Usage and Licensing Fees

The fee for commercial photography is based on two things: production value (creative fee) and usage (licensing fee). Remember that production expenses are in addition to this.

One point of the previous post was to show how production value affects the creative fee. High-end camera gear, lots of lighting equipment and lots of time spent creating a picture will result in a very good photo and also a more expensive photo.

The second factor determining the overall fee is photo usage. This usage is a combination of four things: how many pictures will be used, how the photos will be used (media), where the images will be used (location) and when the pictures will be used (time).

• Media can include: newspapers, magazines, web sites, brochures, billboards, television, product packaging, press releases, posters, annual reports, catalogs and many others.

• Location refers to the geographic area where the pictures will be used: locally, regionally, nationally, internationally, or worldwide.

• Time is the period during which the pictures will be used: just once, a week, a month, a year or longer.

More usage => higher licensing fee. No surprises here.

Here’s a licensing analogy:

When you book a resort vacation, the travel agent will ask:

1) For how many people? (Same as a photographer asking, “How many photos?”)

2) What type of room? (Same as a photographer asking, “What is the media requested?”)

3) For how many nights? (Same as a photographer asking, “How long will the pictures be used?”)

4) Which resort location? (Same as a photographer asking, “Where will the pictures be used?”)

The cost of your vacation (or your photography) will depend on your answers to those questions.
 
Occasionally, a client will ask for “all rights” or a “buyout.”

First, none of those terms have any legal meaning in Canada. Second, what the client is asking for is usually prohibitively expensive. Third, what the client wants is not usually what they really need.

Those terms suggest that the client wants the rights to use the pictures in all possible ways, in all possible media, in every country in the world, for at least half a century (i.e. until the copyright expires), and have full copyright ownership.

Asking for all rights or a buyout is like going to a Hilton Hotel and asking to buy one of their hotels when all you really need is a room for a couple of weeks. It’s like asking to buy a car from Hertz when all you need is a weekend rental.

Most times, what a client needs is not all rights but rather something like exclusive use for a certain period of time, exclusive use within its industry, or unlimited use for a certain period of time.

Clients must separate their photography needs from their photography wants so they don’t end up paying for something they’ll never use.