Legalities and Street Shooting...

[skieur]

The upshot is you cannot use the photo's for monetary gains without a written release. Even for your portfolio, that is crossing the line between displayed art, and advertising. You should get some legal advice from a professional (lawyer that is).

I just read that legally oriented page up above and it sounds like just doing gallery display or making prints to sell is okay, but using them for say an ad for beer or selling them for stock use might not be.

I see my portfolio as simply me showing off my best work, to anyone, not just potential clients so I don't think that so long as I don't use the photos with say text for ads for my business or something I am okay there. I probably wouldn't do that anyway, not unless I had a release, but it would be nice if I ever got to do a show of my work if I could sell prints of my work or put them in a book of my photos at least.

That article above was a bit confusing, but there's a link to another one too. I actually just wanted to know what the pros here might actually do, not just what some article says is "probably" the right thing to do.

I wrote the legally oriented page at the top of the site and a release for street photography is needed ONLY for advertising purposes. A gallery display, selling photos at a gallery, editorial use in a magazine for example in an article on art or street photography can be done for money without a release in the US and other locations. Showing them on your web site is also possible without a release.

What you need to be careful of, is any associations or assumptions that can be construed from your photos. For example, shooting a well dressed gentleman with a strip club in the background might cause some law suit related issues if he was a conservative politician stressing "family values" etc.

skieur