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Copyright & Portrait Photography
By Pywrit | March 30, 2008
One of the most misunderstood areas of photography is how copyright law applies to photos. While there are a number of books on the subject, I’ll give you a brief and simple rundown of how it works.
First, the copyright belongs to the photographer, not the subject - even if the photographer was hired to take portraits. Basically, this means that the customer is not allowed to distribute the photos without the photographer’s consent and they are certainly not allowed to sell the photos . . . period! There is a caveat to this: When a photographer is hired to take photos, especially in the case of portraits, there is an expectation that the customer will be distributing those photos to family, friends, maybe using them online, etc. I don’t think there is a court in the U.S. that would uphold a claim if a customer posted their professionally taken portrait on a website or business card. Of course, I don’t think there is a photographer who would have a problem with this anyway . . . especially if they are given credit for the photo.
“If the photographer holds the copyright, then what is to prevent him/her from selling photos of me?” you ask. Well, there is a provision for right to privacy which states that the subject has the right to privacy and the selling and/or public display of photos without authorization violates that right to privacy. Photographers who plan to sell photos will always have the people in a photograph sign a Model Release, which is a legal form that states that the subject of the photos knows the images will be sold and/or used publicly and gives their permission to the photographer to do so. It also protects the photographer in cases in which the buyer of a photo uses the images in a way for which the subject of the photo has an objection. Basically, it puts all the blame on how a purchased photo is used on the photo buyer. As photographers, we cannot always know how the buyers of our photos plan to use the work and, just like in the rest of the world, there are those few who will lie or steal in order to get what they want. Most portrait photographers also have a provision in their contracts that state that, by signing the contract, the photographer may use the photos in their portfolio. This is standard - for how can a photographer show how good he/she is if he/she cannot show people his/her work?
The copyright can be transferred to the subject, but expect to pay a hefty price for that. Even in portrait photography, expect the photographer to at least double his price if you want to own the copyrights to the photos, and it will probably be considerably more than that.
While the whole copyright issue can be distressing to a small number of people who worry about such things, the reality is that the vast majority of photographers are good, hard-working people. They are not out there to do you wrong. Anything that would hurt their professional reputation would cost them far more than they would ever make by being dishonest or deceitful. My advice is to not worry about copyrights unless you are a professional model.
Topics: On Photography |