Perhaps make some extra money to help buy that new camera you’ve been eyeing?
Before you consider selling your photos, there are a few things that need to be answered first.
1 Who?
2) What?
3) Where?
Who do you want to sell to? There are many markets for photography.
Local merchants, retail, calendar companies, post cards, newspapers, magazines, trade journals.
The list is much longer; but I hope you get the idea. Until you identify who it is you want to sell to, you are like many others; hoping someone will find and notice you. It simply does not work that way. I’m sure it has happened, but photographers who (sell) their work find clients; not the other way around.
What do you want to sell? Prints, digital media, packages? There is a long list here too.
Fort Wayne Wedding Photographer
Finally; where do you want to sell? In your own backyard, city wide, state wide, national or world wide? All are possibilities.
One of the most important concepts for any photographer to grasp is that we do NOT sell our images.
Get the word “sell” out of your mind right now.
Photographers “LICENSE” their images.
So what’s the difference?
The moment we photographers take the picture, something wonderful happens.
WE OWN IT!
The United States Government recognizes this. It all falls under the law giving us full ownership to our images....This is called COPYRIGHTS!
We control who we allow to (USE) our images; we allow or disallow certain uses of the images; we control who may (use) them and for what purpose and for how long. We maintain full control at all times of our creative works.
No one has the right to (COPY) your images unless you say so. That “say so” is spelled out in a (LICENSE) agreement. It’s legal and it’s binding to the licensor and the licensee.
How about an example?
Let’s say you just took a magnificent photo of the Grand Canyon.
It is so creative you feel someone might pay you for it; so you send it off to a few magazines in our example and hope for the best.
A while later, one of the magazines contacts you and say they would love to put it on the front cover of their magazine. Their letter to you says they will pay you for your image.
Now what do you do?
Let’s pretend in their letter to you, you read the following:
“You agree to transfer all copyrights to the (XYZ) company in exchange for two hundred dollars”
Red flags should be going up all over the place. If you agree to such a request, you no longer hold the copyrights; you are no longer the owner of the image. Further; it is though you never took the photo; they did!
This is why we photographers license our imagery; to 1) keep control of the image, (Copyrights) and 2) to allow ourselves the possibility of future licensing to others; which they all pay for.
In part II I will discuss just what a copyright is and what it is not. The legalese can become quite boggling, but I will attempt to make it understandable in everyday language. Speaking of copyrights; ya’ know that little symbol many of us place on our images?...
©
Did you know unless you register your copyright with the United States Copyright office you have very little legal recourse if someone infringes on your copyright? So why bother place the copyright symbol on our photos? We’ll talk about that later as well in part II.
Back to our example.
So the magazine wants to use our image on the front cover. How cool is that?
Wait!
What magazine is it?
What is the circulation?
What is the (use) of the image? Commercial advertising, editorial, educational?
Until we know that, we have no idea what to charge for licensing our image to them.
Do you the photographer get any written credit for the image within the publication?
When I license my images, written credit is very important to me. In the industry we call these (tear sheets).
We (tear) out the page of whatever we were published in. This proves we’ve been published. This is very helpful when we approach other publishers. It shows we have been published, and it shows we know how to work within the industry.
OK. Let’s say the magazine is a tourist magazine that reaches 100,000 people.
The intent of the magazine is to get people to come and visit the Grand Canyon.
Inside the magazine are all sorts of advertisements such as “Joe’s Whitewater Adventures”...“The Big Fish” boating company etc..etc.
I bet all those companies who took out advert space in this magazine had to pay for it.
Your awesome photo will no doubt attract people to buy the magazine. This is why YOUR photo was selected by the publisher/editor; they see (Value) in it. How much value becomes the question we need to answer eventually.
You now need to write a license agreement that will allow and restrict how the photo is to be used along with your fee for the license. Pretty cool huh? The coolest part is that you did NOT (sell) the image which leaves you the right to (Re-license) it in the future.
Some licensing possibilities are:
1) How long will your photo run in the magazine?
2) Exclusive or non-exclusive?
3) Geographic permission Ex: N. American rights only
4) One time rights or more?
Commercial use such as advertising or product endorsements command far more money in licensing fees than editorial use. Editorial is more like a newspaper that reports something news worthy.
No matter what the use is, we as photographers should never relinquish our rights to ownership of our images.
I get questions often from wedding photographers who ask if they should sell their copyrights to the bride & groom. My answer is always the same; absolutely not! Although licensing is rarely done in the wedding photography business, we DO limit the copyright for (Print Rights) to the client.
My contracts read this way when I shoot a wedding. In other words, the bride & groom may make copies and enlargements of the imagery I provide to them, but they may NOT use the photos for profit, commercial. They may not transfer any rights to any party without express written consent from me etc...etc...
I have granted them a small portion of the rights granted to me by the United States Government under copyright law.
In Part II, we will look at the strengths and weaknesses of our copyrights as photographers as well as what we can do if someone steals our images. Theft of images is occurring at a alarming rate with internet theft being the biggest problem. Social networking sites where many of us post images are subject to theft of our images. What you can do about it depends how well you protect your images both technically and legally.
One final point & a warning
It concerns photo contests so many of us want to enter online. Sure; you might get your photo published as the contest winner; perhaps win a cash award or prize; but doing so may place you in jeopardy legally and financially all the while giving up ALL your rights to your photo!Please..Please read all the (TERMS & CONDITIONS) of the contest!
More and more, many contests are nothing more than what we photographers refer to as a (rights grab.)
These less than ethical contest organizers are building their own portfolios for licensing to the highest bidder.
What better way to get thousands of images than lure unsuspecting amateurs to a contest with promises of rewards.
If anyone has questions on this topic or others, please post them and I will try to answer.
If nothing else, I hope we all learned not to sell our images..License them.
My Portfolio
2 comments:
The copyright information is something I knew about but was not sure how to register. Can you tell us how we do that?
Thanks for a informative post.
Great site.
My wife & I were looking for art to decorate our walls in our new home.
Thanks so much.
ps: do you have limited editions?
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