Legal Eagles,

I have a query.

If you engage a professional photographer to take photo's of a special event for you (say a wedding or christening for example) and you pay well over $5000 for the privledge, including purchasing photo's etc who owns the copyright?

An aquaintance of mine paid top dollar for a photographer for an event, and suddenly a year later is wandering through a newsagency and sees a picture from the event on the front cover of the magazine.

Nobody requested permission, nobody even informed them.

Any rights?

man, from what i know, the photographer nearly always owns the rights

was checking out a mates 6grand album last weekend and he was telling us the photgrapher has used some of their shots for promotional purposes in mags as well

That sort of thing should be worked out beforehand I believe between the hirer and the photographer or I think they are well within their rights to seek publishing for any pictures they take.

It's pretty poor form to not ask peoples permission though.

Public sector or non for profit organisations I know must ask permission of the apropriate people before publishing any pics taken.

Normally u have to sign a waiver to allow your image to be used by the photogapher. That's why celebrities sue when old photos of them in bikinis is suddenly sold to magazines etc. If u rang any firm they'd be able to tell u the answer straight away.

The photos taken are the photographers, unless they sign a release form and transfer the copyright to the customer. But even then it depends if the copyright is enclusive or nonexclusive.

They pay for the photographers skill. The amount of money they pay doesn't mean they automaticly get the rights to the originals.

Why would they enter into an agreement without knowing the in's and outs?

My Cock: a release form only enters the issue when they will be using the photographs taken on their website, make public, or use for furture work they submit to competitions, sell, etc etc

last edited by Kat at 11:26:44 17/Sep/06

I suspect you're right and that they have no rights, but surely it would be best to ask permission or simply inform them in advance.

What if some blokes wife dies and he sees her picture on the cover of "Ideal Bride" a few weeks later, Or your kid dies of cancer and its on the cover of a Baby Mag?

simple manners wouldn't go astray.

sue for breach of contract on the grounds of unilateral mistake!
go go go~!

that's a lot of coin

spidz: manners?? In business? Business is usually black and white. It isn't about 'being nice'. If he requested the services of a photographer he would have signed an agreement. Within that agreement it would be all laid out.


Ge him to read the paperwork. Why does this even need to be said?!?!?!

Kat: No s*** - that's what has happened here.

f***, Kat giving legal advice - QGL has reached an all new low.

Look up Model Release Forms on the internet

And let me guess. By 'mate' you mean you don't you?

Cause you only got married a year ago or so.

Spidz got owned!!! HAW HAW

last edited by Kat at 12:04:25 17/Sep/06

photos taken for "private or domestic purposes" the client is the copyright owner unless otherwise agreed.

hmm, will have to see if he has a copy of the contract, if there even was one.

Even if there was no physical contract that he signed, the legal contract he had with the photographer would be one based on what is normally in a contract of that nature. If contracts for wedding photography or whatever generally have a clause saying the photographer wont use the photos without permission, he could argue that he thought that would be an implied term of his contract given established trade custom.
I think that would be the best way to go.

The law of copyright provides that it rests with the artist unless specifically provided otherwise. Same goes with architects for example.

So unless you specifically provided in your contract that copyright was assigned to you then it has not been. sorry.

spidz, read your pm or pm me

basically the consumer owns the copyrights CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF.


but photographers will put lines int he contract saying that they own it. after 2 years the copyright expires and you have the ability to get those photos for free.

now, what some photographers will do is charge you for negatives, film paper, etc in order to recoup from this.

i found this out as we have just organised a photographer for our wedding, and i spoke to him in great detail about who owns what and the legalities of it.

Photographer at my sisters wedding wanted to use photos she took for her wedding for her promo gear, but asked her first.

My sister agreed.

But my sister was pissed off when it turned out she wanted to use pictures of the parents pet dog ! heh

$6000 for photos?

That's daylight robbery. WTF? Does the photographer blow you as well?

Also ...

http://www.nla.gov.au/pict/pic_copyright.html

my photographer is costing 1300 bucks, thats for 5 hours or so of photos, 20 pages of photos in an album, and if family members order 500 dollars worth of photos, we get all the photos on cd, thats colour corrected and in full resolution.

no other profoessional (ie not backyard jobbies) photographers would give us full reoslution photos on cd, which is what we wanted. not so we could print them out ourselves, but so we could store it on our computers and online, which is where we look at photos mostly. playing them through the tv and what not.

6000 bucks is melbourne/sydney prices, but a couple of the profesisional jobs here charge that much

The law of copyright provides that it rests with the artist unless specifically provided otherwise. Same goes with architects for example.

My fathers an architect and Im working for his firm at the moment. All designs and drawing documentation are copyrighted for the company and not the client. We have not had a circumstance arise that would make this different.
This also comes into legal play with professional indemnity insurance etc.
Its a bit different than photos though. People come to an architect to get an original and well designed home. For an architect, you get paid x amount of money to create the design. You wouldnt want the client to then own it and make money by selling it off. Also if someone else had the rights you might see the same design be reused more than once which would reflect on the companies reputation etc.
The best way to explain it is that you way for the time and work to be done, not the actual design.
Sorry didntr explain that very well but hopefully you get the point.

Photos being of such a personal nature though, I mean I really think you should specify as they client that you have rights over the images.

yer, old mates album was without a doubt the best photos ive ever seen

also, took the photographer 12 months to get all the photos together and printed for them

lucky they werent in any hurry

What does copyright have to do with release? I'm speaking purely from my experience at the Children's Hospital, but it doesn't matter who the f*** is taking photos or filming, you always need to get parental consent to print photos of kiddies. Obvioulsly it could be different for adults, but they would still at least need to verbally agree to the use of the photos, which may have been done when they hired the photographer.

When I went to see Something For Kate two weeks ago there was a media photographer who went around tkaing photos of randoms, and someone following them taking down all the details of whoever was photographed.

I can't get someone to pay me money to take photos of them, FOR them, and then turn around and use those photos in a different publication without consent from the people photographed.

I guess the real question is, are you sure there wasn't a clause in the agreement, or that it was verbally agreed that photos could be used for other purposes? Unfortunately if couples aren't on the ball they probably wouldn't read much into, "Photos taken can be published at the photographers discretion."

You have to get a release. All my clients sign one and if they don't I simply cannot use their pictures for anything but their package.

But as said earlier, sounds like it was a clause in the contract that the 'clients' didn't bother reading.

last edited by Kat at 09:46:01 19/Sep/06

Our photographer used a couple of our photos in magazines etc, but we didn't care.

orbs likes to flaunt his hawtness around