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Getting Releases for Your Stock Images

That's where my the photo release comes in. And so I'm going to go back here. So I'm going to my new images. There it is, by the way. I don't need a release for the squirrel. I only need a release for the guy and the girl, and I'm gonna put a release for the location as well. Just because it's one of the It's a late location that's recognizable enough in Phoenix that I paid a fee to be in there to use it. That's how you know you really need a release on a location is if you had to pay to get it. You know you need a release on DSO. I'm clicking on that, and at the bottom, you can see that there's 14 tags so you can see all the remaining tags. There's a lot that needs, like instructional is not a tag that you need. I have the tag in there because when I want to sort for things that I could use for instruction, I use it. But I don't need that. I don't need lecture in there. There's a lot that I can delete. But then I also need to say Yes, there are people here. And so now I need to go in ...

and create a release. So I'm going to create a new release. And if you don't know much about photo releases and whether or not you need a release and how to make a release, they will educate you right here. So there's a bunch of FAA queues here, so just click on there and you'll get educated on what you need a photo release for how to write it. All that kind of stuff will be available. If you want an existing release, they actually have releases right here. So you can take it downloaded. Copy the copy on it and put it into. So I use this my release on easy release. I can actually take the text from theirs and put it on mine. So if you have no tax, if you if you have don't have a photo release, just go to your adobe stock account. Grab that release and use that carry around little paper ones with you so that you can have people sign paper releases and then just scan on, put him into J peg and then have him into the file and put him in the file with the photos. So I'm simply going to create a new release on the name of the release is going to be, um, the Deuce Photo shoot. Um, and it's going to be OK, so I'm gonna attach the release. I've got to go find the release. This is her. I'm gonna open. And it's up loading the J peg of that release, and I will do that toe all three releases, So I'll do it to the guy. I'll do it for her and I'll do it for the location on. Then I'll submit it so that they actually have the releases. And I think this is a good stock image. People will be like, Oh, that's cool image. Maybe I can use that for something. Okay, now something that all of you should consider, especially those of you who are wedding photographers or portrait photographers. It's very simple to get models that will sign a release you can. You can pay professional models a lot, or you can pay non professional models a little, but you can get people to model for you. And if you have your own kids you can. You know you can work with them and just come up with scenarios that are lifestyle driven, because that's where most of your sales will come from. It's something like this. Where there people doing something interesting says something. Ah, Mom, playing with their kids cooking in the kitchen Kids reading their books are doing their homework. Just every time you read a magazine and you see a photograph that's a stock image or an image that someone paid even Mawr toe have someone create for them. So pay attention to it and start making images like that and practice and play. Now you don't have to go and spend. If you're not going to go out and, you know, spend $5000 on a on a shoot for one image and you're never gonna make that $5000 back on stock. So don't do that. One I'm telling you to do is spend a little bit of money on something and get a lot of different imagery from it. Then you could make something back on that, or like I said before, if you already have someone having you do their shoot, get a get a model Readings from him explain to them what you're gonna be doing explained to him that you can afford you can. You can give them a better price if they'll just sign this model release, you know, or get someone that will do something and they want. They want free Portrait's great given free portrait's. They have to sign your model release. That's a good deal. You know what I'm saying? So work with people that way, the more they want from you. You want something from them, too, So get moderate leases. I've had weddings where I've struck a deal with the bride because she could not afford my total fee. So I asked for a model release from every person at the wedding, and they went and got it. Every single person of the wedding signed a release worked out. I got a decent rate from the wedding, and they got the rate they could afford. And I have a wedding. I could do anything I want with. So utilize the stuff that you're not using and make something of it. But it it Presupposes that you are first tagging images and organizing images in a very thoughtful way so you can find them. And secondly, it Presupposes that you are actually utilizing those tools that you have. So now you have tools, give you tools, give me your tools, the ability to find your images toe work on your images on Now, Adobe has given you the ability to connect to people who want your images. So the question of whether or not you're gonna do something with it that's really up to you. And I say, Do something with it because there's you got a lot of stuff in your current catalogue that if you just spend a couple days, you would find a lot of gems in there that could go immediately out to start making you some money back. Most importantly, what's the pricing mechanism using Adobe stock? I'm not gonna get too far into that, but you get 30% of whatever is made on the on the deal. Adobe set the pricing. You don't set the pricing so they know what the market will bear, and they sell it to as many people as they can. And so hopefully your images will be sold in a lot of places, and you'll make a decent amount of money, but at the very least you'll be making more money than you are, which is zero right? So, um, it's a great way to utilize random, stupid pictures of squirrels that you took right. You took a funny picture of a squirrel, and for the last three years it's been sitting on your phone to show funny people of This is funny little picture. Now, maybe that funny little picture will show up somewhere in a magazine, and you'll have been paid for it, So that works for me. It might as well work for you as well. One thing that I wanted to talk to you about after we talked about submitting to stock is the importance of copyrighting your work. So if you you realize that you own the copyright to work, at least in the United States and because the United States has an international treaty, most of the countries around the world also follow that treaty. Although if you go to many of the countries that are, shall we say less than and other countries that the King of Siam is like emailing you and asking for you know 1000 bucks so that he can give you six billion. Those places don't generally follow copyright treaties, but most of the first in the Second World or are following copyright treaties. But in the United States and those people who are signed on to the copyright treaties, um, you own the copyright to your photo. The second you take the picture, you own it. It is yours. It's not something you can. People can't take it from you. It is yours. The question is proving that it's yours, and that's what the copyright office is. Four. So when you submit your work for copyright, so a registration for a copyright all you're simply doing is giving people the ability to find out whose photo is this. So when you submit a series of photos which you can do online, you can upload them. You don't have to put them on disk and send them in. You can just upload them, and you can upload a collection of photos, and you only pay one fee for as many photos as you want to throw up there. So it's a really easy system. Um, but you need to go to the copyright office which is copyright US COPYRIGHT DOUG cover Something like that, um so and those of you in a different country, look for your country's copyright office and go ahead and copyright your images because you own the copyright the second you snapped the shutter, it's yours now if you just prove it by up, loading the images to the copyright office and putting your name associated with, um Then if someone ever steals your image or does something with your image now you have recourse in the United States. You can do a lot mawr to stop the use of the image or to get paid for their infraction. If you've copyrighted your images upfront, it are. If you've registered the copyright up front, if you haven't registered the copyright up front, it's much more difficult for you to a prove that it's yours or be get anything back from them. At most, you might be ableto give them a small fine and tell them to stop using it. But if you've registered as a copyrighted image, then when you go to court, they take you very seriously. So at the very least once a year, you should be sending off a mass set of images that you shot for that year. But if you do something seriously good, all you gotta do is just right after you're done with it, before you start submitting it for stock. And before you start sending it off here and there and publication and putting it on Facebook, I know we all live in this like whatever you do got do right now culture. But before you do that stuff, if it's something seriously good, you should then take that project and submit it. Pay the copyright registration fee, get it up to the copyright website and just be done with it so that you have that. And then take that coffee, right? Registration the form they send back to you and put it with the model releases. With all of your photos easy enough, then if you ever find that image out somewhere and someone stealing it, you just go back. Grab that copyright release, arming the copyright registration and take it to the judge. Here's my photo. Here's the copyright registration. This is when they printed it and then go to town. All right, so just be aware that you need to copyright. Register your copyright for your images. If you want to fully protect yourself when you start sending your work out there throughout the world, it needs to be registered is copyrighted, and you can't wait six years and then have someone steal your stuff and say, Oh, well, if you didn't register the copyright, you clearly weren't all that concerned about it. So it's very easy. And when you export your just export J pegs at like 1600 pixels or even last 800 pixels is fine, just something that's big enough so that they could open it and look and compare the two and see if it's the same photograph and then submit the whole set to the copyright office and pay the fee and be done with it. Yeah, I have a two part question. One. What's your practice in terms of copyrighting between portrait wedding, commercial photography or just stock? Anything that I do that's commercial in nature. Soon as I'm done with the project copyright, anything that is just general in nature, I'll just wait till the end of the six months or whatever, a period of time where I have a good collection and then just grab everything that I'm shipping out there, like all you have to do is search all 2016 in December and then just take everything from 2016 and send it to the copyright office. That's fine, too. But if it's a serious project, if it's something I'm doing for commercial work or something, I'm gonna do for stock, especially if it's something that I'm doing specifically for a stock or for commercial. Um, then that means to be copyrighted. Any big projects copyright. And with that process of copyrighting it, Is it just a JPEG image or you sending them the full? No, just a small 800 pixel j peg Absolutely fine. You could they even say 400 pixels is fine, But if you want to be more clear about it, they zoom in a little bit further and see that it's exactly the same. Photo 800. Perfectly fine. And when I say copyright your images, I mean register your copyright because again you only copyright the second you take the picture, it's yours. It's just a matter of proving it, and the registration is help you prove that cool I want to just get a clarification here. You talked about getting model releases. This question comes from Angela. She wants to know more about product releases, she says. For example, if you submit an image that has a product in it, if somebody is holding an IPhone or something in the image, I mean how specific you have to get with product releases when Europe. Well, I'm not an attorney, you know, little advice here. Illegal advice at all. But generally speaking, most people that do stuff for stock when they shoot a picture of like an apple laptop, they will actually just cover out the low and just get the logo out. The logo is what is the infringement. So they which is strange, that most of the time they don't. It's better for them to have it, especially that shown in a good light. It would be better for them to have it, but they still tend to protect their logo eso. If you just remove the logo, then you have no problems. But if you have the logo, it's a hit or miss thing, and I'll bet that the people at Adobe would probably catch it and be like No, and they would probably want you to remove the Logan. Now, that's not true. For if I'm photographing, say, um, a city scape and there happens to be a building over here that has the, you know, some kind of a low. That's a pretty public thing. So I don't imagine that there's any repercussions. Oh, you stole our logo. Note. You just built a huge building on the skies line of New York City that has a logo on it that you put there in the public eye. So that's probably not something that would be enforced or even they probably didn't go after you. But again, I'm not attorney, so I don't know the answer to that, but that those are my thoughts on it. That's all the questions here. Any final thoughts before we wrap things up? Yeah. So, um, Mike, I said when we started, I was gonna tell you the wise first and then the house. So I hope that I've successfully instilled in you the reason that you need to get organized. And don't be like the person who told me that's a lot of key wording. Instead, be excited about the fact that once you do the key wording, which actually doesn't take very long. But once you've done the key wording and once you've done the organization, it is super easy to find things. My wife has gets so frustrated my kids, because they lose their shoes every single morning and she's just like I gave you a bucket to put your shoes in. If you just put them there every time you take them off and which takes no time at all, then when you're looking for your shoes, there's only one place they will be, and that's in the bucket and so they can go grab him and put their shoes on. It's very simple. I'm just teaching in the same principle and asking you to put your shoes in the bucket. You have a photo. Presumably, you like the photo well enough to keep it. So if you like your photo and if you think it's valuable to you and you want to share it with the world, then why wouldn't you want it to be in a place? You can find it when you need to share it, and Adobe Again is giving you the ability. It's giving you the tools to be able to quickly organize your images, to share your images from anywhere you happen to be because they're connected. And now they've given you the ability to take those images that you have no income from and possibly get some income. They're really working hard on your behalf to make sure that you can share your images. And so those image will become useful to you in some way, whether it's professionally, whether it's just for fun and with your kids and with your family or with your colleagues or camera clubs, or with people who possibly want to buy. It doesn't matter what the purpose is, whether you're trying to make money or just trying to have fun and share the, you know, beauty that you see around you, you still want to be organized, and that's what key wording is for. That's what your organization of your portfolios for, and so get on the bandwagon and get organized with me so that you have the ability to share the images that you work so hard on because we all work very hard on images. So there's a reason for that no photographer takes pictures for them never to be seen. But we just don't do that. We're not wired that way. We want the world to see what came through our eyes. And so here are the tools.