Legality of Portrait and Street Photography

amg2833

I am going working on acquiring a functional strobist setup very soon would very much like to do portraits of random people passing in the city (with their permission, of course!).

I'm not to the point where selling photographs like this is feasible (although it will be one day), but what should I do about model releases and other legal issues? They would be going on my website for now, but may eventually be sold as "fine art" photography, never stock.

Clay Enos (LINK) seems to do something similar to what I'd like to do (although he does all natural light photography), but I can't find anything about model releases.

Thanks for the help!

Angelo

Anthony:

if you go to the "sticky" at the top of this forum: "Photographer's Resources" you'll find all sorts of information regarding legal issues and model releases.

you can also use the "search" feature to find existing threads on this topic... and there are quite a few. Good luck

emeraldrose

Angelo wrote:

Anthony:

if you go to the "sticky" at the top of this forum: "Photographer's Resources" you'll find all sorts of information regarding legal issues and model releases.

you can also use the "search" feature to find existing threads on this topic... and there are quite a few. Good luck

agree with above. When I did this 7/4 I went up to people asked them if I could and if they'd sign a model release told them why, and then gave them the release with a pen and a card. worked well, didn't sell anything, but had fun.

Cygnus Studios

Here is a good resource for model releases and here is a good resource for publicity laws by state.

In most instances it is not very hard to get people to sign a model release if properly informed. I keep plenty of model/property releases in my camera bag, along with a portfolio to show people.

Even in the cases that do not require a release, I still try to get one. You just never know when and where your image could be used at a later date. Some photographers offer a free image with the release, but I prefer to offer a discount on any photography that the person may want at a later date. I have been pleasantly surprised at the number of people who contact me weeks or months later for a portrait session from this earlier encounter.

amg2833

Awesome, guys. Thanks. Sometimes I forget of all the resources already on DGrin. I'll come back if I have any more questions after doing some research.