Beginners Guide

Easy Guide To Licensing For Real Estate Photographers

Easy Guide To Licensing In Real Estate Photography

Licensing is extremely important in the real estate photography industry, but it’s also not fully understood by far too many real estate photographers.

In this article, I’ll discuss licensing and how it relates to real estate photography. You’ll gain a basic understanding of licensing, copyrights, and ownership, all of which are extremely important.

Table of Contents

What Is Licensing?

Licensing, when talking in the context of real estate photography, refers to the granting of specific rights to someone else to use a copyrighted work, in this case a real estate photo.

When a photographer licenses their photos, they allow others to use their images for agreed upon usages, while still retaining the copyright ownership. This usually happens in the form of a written contract.

Licensing is a legal and contractual arrangement between the copyright holder (the real estate photographer) and the licensee (the person or entity obtaining the rights, usually a realtor).

The licensing agreement outlines the terms and conditions under which the photographs can be used, including the scope, duration, and limitations of usage.

In it’s most basic sense, licensing allows someone else to use your photos without owning them. You retain ownership while the other party is allowed usage.

Copyright And Ownership

In order to sell the license to a photo, you must be the copyright holder, meaning that you are the owner of the photo. Chances are, if you captured the photo, you hold the copyright unless you explicitly agreed that you give up any copyright claim.

Generally, as the creator of a photograph, the real estate photographer is automatically granted the copyright to their work. This means you have exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, display, or sell any photograph you take unless you transfer or license those rights to someone else.

All of that is a long way of saying that unless you signed a contract saying that you give up your copyright to the images, you are the copyright holder. That means that you are the owner of the photos and have the ability to license them to anyone for any reason.

Key Factors To Understand

Here are some other key factors to understand when it comes to licensing your real estate photos:

Usage and Restrictions

Licensing agreements for real estate photography typically outline the allowed uses and any restrictions decided by the photographer.

This may include specifying the platforms where the images can be displayed, the duration of use, the number of reproductions allowed, or any other limitations deemed necessary.

In practice, this can be something as simple as allowing your clients full usage of the images for marketing purposes until the house is sold. Meaning they can put the images on the MLS, social media, or any other marketing channel they use to market the home.

Licensing Fees

Licensing fees is just a fancy way of saying payment. You are not selling the images to your clients, you’re charging them a licensing fee to use the photos.

This is a major distinction that needs to be understood by both parties. If your client thinks they own the photos, they could easily use the images in ways that you would never sign off on.

You license them the rights to use the images for a specific period of time and only for specific usages. If they were to own the photos, they would be able to do whatever they wanted with them, which is clearly not the case.

Exclusive vs Non-Exclusive Licenses

Licensing agreements can be either exclusive or non-exclusive, each of which dictates how you as the copyright holder can license the same images in the future.

An exclusive license grants the licensee (your client) the sole right to use the photographs for a specific purpose or within a defined period. This means that they are the only other party that can use the images and gain access to a license.

In contrast, a non-exclusive license allows the photographer to license the same images to multiple clients simultaneously. In practice, this means that you would be able to sell the license to other people as well.

In real estate photography, you might photograph a home for a client that then loses the contract to sell that home. When another realtor gets the contract to sell the home, they may want to license the same photos from you.

In this situation, if you gave an exclusive license to the first client, you would not be able to license the same photos to the second realtor. If the agreement was non-exclusive, you could license the photos to the second realtor.

Additional Resources

If you’re just getting started in real estate photography, check out our Beginners Guide. It’s full of helpful articles and tips that will guide you in the right direction as you begin your real estate photography journey.

You can check out our Gear section as well to see reviews and recommendations on the latest real estate photography gear.

If you’re more interested in other resources that can help your real estate photography business, check out our Business Resources page.

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About author
Matthew Digati is a professional Real Estate and Architectural Photographer. Matthew has worked as a Real Estate and Architectural Photographer since 2015 and has photographed properties and projects all over the United States.
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