Photo licensing

I have been browsing Pixsy a bit recently. If you don’t know Pixsy, it’s a site to search the internet for you photos. You upload your library of photos, and they search for you. They do even more, but I will get to that in a different post. But what I noticed is, so many people and even companies, don’t bother to comply with licencing rules. Do they don’t know I could easily start suing them one by one and require payments for all the photos? I don’t want to do that, but maybe one day it will be to much to ignore. And since some of my photos are already licensed for exclusive use, I have my own obligations, and they can even create problems for me, which I will not allow.

But until that day, here is a bit of a reminder on how and when you can use my photos for free, and when you have to license them.

All my photos are shared under Creative Commons licence.

So you may download and share them further as long as you follow these three rules:

• Attribution — Please always when you share my photos, note that I am the author, with my name Miroslav Pertrasko and link back to this site www.hdrshooter.com
• Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes, without my specific permission
• No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work, without my specific permission

That said, let’s look at it more specificaly

Social media

First, there is social media. On any of them, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, you can share any of my photos, as long as you include the credit and link back to the blog. This is the same for personal accounts and company accounts. As long it’s sharing, anyone can do it as much as they want.

Of course, if anyone pretends they are the author of the photo, they will first get a nice message from me, and if its not resolved, a copyright claim. This I find just insulting and will not tolerate it.

Personal use

Personal use of the images in the sizes I shared on my various sites is free. So if you want to use it on your personal blog, print something small, use it in your photo album, and similar, you are free to do so. Of course with online use, please include my name and link back to this blog.

If you require a full size image, for instance you want to print a poster for your room, please head over to the Shop where you can buy a download copy for personal use, or contact me here.

Commercial use

Any commercial use is not free and requires a license fee to be payed. This is any use in brochures, flyers, promo materials, magazines, company websites, books and similar. Please take into account, that this includes all company websites. If you are a travel company, and want to use a photo on your site, you need a license. If you are a hotel and want the photo on your site, you need a license, and so on.

Even if you create a free promotional product, you still have to license the photos for it. Again, for example a company calendar. You give it to your customers for free, but as with any promotion, you have to carry the cost, not the photographer.

Licensing is quite easy. Either head over to the Shop, where you can choose a download commercial license for the available photos. They are available at different resolutions for different prices. In case the photo is not available, please contact me here.

In any case, anyone is free to contact me if something is not clear here :)