📸 Why Licensing Images Matters:
Image licensing can feel like legal jargon, but at its core, it’s about respecting creative work. If you wouldn’t let someone take your product, service, or design without paying, then using a photographer’s image without a licence is no different.
Copyright, intellectual property and image licensing can be a complex and often misunderstood area.
On one hand, clients who engage photographic services may incorrectly assume that they own the photographs because the images feature them or their property—whether it be a product, person, item, or property. They often believe they have the right to use these images however they wish, for as long as they like, and that they can share and distribute the images freely because they paid for the photographs.
This is a misconception.
On the other hand, the creative photographer has invested time, expertise, and skills to create the images for a specific intended use. Even if the images could serve another purpose that would benefit from their use, displaying or distributing them without first obtaining the appropriate licensing is essentially theft.
Sounds extreme, right?
But it's not.
A good analogy to understand copyright laws is the stories we hear from musical artists. Over the years, many artists have successfully sued and won cases where their songs were sampled in other works without permission.
One well-known case is Vanilla Ice's song "Ice Ice Baby", which sampled the Queen and David Bowie hit "Under Pressure" without permission or proper licensing. Vanilla Ice eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, but he later reported that it would have cost him much less to buy the copyright of the song than to pay the settlement. Whether it’s music, Photographs, paintings, poems and written text, if someone created, using it without permission of the creator is theft, a breach of copyright laws.
Now, with that insight, let's apply this to one of my images. Let's break down how many different uses, just one of my images might be valuable to multiple other parties for marketing their products or services.
The image above was taken by me, for a real estate agents sales campaign. The image was used on platforms such as realestate.com and Domain as well as the listing agents social media accounts and the real estate’s own website. The house sold for $2.1 Million, the agents commission for this property ( I am “guess-timating”) would have been in the range of approx $20,000 - 40,000.
This is where the transaction ends and where the licensing that the real estate agent paid for is complete.
For my services, the real estate agency paid my service fee for usage of this image and other images, for the purpose of marketing the sale of this property.
If this image was distributed without permission, including to the owners of the property, all of these other interested parties, could benefit commercially/ financially by using this image in their own marketing. Free marketing, at my expense.
Real life example:
VCAT once ruled in the favour of a photographer, who discovered an agent had used their images without licence or permission to sell a home. VCAT ruled that the photographer could claim for what he felt was a justified amount of loss and ordered the agent to pay $1000 per image for each image that was used without permission, plus legal costs. The amount that was payable by the agent, wiped that agents commission from the house sale.
An expensive lesson indeed.
Let’s dig a little deeper with some examples of common breaches that occur, specifically within the real estate industry & how to avoid them
Real estate agents:
Sell, the images from a failed sales campaign to another agent.
Give the images to a new agent who is taking over a listing.
Provides ‘free of charge’, the images to a third party, such as a staging company, the builder, a trade, a cleaner, the new owners who plan to rent it as an airbnb, a new property manager who will lease the property for private rental.
How to avoid breaching the image usage rights: Do not distribute the images to any other party. If someone requests copies of the images, refer them back to you photographer.
Images you have commissioned should only be supplied to parties exclusively involved in your sales campaign - such as: Sales board printers, uploaded to your branded website and other websites including realestate.com & domain.com.au, they can be shared on your branded social media. Beyond that, the fee you pay for the images does not permit you to use or distribute the image files.
Staging companies:
Will often ask agents to provide the photo’s
Will screen shot from websites and socials and use on their own website and socials without permission or crediting the photographer (*crediting the photographer does not alleviate the need to obtain permission or license fee - but in most cases, photographers will appreciate the shout out.
Tip: As suppliers to the the real estate industry, it might be worth stagers having a discussion, creating connections with local photographers who shoot for real estate to come to a mutual agreement to arrange having specific photo’s taken during a campaign shoot, images that speak more to the staging for a agreed price so that the content that is produced is much more relatable for marketing.
How to avoid breaching the image usage rights: Simple! Reach out to the photographer, ask if they are happy for you to share the images they have taken with your staging in it. Over socials, most photographers would probably be happy with being tagged in the post, however, if used on websites or printed marketing, you may be asked to pay a licensing fee.
AIRBNB hosting companies & individuals:
Will often ask agents to provide the photo’s from a sales campaign
Will screen shot from websites or socials and use on their own website and socials without permission.
Opinion: Seeing a real estate agents watermark on images that are being marketed for Airbnb, does not look good for the Airbnb hosts branding, this makes it obvious that permission or usage rights have not been obtained.
How to avoid breaching the image usage rights: Get your own photos taken! Airbnb photography requires a different “feel” to it. You can get by using real estate images, but then your listing will look like every other ‘no frills’ listing. If you want your property to stand out, hire a decent Airbnb photographer, one who has a proven track record, check out their portfolio, remember, cheap photographers end up being more expensive, you will need a reshoot. Invest well from the beginning.
Conclusion:
Licensing is about fairness and value.
Every professional brings something unique to the table—and that includes photographers. So next time you want to use an image, make sure you’ve licensed it properly.
Everyone wins.
