Image rights, usage and licensing, in plain English

The invoice is settled. The images are on the server. Eighteen months later somebody asks whether the courtyard shot can go on a hoarding at the site entrance, and nobody in the room knows the answer.

That is the normal state of affairs. Most commissioning briefs specify the shot in detail and the rights not at all. Then the images work, the campaign expands, and the question arrives when the photographer is on another job and the person who booked them has left.

None of this is complicated. It is just rarely written down. Here is the whole thing in one place.

Who owns the photograph

In the UK, the photographer owns the copyright. Not the client, not the person who paid, not the person in the shot. This is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and it is the opposite of what most people assume.

There are two exceptions.

The photographer was an employee and took the picture as part of the job. Then the employer owns it. A freelancer is not an employee, however long you have used them.

Or the copyright was assigned to you in writing and signed. Assignment is a transfer of ownership. It has to be a document. A conversation, an email saying "yours to use", an invoice line reading full rights: none of those transfer copyright.

Absent one of those, the photographer owns the images and you hold a licence to use them. That is not a bad position. It is only a bad position if you did not know you were in it.

What a licence actually grants

A licence is permission to use an image in defined ways. Five variables define it. Every argument about photography rights is an argument about one of these five, and most of them happen because nobody named them at the start.

Media. Where the image can appear. Website, social, print brochure, press, paid advertising, outdoor, third-party portals. These are not one thing. A licence covering your website does not cover a bus shelter.

Territory. UK, Europe, worldwide. For most studio work this is academic, but it stops being academic the moment a scheme is marketed to overseas buyers.

Duration. One year, three years, perpetual. Perpetual means forever. It does not mean exclusive, and it does not mean you own it.

Exclusivity. Whether the photographer can license the same images to anyone else. Non-exclusive is the default. If you need exclusivity, it has to be stated, and under the Act an exclusive licence has to be in writing and signed. On a development shoot this matters more than people expect, because the contractor, the architect, the agent and the funder may all want the same images.

Sub-licensing. Whether you can pass the images to someone else to use. Agents, portals, press, joint venture partners. Assume you cannot unless it says you can.

Get those five written into the brief and the eighteen-month question answers itself.

Buyout is not a legal term

Everybody says it. It appears on invoices. It means nothing on its own.

When a photographer says buyout they usually mean a broad, perpetual, non-exclusive licence across most media. When a client hears buyout they usually mean assignment, meaning the images are now theirs. Those are different things and the gap between them is where the disputes live.

If someone offers you a buyout, ask for it in the five variables above. If they cannot express it that way, it has not been thought about.

Credit, and the UK quirk

Photographers have a right to be identified as the author. In the UK it is not automatic. It has to be asserted in writing, usually in the contract or on the delivery note.

For commercial work most photographers waive it in practice, because a credit line under a kitchen CGI helps nobody. But if credit matters to either side, put it in the agreement. It costs nothing to be explicit and it is awkward to raise afterwards.

The people in the shot

This is a separate question from copyright, and it catches people out.

The UK has no standalone image right. What it has is data protection law, and a recognisable person in a photograph is personal data. If you are using someone's likeness in marketing, you need a lawful basis, and in practice that means a signed model release.

Get releases at the time. Chasing a release from a resident who was crossing the courtyard nine months ago is not a project you want. If a person is genuinely incidental and unrecognisable, the risk is low, but the fix is cheap and the exposure is not.

Children need a parent or guardian to sign, always, without exception. Schools have their own consent frameworks, so ask for the school's rather than imposing your own.

The buildings and the things

Photographing a building from a public place is fine. The Act specifically permits it. There is no such thing as building copyright preventing a photograph taken from the street.

Two things do bite. Access: if you are on private land you need permission from whoever controls it, and that is a condition of entry rather than a copyright question. And trade marks: a logo appearing incidentally in a street scene is fine, the same logo used in a way that suggests endorsement is not.

CGI is a different animal

Rendered images are still copyright works, and the same ownership rules apply to whoever made them. But there is a layer underneath.

A CGI is built from someone else's drawings. The architect owns copyright in those drawings, and the appointment usually sets out what they can be used for. Before commissioning a visual, check that the drawings can be used for marketing. Most appointments allow it. Some do not, and the time to find out is not after the render is signed off.

Then there is the model itself. The 3D model and the final image are separate assets. A licence to use the images does not entitle you to the model files, and if you want the model handed over so a different studio can produce views later, negotiate that at the start. It is a real cost and it will be priced.

Portals and third parties

Anything you upload to a property portal, a jobs board or a press site is governed by that platform's terms as well as your licence. Portals typically require a broad sub-licence to use, reproduce and syndicate what you upload.

So you need the right to sub-license before you upload. If your photography licence is website and social only, putting the same images on a portal is outside it. This is the single most common breach we see, and it is entirely accidental every time.

The five questions

Before any shoot, settle these. In writing, in the brief.

1. Who will own the copyright, and is it a licence or an assignment?
2. Which media are covered, and does that include third-party portals and paid advertising?
3. How long does the licence run?
4. Is it exclusive, and if so, to whom?
5. Can we pass the images to agents, partners or press?

Five lines. They take a minute to write and they close the whole subject.

How we handle it

We license broadly and say so on the quote. Standard terms are perpetual, worldwide, all media including paid and portals, non-exclusive, with sub-licensing to your agents and partners permitted. Exclusivity and assignment are both available and both priced separately, because they are worth something and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

Model releases are collected on the day by us. CGI model files are yours if you want them, quoted at the outset rather than negotiated later.

We would rather have this conversation in the brief than in eighteen months.

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This is how the ground rules generally work, not legal advice. If a specific project turns on the detail, such as a contested asset, an unusual appointment or a scheme with several parties claiming the same images, take proper advice on it.

Commissioning a shoot and want the rights settled before it happens? Send us the brief.