It’s potentially dangerous to ignore this step when you make your image submissions to microstock agencies because you might end up as a jailbird or end up in the poorhouse if you’re not careful.

You need to have a basic understanding of the law before you make your first submission. It’s luckily not that complicated and the most important parts can be condensed in a few bullets:

• Always make sure you have a signed model release if you sell the image for commercial use (advertising etc.) and the image contains recognizable individuals.
• Always make sure you have a signed property release if you sell the image for commercial use and the image contains recognizable private property.
• Always make sure you have a signed model release or property release if you sell images with Royalty free license and the image contains recognizable individuals or private property
• You can sell images with recognizable individuals or private property without model or property release but only if you sell the image with Rights Managed license for editorial use
• If there are several recognizable individuals all of them needs to sign the property release
• If the recognizable individual is under aged the parent must sign the property release.

I recommend you always try to get a model release whenever you can. Imagine Coca Cola offered you $20,000 for exclusive use in one of their campaign and you didn’t have a model release. That would suck, right?

Both you, the stock agency and the end user could be sued if you break the law so always be careful with commercial issues.

I’ve created a free video to to help you stay on the right side of the law. Watch the free video by clicking on this link.

Disclaimer: I’m nor a lawyer neither a professional on legal stuff and I recommend you always ask for advice by a trained professional.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine A Niche For Your Microstock Photography
7. STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies
8. STEP #6: Select one (1) microstock photography agency
9. STEP #7: Select stock images with good technical quality
10. STEP #8: Select images that are commercially useful