Original subtitles

Now that we have our images,

let's talk about licensing.

This is really an important factor in

selling your images and considering selling your images.

This determines who can use your image,

for how long they can use your image,

how they can use it,

who they can give it to,

and whether or not you can sell that image to additional buyers.

As a photographer, you are in charge.

You do make the rules, so to speak.

So you can sell an image as a buyout.

There's the concept of copyright transfer.

When you transfer copyright of one of your images to a buyer,

it grants them exclusive usage perpetually.

So, that image is no longer yours.

You cannot sell it to anyone else.

In some cases, they may even want you to get rid of that photo off of your hard drive.

On the contrary, there is various other ways that you can

grant usage of your image to buyers through limited exclusivity.

You can do exclusive use for web use only,

for print, for a TV commercial,

whatever it is that they want,

and then you make the price according to that usage and

the copyright is still in your name and you can sell the image to other parties.

In addition to exclusive use,

there is, of course, nonexclusive or royalty-free.

This is probably, for me at least,

the most commonly purchased license.

Somebody can purchase your image and they can use it on their blog posts,

they could use on their Instagram,

they can use it on their Facebook page,

on their web page.

They could turn around and have it in a print advertisement.

So, you have to understand that your image can be used in

many different places by the same person or company,

and if you're all right with that and the price is right,

then that is going to be probably the most commonly purchased type of license.

The good thing about this type of license is

that you can sell it to as many people as possible.

Generally, a buyer will understand this

and understand that at the price they're purchasing that particular image,

they are not granted exclusivity,

they are not granted a buyout,

there's going to be no transfer of copyright of that image.

So, the rights belong to you,

they can use it for whatever they see fit,

and you can sell it to as many different buyers as possible.

With this royalty-free purchasing lies

the most lucrative opportunity for most photographers.

The same image can sell one, two,

five,10 times and that image can be seen

across a multitude of platforms and locations by different brands, people, anything.

That's exciting.

So, therein lies the nature,

the spirit of stock photography.

Essentially, it's volume-based.

You might not make $2,000 on every photo.

However, you will sell more photos.

The more you put out there,

the more you'll receive in return.

Eventually, the quality of your work will naturally get better over time with practice,

after practicing on this course.

The goal is to create

this archive of images or add to the archive of images you may already

have that you can use in websites like iStock or Getty images,

Snapwire, and you can just have

this large shop where you are selling images to people all around the world.

Now that we've gone over the importance of your own copyright and licensing,

it's important to be aware of other brands and

trademarks and make sure that when you're shooting and you're framing up these shots,

that you're not inadvertently including

other brands and things that you don't want to be in the final product.

You probably don't want to inadvertently have a brand who is

purchasing your photo endorsing another brand or vice versa.

You might wonder why some photographers are seemingly

giving away full res pictures on the Internet.

This type of licensing is called creative commons.

It essentially grants royalty-free non-exclusive use

of your photo to anybody who wants it.

They can use it for anything they want,

as many times as they want,

and without paying a dime.

What that grants the photographer though is a means to lead generation.

This might lead to somebody funding your website as

creative commons does imply that you will be given credit where this photo was used.

So, in addition to lead generation,

you have getting your name out there which has its uses sometimes.

It does lead to a lot of traffic that comes back to either you or to

your stock image website page and this can be useful.

Somebody likes your style and they found one of your creative common images,

that might link them back to

your Snapwire profile page where they can find a whole variety of images to purchase.

There's essentially a risk reward balance

when it comes to model releases and property releases.

These are two very important things to be

aware of when you're taking photos of this nature.

As I mentioned before,

taking picture of somebody's face isn't identifiable is

a much more low-risk approach because that person is much

less likely to approach you at some point

when that photo has been sold or license has been granted to somebody,

or a company, or somebody to use that photo.

They're much less likely to approach you with an issue and say, "Hey,

I didn't grant you the rights to use my body in this image where I'm the focal point."

But if the person is not the focal point,

if they are in the background maybe blurred out in the corner and

the focal point is a tree or a car or something else,

then that is almost entirely no risk.

I don't want to say no risk but

it is something that you generally don't need to worry about.

This level of intricacy when it comes down to identifying

property or models and the need for a release differs.

It varies from stock website to stock website.

Some websites like Snapwire are

a little more relaxed when it comes to getting model releases and that's fine.

It's a risk reward level based on what you're willing to do.

It is good to be aware of the ins and outs of photography from a legal standpoint.

My best practice would be to get model releases and

a property release from not only this location owner but from my friends,

everybody who is letting me take a photo of them today.

Not necessarily everybody who I'm going to use but just everybody who's here.

That way, I'm protected.

In a case like this,

I might have everybody sign a model release and

the property owner sign a property release just in case.

My best practice is to bring with me the Snapwire app that they provide.

It's just the easiest way to maintain records of

all the model and property releases that I obtain along the way.

So, today, after I shoot everybody,

I'll just have my friend's sign a model release with the date,

location, a little summary of what's going on

and I'll have the property owners sign one and I'll have it stored on my phone.

I can print it later if I need to or not.

I know that's a lot to remember.

We just went through rights and your protection.

Now, let's get to the fun part.

Let's edit and upload these photos to a stock photo website.