Help needed with commercial licensing and pricing

[Tim Arch]

First of all hello, I'm new here! Been lurking off and on for a couple of years now, and am slowly becoming more active as a photographer. Mainly shooting weddings at the moment, but more recently have been combining my love of photography with my love of mountain biking, and have been really pleased with the results (and the response!).

I've been shooting mtb races, selling the images as downloads or prints to the participants. The download option (using Zenfolio) comes with a personal use licensing agreement. Some of these riders are sponsored to a certain degree by bike shops or manufacturers, and I have received a couple of orders from these bike shops. The last order was from a bike shop for every rider wearing their gear, and I added a note in the email containing their download link that this order allows for personal use of the images as per the licensing agreement, and that they should contact me to discuss negotiating a commercial use agreement should they wish to use the photos on their shop website. No word back from the shop, however I have since discovered they are using the images on their shop Facebook page. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but this would constitute commercial use yes?

Any ideas as to how I should proceed? At the moment it's been suggested a friendly email asking where to send the invoice for starters. Definitely want to keep it friendly - the mtb industry is a fairly small one here in Australia. And also any ideas as to how much I should charge per image for this usage? And how I should charge - ie time-based or one-off fee? I currently charge $7.50 per download with a personal use license for all the race participants, but would love to try selling images of sponsored riders to shops and manufacturers.

Thanks heaps for your help,

Tim

[Photo-John]

Good to see you posting here, Tim. You should post some of your mountain bike photos on the sports photography forum, too. This is a very bike-friendly photo community

Like I said on Twitter, I'd start out friendly. However, I didn't realize you'd already sent them a note that the images were for personal use only. Since the licensing agreement on the site and your note made that clear, I think it's safe to assume they knew what they were doing and thought they could get away with it. You still want to keep things friendly if you can, though. So I'd send them an e-mail that points out the licensing agreement on the site and your note - in a non-accusatory way.

Usage fees depend on distribution, size of the photos, placement, market, etc. And we're talking about the bike market here. No one is getting rich. How many photos are they using and how big are they? Are they on the Home page or are they on a team page or something?

[Tim Arch]

Thanks John - I'll post some soon. Heading out this afternoon to shoot some CX which should be a hoot.

They're using 11 photos in a gallery posted on the shop Facebook page, so they're 720x480 if you click through to the gallery.

I'm more annoyed at the blatant disregard of specific mention I made of it being a personal use license than anything else, and that it looks like he's passing the photos off as his own.

[Photo-John]

Happy to help. Please give us an update on what happens, Tim.