All staff in the school I work in received this email today.

‘Please ensure that a copy of ALL photos that might be of use in marketing the school eg. website, are provided for (person’s name).

Thanks

(signed by headteacher)’

A few things spring from this:

Who owns the copyright of the pictures? I have several hundred, of many subjects. Many are taken in school- eg of experiments, of students working. Many more are taken out of school, in a public place- eg Museums, field trips, Duke of Edinburgh’s award expeditions. All have been taken using my own camera, is that pertinent? All parents are asked if they object to having their children’s pictures taken. A very small number do not wish the pictures taken, usually because of e.g. family rift and the parent having moved to another area to ‘escape’. Those children are not photographed.
Should photo’s be deleted once a child has left the school? Is this still the case if the photo was taken in a public place?

Any thoughts on this?

I’m now off to a fund-raising Curry Night to help with our exchange to Lesotho. Should I take pics? And once in Lesotho, who owns copyright then? Me, my school (employer), The UK government (trip partially paid for by the Govt.) The Host school in Lesotho….?

Please, I’d appreciate sensible responses. Thanks, Ambrose

My view woudl be if you take the pictures durign the course of your job then copyright is with your employer.

Only children who have not opted out of pictures should have photo’s taken and they can be used in perpetuity.

Being in a public place or not is irrelevant, it’s whether you were ‘working’ at the time that matters.

The policy at my university is to get consent from everyone before a photographer starts work and that is for over-18s. We do this in a catch-all form at the start of the year.

With IP, the university technically owns everything i create during my job – drafts of journal articles, lectures, module designs, visual outputs. However, i did enquire whether i could license some work as creative commons and they said it was fine, presumably because it was of no commercial value. I suspect it would have been very different if there was potential profit to be made.

What wwaswas said. Copyright is with the employer. It’s kind of like when you write a long boring report for your work, even if you use your own computer. They paid for it, so it is theirs.

Thanks. My wife has assisted on some trips on an unpaid basis. If she took pictures am I right in assuming all of the above would still apply?

No doubt she can use them for ‘personal’ use but I’d be wary of publishing them in any form with identifiable childrens faces in them.

I can’t see you being able to sell pictures of minors anyway so it’s possibly a moot point who owns the copyright?

Copyright is the right to make copies, sales don’t come into it. If your wife took photos as a volunteer then she probably owns copy right. depends on how formal the volunteering arrangement was, but if she offers them for the school to use then she’s effectively licensing them to make / publish copies. It’s up to the school to decide whether its appropriate to publish them if she offers them.

I can’t see you being able to sell pictures of minors anyway…

😯

Seriously?

Well, seriously not pictures of kids in a school or on a school trip.

The photographer owns the copyright of the photos taken. The employer owns any materials used to take the photos. Model releases are required for any people in the photos before publication.

The photographer owns the copyright of the photos taken. The employer owns any materials used to take the photos. Model releases are required for any people in the photos before publication.

No, no no. At least I’m pretty sure that basically all that is untrue for this kind of situation. It’s true if you’re commissioning freelance advertising photography. Not true if you’re doing photography as part of your employment (ie. taking photos for your employer as part of your job). If you’re doing it as part of your job, the employer owns it.

More details here.

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/ukcs/docs/edupack.pdf

The model release thing isn’t right either – for most school uses of photos you don’t need model releases for things – eg. where you are just going to use it in a documentary sense, for example if you take a picture of a bunch of people on a school trip, and publish it in the local paper as ‘a bunch of kids from yr 11 on their school trip to the zoo’, you don’t need model releases.

Obviously if you sold it to the zoo for use in their advertising campaign, accompanied by some bumph about how much kids lurrrve coming to the zoo, you’d need the model releases.

Although for promotional material, there is a fine line between ‘here are a bunch of kids on a school trip’, and ‘here are a bunch of kids on an awesome trip that they are just super loving thanks to our awesome teachers’, which means that for promo stuff at the university, prospectuses etc., our marketing people are sometimes use releases.

I was just taking pics to record events. I have not been asked to do so at any stage, nor is it in my job description. Now they want ‘my’ pictures to do with as they seem fit. I’m not altogether happy about it tbh.

I can understand that the school owns copyright of photos taken in school/ during lessons. I accept that.

What I think I’m annoyed at is that they seem to believe that they can demand ‘ALL’ photos, including ones taken in public places out of school hours, essentially when I’m working voluntarily.

I have a great photo of some happy looking DoE kids in the camping in the pouring rain. It was taken at 18:40 last Thursday- there is no way anyone can call that my normal contact hours. I’ll accept that I was ‘at work’ though. I’m annoyed that my employers can claim that it is their photo to do with as they please.

What I think I’m annoyed at is that they seem to believe that they can demand ‘ALL’ photos, including ones taken in public places out of school hours, essentially when I’m working voluntarily.

Well there’s an easy answer to that. Don’t send them the ones you don’t think they have a right to. What’s going to happen – do you think they’ll send round somebody to confiscate your computers to check for photos they think they should have?

Or do you find the very fact they ask for them annoying? I can think of all sorts of other things which might annoy you in that case…

Well there’s an easy answer to that. Don’t send them the ones you don’t think they have a right to. What’s going to happen – do you think they’ll send round somebody to confiscate your computers to check for photos they think they should have?

+1

Just send them a few crap ones. What can they do?

I have a great photo of some happy looking DoE kids in the camping in the pouring rain. It was taken at 18:40 last Thursday- there is no way anyone can call that my normal contact hours. I’ll accept that I was ‘at work’ though.

If its part of what you do for work it doesn’t matter whether it was in ‘office hours’ or not.

There’ll be a generation of teachers having a bit of giggle at you pointing out you were still working at 18.40. My dad never expected to leave school before 8/9pm any night of the week 🙂

They can giggle away. I got home at 18:30 the next day.

FWIW I’ve submitted hundreds of pics for them to sift through. All at a nice low resolution.