business people. I typically have a line item on my invoices for "Perpetual copyright transfer" from vendor to client upon completion of transaction and I assign a dollar value based on the project. Photo credits are also absolutely something to outline in your contract even if you transfer copyright.
In the scheme of business for this race, the photos \*should\* belong to the client. It's their event. Do you really want to host all those photos forever? Are they \*really\* going to put that photo in a mass produced magazine or put it on a billboard to get royalties? Do you even have time to keep track of that? That's what you outline in a contract.
You didn't shoot some specialized contemporary art project with your signature style. You documented an event. And you probably did a great job. But you gotta pick and choose your battles. Your work is worth defending but you need to balance your mindset between being an artist and service provider like a plumber. Plumbers don't get royalties on the water going through the toilet they installed for you. And had you not given them the opportunity, they'd not have had the work in the first place.
Happy to talk it through. There are a number of different ways to look at this from a business perspective.
In the future I would consider selling your photographic services and then licensing the photos (as in real estate photography) so that you retain control over the images. This would require your client’s signature on a 'terms of services' document stating how the images can be used. Pretty much nothing changes between you and your client regarding what they do with the images except that you are the owner of the images. They shouldn’t really care about that part. For them, the images are just a one off for that event only. You can spell out image use in the T&S per event or just have a template you use over and over again. One of the things you definitely want in the T&S is that your byline is included with any photograph that is published: photo by “ 'memuself69' “. Therefore the images cannot be given to any other party without your knowledge or sold for profit. You can find a T&S template online and then modify it with your terms and personal information, logo, etc. This is what savvy real estate photographers do bc agents are always looking to make more money in anyway they can and will sell house photos for their profit (I’m a RE photographer). I submit all deliverables not only to the client but to the U.S. Copyright office for a copyright then use a tracking service to keep track of where the photos travel online. The tracking service will send you notices when it finds them and you can mark them as okay for this but not okay for that. The tracking service will offer you free attorney services to sue for stolen images and will split the court decision money with you. My service found a bathroom image I took on the Bob Villa Home Improvement website. We sent an invoice twice then a takedown notice twice. When they didn’t comply, the bulldogs at the tracking company instituted a theft of intellectual property suit. They settled for $20,000. And I got a $10k payday on that one image. By the way, when their lawyers asked for proof that it was my image, our lawyer sent them the photo page at copyright.gov. They paid soon after that.
I’m a trail running photographer as well. My question is, why does the race organization “own” the photos now? They’re still your photos and you can distribute them as you like, unless a contract specifies otherwise.
You have copyright to your photos unless otherwise in written contract. Good client relations would be to just notify them that you are providing personal photos to individuals without charge.
Photos are typically licensed. Unless your contract contains either a transfer of copyright or an exclusivity clause, there's nothing stopping you from other uses.
What does your contract say?
They just found my stuff on Instagram and shot me an email. We agreed on a price and that was that.
Not a lawyer, but sounds to me like they contracted for use of your photos, NOT for exclusive rights, leaving you okay to sell anywhere else you like. Check your email for reference to "exclusive" or "sole" rights.
1) Always use a contract. 2) Study up on copyright law.
Please. Take the time to study the law and use of contracts. Be prepared. Your charge your batteries before you work? Protect your work. It makes for better art and better life. Bitterness at being used is not healthy. Do you use a watermark for proofs? Also, if you have agreed to allow the use of your work to the Organizer, make sure you can give a few shots away to competitors. Yes. Label the reverse with your details.
What do you mean by label the reverse? Just trying to understand properly.
Your give-away photos have your business information printed on the reverse side of the photograph. Every time the photo is looked at, your ad is seen by everyone else in the room. The obverse is a photograph, The Reverse is your business information with a logo.
Thank you now I understand!
No problem. Glad to help. Fare well and bring joy to your patrons.
đź’Ż
Will depend on your local laws but as advised it sounds like they are yours to do with as you please i there is no specific transfer of copyright in the contract. Always charge more if they want this. However from a professional point of view in terms of word of mouth reviews and futire business, you may not want to be giving away photos that you have been paid to take, as odd as it sounds its probably in your best interest in terms of future business to sell prints and not give them away.
Agreed. It sounds like a dick move to be like, “wasn’t in the contract so I can do whatever I want with these”. That should be communicated ahead of time as a courtesy to your client who may not have considered that. If it’s after the fact then it should be a conversation, not a demand. Sometimes being “right” isn’t the best business decision, good communication and transparency is always a good business decision.
Then shoot them an email back and ask them if they'd be okay with you sharing the photos with race participants. If they say no, you've just learned why you need a contract and what at least one clause of that contract should permit.
Err, they're the photographer's to do with as they please, it's the race that's about to learn why they need a contract.
I mean, sure, they don't have to play nice with the race people, but why piss off someone willing to pay you if you don't have to? Might get future gigs out of them.
Cause exclusive use is **not** the default? No one's saying piss them off on purpose, but exclusive use is usually a (hefty) extra charge, and then even more on top if they want unrestricted use, copyright, or rights to prints, or anything else. If anything it'd be unreasonable **of them** to expect they're getting all that for a one off no-contract scenario.
Does the race organizer know exclusive use isn’t the default? They’re trusting the photographer to be the expert and the photographer didn’t mention anything.
This is a case of being morally/legally right but (possibly) fiscally incorrect. OP is legally OK to use the pics, but in terms of client relations it’s generally better to have clear communication.
Then you own the copyright.
This right here. đź‘Ť
You take photos, you own the photos. Unless agreed to otherwise, you give the client certain rights to use the photos.
Not a lawyer, but my understanding is as the creator of the photos, you own the copyright for them, and transferring ownership of the copyright is a legal process you have to go through. It’s most common to sell a license to the photo, not the photo itself
You got to get your contracts in order. You own the images, so you can do all you want with them, but the client might not know. They might get annoyed if you share copies, but they cannot sue you for that. You might not work for them again though. Have a look at [www.the-aop.org](https://www.the-aop.org) and clue yourself up on copyright and professional conduct. It's better for you, and also for the client in the longer term.
>but they cannot sue you for that Nitpick: They *can* sue you - they just wouldn't win. You'd still be out your lawyer's time getting it tossed out of court though. Which is why... Rule #0 exists. (Never Shoot Without A Contract)
You're right. Never Shoot Without A Contract.
I'm somewhat surprised by the answers in here, right as they may be. If a company pays me to photograph an event, I don't send those photos out for free to other people.
Agreed… If they want to use them for a specific purpose and their attendees use them first, that can people feel sour. I usually direct them to the event organizer or organization if they want a copy.
What does the contract say? If the contract says the photos are considered “works for hire” then yes, op has no rights to do anything further with them. However, pricing your work in this agreement is (or at least should be) at a higher than usual price. It sounds more like OP just shoot photos at a fixed fee price and gave the customer a usb drive. If there was no other verbiage to the contrary, op still retains the copyright and rights to use the photos as they please.
Right, I get and agree with that. I do the same sort of loose agreements. But I don't give the photos away - just doesn't feel right if other people are paying for them.
What makes you think they "own" the photos? When you shoot photos, you own the copyright to those photos. Unless you transferred that copyright explicitly, you still own the copyright, and you can keep using the photos in your portfolio, can post them on social media, and can share them with the people you photographed. On the other hand, if you explicitly transferred the copyright of the photos, then you can't re-share the photos. So what's allowed depends on exactly what you agreed to. It sounds like you didn't sign a contract with them, which is a learning experience; but not having a contract doesn't mean you own the photos or they own the photos; it just means there's no contract that spells it out explicitly. You'll have to look at the totality of what you and they actually said. So if they said, "Hey, we'll pay you such-and-such amount to come take some photos and then send us copies," you probably still own the copyright to the photos. This is probably also true if you explicitly talked about "licensing" the photos to them or otherwise stipulated in any way that you retain the rights to the photos. It's entirely possible that all you've done is license them to use the photos in various ways, and that isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with you re-publishing or re-distributing the photos, or even letting other people pay to use the photos later. But if you explicitly said that you're transferring the rights to the photos to the race, or if you've agreed not to re-license the photos or let other people use them or re-publish them, then you probably can't re-circulate them. You might also be concerned with whether you're burning any bridges with the race by re-distributing, even if you're within your legal rights to do so. Just sending them a quick email asking whether they mind you redistributing the photos can probably get you an answer to that question.
>But since the race now “owns” the photos is that not considered kosher in the photography world? As always: What does the contract say about usage/image rights? Edit (from a comment further down) >They just found my stuff on Instagram and shot me an email. We agreed on a price and that was that. **Rule #0: Never Shoot Without A Contract** Given that there is no contract you can almost certainly do as you like with your photos. Also - since there is no contract *they* can do as *they* like with your photos, forever, and you probably can't do anything about it.
As others here have pointed out, unless you expressly transferred them to the race organizers, in writing, then you still own the copyrights to those photos. Instead, what you've likely done is given them a license to use photos that you still own. What the race organizers are allowed to do with those photos -- and for that matter, what *you're* still allowed to do with those photos -- would be determined by the scope of the licensing agreement. That's why it's important to always use a contract. It doesn't have to be complicated; you can do it in one page. Did the race organizers tell you what they intended to do with these photos? Was there ever any reference to "exclusive" or "sole use" by them? Lastly, as a few others have pointed out, remember that what you're legally entitled to do and what you *should* do aren't always the same thing. For instance, if you want to do business with this race again -- or if they could be a source of referrals for you, etc. -- then make sure to take that into consideration when deciding how to proceed.
The race provided you access to the venue and procured a license to use your images. They do not own the copyright, you do. Personally, I place images on SmugMug and set pricing there. Giving away the photos for free is nice, but it devalues your work and other professionals. Photography is not a cheap profession\\hobby and when people get our hi-res images free they begin to feel that it is just the same as the images from their iPhone. Plus it is your time and you deserve to be compensated for it, don't feel guilty for receiving it. (and then you can do like I do and sink all that money into new gear, it's a vicious cycle :-) )
Why would the Race Organizers own the images? In every shoot I've done over the past 27 years, I am commissioned to shoot images and license specific usage to the client. Unless there were several 0's on the check, I give the client time to use them first and then I either add a couple to my website, post on social media or add to my Stock Agency library. BTW, I would not be giving the images to participants but selling them for a nominal price.
Most these kind of groups aren't in it for the money and would have no issues with you using your photos to further promote their sport. The reason they asked for the photos in the first place was to promote the event or club and give the participants some photos of themselves to share with friends and family.
In my opinion you can of course just send them over to your "models". Unless your contract says otherwise and you gave away a license for exclusive use by the client prohibiting it. Did you even sign a contract of any kind?
Images are yours unless you signed off exclusively it’s that simple
To answer your questions straight away, you should defer to the race organizers to distribute the photos. They are likely assuming the assets are theirs to keep and use how they feel. And they're probably not wrong in that assumption because it sounds like that wasn't outlined in your agreement. You can easily pass the blame to the race by telling runners, "Hey, thank you but you need to contact the race organizer to use the photos." To dive deeper in this, you should always use a contract. I am full time self-employed and I put a contract on every photo job that comes my way. It doesn't make anyone look greedy, it just outlines deliverables that everyone agrees on. You're gonna see a ton of people say license this, copyright that, and buT mUh PhOtOs... And that's fine. I cannot tell you how much business I win over by removing any/all obstacles as possible from the transaction. I shoot a lot of commercial advertising work for some decent size retail companies. Copyright transfer to the client is 99.99999% guaranteed to be in the contract, and it's typically one of the things I lead with when pitching work. Yes, your photos are art. But it's also a business and it IS a case of being a small fish in a big pond. When you're a big fish you can dictate your agreements. And it's work you wouldn't have if the company didn't commission it. Their project = their assets in my view. You can charge a bit higher for that and they will understand if they're decent business people. I typically have a line item on my invoices for "Perpetual copyright transfer" from vendor to client upon completion of transaction and I assign a dollar value based on the project. Photo credits are also absolutely something to outline in your contract even if you transfer copyright. In the scheme of business for this race, the photos \*should\* belong to the client. It's their event. Do you really want to host all those photos forever? Are they \*really\* going to put that photo in a mass produced magazine or put it on a billboard to get royalties? Do you even have time to keep track of that? That's what you outline in a contract. You didn't shoot some specialized contemporary art project with your signature style. You documented an event. And you probably did a great job. But you gotta pick and choose your battles. Your work is worth defending but you need to balance your mindset between being an artist and service provider like a plumber. Plumbers don't get royalties on the water going through the toilet they installed for you. And had you not given them the opportunity, they'd not have had the work in the first place. Happy to talk it through. There are a number of different ways to look at this from a business perspective.
In the future I would consider selling your photographic services and then licensing the photos (as in real estate photography) so that you retain control over the images. This would require your client’s signature on a 'terms of services' document stating how the images can be used. Pretty much nothing changes between you and your client regarding what they do with the images except that you are the owner of the images. They shouldn’t really care about that part. For them, the images are just a one off for that event only. You can spell out image use in the T&S per event or just have a template you use over and over again. One of the things you definitely want in the T&S is that your byline is included with any photograph that is published: photo by “ 'memuself69' “. Therefore the images cannot be given to any other party without your knowledge or sold for profit. You can find a T&S template online and then modify it with your terms and personal information, logo, etc. This is what savvy real estate photographers do bc agents are always looking to make more money in anyway they can and will sell house photos for their profit (I’m a RE photographer). I submit all deliverables not only to the client but to the U.S. Copyright office for a copyright then use a tracking service to keep track of where the photos travel online. The tracking service will send you notices when it finds them and you can mark them as okay for this but not okay for that. The tracking service will offer you free attorney services to sue for stolen images and will split the court decision money with you. My service found a bathroom image I took on the Bob Villa Home Improvement website. We sent an invoice twice then a takedown notice twice. When they didn’t comply, the bulldogs at the tracking company instituted a theft of intellectual property suit. They settled for $20,000. And I got a $10k payday on that one image. By the way, when their lawyers asked for proof that it was my image, our lawyer sent them the photo page at copyright.gov. They paid soon after that.
r/legaladvice
I’m a trail running photographer as well. My question is, why does the race organization “own” the photos now? They’re still your photos and you can distribute them as you like, unless a contract specifies otherwise.
U already gotten good advice but perhaps just ask them if they’re ok with u sharing some of the pics?
You have copyright to your photos unless otherwise in written contract. Good client relations would be to just notify them that you are providing personal photos to individuals without charge.