Photography business exclusivity contract?

[dakwegmo]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

But, you want to sell your images......that's the key. you can always approach the school and tell them that you'll give them 10% of the profit.

If the school has an exclusive arrangement with another photographer, wouldn't that then be a breach of their contract?

Originally Posted by graciousness

If you want to sell the photos, you are probably going to need model release or permission from other parents of the children to have their kids in the photos that you want to sell.

You don't need a model release to sell photos of anyone. Much like the rest of what you said, it's a good idea to do it, especially if you're trying to build a name for yourself professionally. However, there is no legal requirement to get permission to sell photos of children.

[new hobby]

thanks

I dont want to sell them, I just want to use them for my portfolio

[atmos05]

As an attorney who's had some experience with this type of thing, I'll try to keep it short and to the point:

An exclusivity clause is a way to prevent a photographer from competition. You, as a non-signatory, are not explicitly bound by the contract and the photographer has no ability to stop you from taking photos or prevent you from using them in a portfolio and/or selling them.

Now, the character of the event determines the property owner's rights against you. Depending on the circumstances, the school could seek to restrain you from publishing and/or selling the photos, or, if you do sell them, take a percentage (or all) of your profits from doing so. Granted, that's an exceptional circumstance, but it's possible.

The character of the event and the warnings determine whether these rights can be enforced. If the event is held open to the public and the school district doesn't ask you to not publish the photos, they have no right to do so in the future. If they post warnings telling you not to photograph, or that photos are for personal and not professional use, then they might be able to bring suit against you in the future.

These type of things are very circumstance-specific and a forum post can't discuss all the details, hopefully this helps.

P.S. To the guy who said that you don't need a model release to sell photos of someone, that's only partially true. If you take a photo of a person and sell it, that person can then bring a lawsuit against you to recover their fare share of the modeling fees. There have been numerous lawsuits filed against "crowd photographers" over the rights to the images of people in the photos - sometimes the unintentional models win, sometimes the photographers win - again, it's all fact-specific.

[atmos05]

Just to follow up on the last post - this is why every stock site I've ever been to prevents posting of pictures without a signed model release - they don't want the hassle of being dragged into a lawsuit (and paying the legal fees) as an additional defendant in an unintentional model's suit against a photographer.

[dakwegmo]

Originally Posted by atmos05

P.S. To the guy who said that you don't need a model release to sell photos of someone, that's only partially true. If you take a photo of a person and sell it, that person can then bring a lawsuit against you to recover their fare share of the modeling fees. There have been numerous lawsuits filed against "crowd photographers" over the rights to the images of people in the photos - sometimes the unintentional models win, sometimes the photographers win - again, it's all fact-specific.

Can you provide an example of a case where the models won? I'm curious whether the specific facts relate to the sale of the photo(s) and not commercial publication, or the sale of commercial products.