Licensing question?

marcusrichphoto

Hi,

I recently shot some interior photographs for a high end kitchen company and supplied them with 50 edited files for social media, web and internal marketing use. The company contacted me today to ask for a quote for the use of 5 images for a magazine advert. So I could provide a fair and detailed quote, I responded with a request for information based on the following criteria...

• Are the images to be used for a quarter, half, full, double page spread or a front cover?
• How many images will be used in total?
• Will the images be used for a feature or an advert?
• Which Magazine will the images be featured?
• What is the distribution reach (press run) of the magazine?

I then received a phone call to request a quote for all images to be licensed for free use, as they didn't want to keep having to call me and re-licence images for further publications.

So, my question is, what would be a fair price, for all 50 images to be licensed for this purpose?

Thanks,

Marcus.

MomaZunk

Try this to see if this helps.
http://photographersindex.com/stockprice.htm
I am also interested in others experience.

Angelo

Firstly, congratulations on doing a job that has been well received. For the record I don't believe you should have turned over so many images to them but that's water under the bridge.

I'd ask the client to select a set of images from the greater number, perhaps 5 - 12, and request $2500 with unlimited use for a period of 2 years with the option to renew the license.

Nitpicking details regarding size, use, placement etc will only turn the client off.

marcusrichphoto

Thanks for your responses guys.

I spoke to some other professional photographers and took some advice from my photography association also, there were quite a few differences of opinion. I'll send a more detailed response later, as I'm on my mobile, but I sent a quote for £750 for 10 images, for the period of one year, which I thought was more than fair. I haven't heard back, so not sure if they'll go for it, will let you know.

Cheers,

Glort

My experience has been that companies outside the publishing industry don't like the idea of licensing images or think it's fair, especially if they are small to medium businesses that may not be advertising all the time.
Few of them seem to understand or accept why they should pay you to take the pics then pay you again for using them.

Personally I prefer to simply charge for the shoot and the use of the pics up front and make my money there and that's it.
These pics are probably of no use to anyone else other than the client. Maybe you could use them for stock but we all know what that's worth these days anyhow. In the case of a Kitchen company, they will be bringing out new designs and styles regularly so if you keep them happy, they are return customers with a High net lifetime value. I shot for a kitchen company over 5 years and also got an amount of work from supplier companies etc. They paid well and were excellent clients.

Had I charged to do the shoots AND then tried to licence the images, I would have blown them out of the water straight off.
The business model of licensing is all well and good for SOME clients but in a lot of ways I think it's becoming outdated. While it's fine to say your work is worth X amount, clients now have plenty of options to get pics and to think they won't hire someone who will work for next to nothing because your work is better is pretty naive. There are a lot of good shooters out there now ready to work cheap and meet the needs of the market.

In this case if the client doesn't go for the licensing of the pics, then a good income stream has been lost and the photographer has a bunch of pics he can't do much else with. Not sure about the US or UK but here in Oz, the company that paid for the pics to be taken would also be copyright holders so you couldn't use them for stock without their permission and they will probably try to licence that back to you if you were to ask.

The sticking point I see here is not the money or the licencing Per se, it's the time limit placed upon the use of the images.
The only benefit to licencing for a limited time is the possibility of the client coming back and wanting to re-licence the images. The problem I see with that is they may well have changed designs in the mean time or have new ones on the drawing board and only want to use a portion of the images at best. The other thing is what they could get the images re shot for and on an outright ownership basis.

To my mind, the chance of them re-licencing the images is unlikely so putting a time limit on their use rather than selling them outright ( as they requested) is something the clients will see as lowering the value of the pics and impeding the shooter making any money at all for them. OTOH, by " Licencing" them in perpetuity, The customer sees they are getting a much more valuable product which they own and are more prepared to pay for. From the shooters POV, the images have a limited life anyway, particularly for mag ads, so really the " Licence" of the images is determined by their own usefulness. It's not like the company is going to be running ads for the same kitchens in 10 or even 3 years.

If a shooter was of the mindset of licencing, I would suggest going back to the clients with 2 Quotes. One for the use of the pics for a year and a slightly higher rate for outright ownership.
At least you then have 2 chances of putting some money in your bank rather than having otherwise useless images sitting on your HDD.

marcusrichphoto

Glort wrote: »

My experience has been that companies outside the publishing industry don't like the idea of licensing images or think it's fair, especially if they are small to medium businesses that may not be advertising all the time...

Thanks for the great advice Glort, the whole experience has been a great lesson and I will approach the whole thing differently next time.

My client happily settled on a one off payment of £200 for an unlimited free use license.