Question regarding photo ownership/contract

[RYSKPhotos]

Hi,

I am new to this and have a question that I hope someone can please help me with.

I was a vet assistant at this animal hospital for about a year. I also, do photography on the side as a business. I would take some photos every now and then of animals, surgeries, etc. Now, I had to leave the company, due to medical issues, and they want my photos to use for promotional use.

I am not sure what kind of contract I should draw up, or how to go about this.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Big Mike]

Tricky situation.

In most cases, in the US, the photographer owns the rights to their image as soon as the photo is taken.
The exception is when they are working under a contract that has them transferring the rights to someone else.

The way I understand it, if photography was an expected part of your job while working for that company, then it could be said/argued that they own the rights. But if photography was not an expected part of your job, then you would likely retain the rights to those images.

So assuming you do hold the rights, what are you expecting in exchange for the their use of the images? You can ask for anything you want, but they can obviously say no and leave it at that.

Do you want to retain some rights for the images, and only allow them limited usage? For example, you could sell them the right to use the images on their website and/or printed material, but you could retain the rights to sell the image to someone else etc. Would they want exclusive use of the images?

As you can imagine, a contract can start to get pretty involved. The best advice would be to talk to a lawyer who knows about or specializes in 'intellectual property'.

If it were me, I would probably prefer to keep things simple. I would let them use the images for anything that they want, and ask for some nominal fee in return.

 

[KmH]

It has to say in an employment contract or some other formal document signed by the employer and the employee that photography is part of your regular duties and that the employer owns the copyright to any photos you make while you are working for the employer.
The legal term is Work For Hire.

The type of contract you use is called a Use License.
You want to license the use of stock photographs you own the copyright to.

Details: Usage Or Licensing Fee

This fee is determined by how the client is using the photographs. Typically, the larger the audience for a specific use, the higher the usage or licensing fee. For example, a photograph used in a print and web ad campaign for a consumer product would have a much higher licensing fee than a photograph used in a business-to-business company brochure — the former has an audience in the millions, the latter perhaps a few thousand.

More Use = Higher Fee
Remember that this part of your overall price is not affected by how difficult the photograph is to execute or what the production expenses are. Those issues are calculated elsewhere. This fee is all about the use by the client. It is possible for a photograph, executed with minimal expenses or expertise, to generate an extremely high licensing fee. The point here is the use, not what it took to create the image.

 

[RYSKPhotos]

Thank you both so much! This helps a lot!!