Licensing photographs for use on a web site

[rcarca]

A friend wants to "buy" three pictures to use on her commercial website. Anyone have experience of doing this? How much is reasonable to charge? What licensing pitfalls should I watch out for?

Thanks

Richard

[Trevoreast]

Re: Licensing photographs for use on a web site

Hi Richard,
Stock photography websites are good source of info on the types of licences, prices and associated legal issues. Much better than “have a go forum lawyers” imho.

It’s good to ask for personal experiences however, you run the risk of getting well meaning, but duff advice. I see many images for sale on people’s websites with no T&Cs whatsoever, and selling images that would be rejected by the vast majority of stock sites for legal reasons.

Looks Like the rights managed model RM could work for you in this scenario - it allows for specified use, position ,size and possibly time limit. There are other factors based on circulation for print and hits for websites.

Trev

[Paulstw]

Re: Licensing photographs for use on a web site

Richard, I set up an account on Alamy.com You can upload really high res examples of your images, and companies can buy them on license (rights managed or royalty free) to use as they wish, the more they use them, the more they pay. It's about protection for your art, and if a company do a 25k magazine run with your picture as their front cover you could lose out if you hadn't licensed it correctly.

Took me about a day to get my stuff on there, however you could direct anyone there if you get interest.

Example - A guy took a photo of falling dominoes. He posted it on Alamy. 3 days later a company bought the rights to use that image for a year in a one time publication going out to buyers of something. He got $500 for that.

You upload the pic, and alamy decide how much it's worth to the buyer based on what its use is.

Microsites charge folk cents for images, and while there's a quick turnaround for that, you could have a situation where a company buys your image for cents and mass produces it for a canvas to sell in shops at £40 a pop.

I know that a bit away from a verbal agreement with friends, but it's an option to direct anyone else to your alamy site :)

Paul