Meanwhile in Central London
“We steal their lives, the aspirations and their hopes.” Lots more trickling onto Youtube and others, with the inevitable footage of police smacking people with batons.
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Do I need to obtain a Model Release?
A Model Release is a simple contract, a form signed by the subject of a your photograph setting out what are your contractual obligations to each other. If you are working for publishers in the USA, or intend to sell photographs into the stock images market, you will need to get signed model releases for each photograph. Here’s Alamy’s model release page, and here’s one from a US model agency.
In the UK? No.
There is absolutely no requirement in the UK even to ask permission to take someone’s photograph, providing the photographer doesn’t harass the subject in any way.
If someone asks you to take photographs of them for a modelling portfolio, agree the terms for your payment in advance. In UK law the photographs always belong to the photographer, who might in law do anything, including publishing them anywhere, without recompensing the model.
Redeye, the Manchester photography network, say:
“if you are photographing in public for editorial or artistic purposes, it is good professional practice to explain to people what you are photographing them for, and ask them whether they mind their photograph being used. Whether you back this up with a piece of paper is up to you. If you take a photo of someone in the street and then distort it hideously and supply an offensive caption, they should sue you for defamation whether or not they gave consent.”
Photographing children is slightly different: paid child models need to be licensed, so use a reputable model agency. For photographing children who are not professional models, again it isn’t compulsory to obtain a model release, but a signed parental consent form is a good idea if you’re doing studio shoots.
There are a full set of legal forms at the back of the AOP’s Beyond The Lens, and available for free download from their website. The Getty Images model release form is on Page 18 of the PDF.
The standard legal guidance for photographers in the UK is available for download as a PDF from Linda Macpherson. The secretary of Newcastle Uni’s Photo Soc has some slightly more strident advice here.
So If you have photographs of local Yorkshiremen and women, their children and dogs, posing for your camera in the weak spring sunshine on Saltburn pier - go ahead and publish them!
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