Best Business Practices for Photographers [177]
When traveling out of the country, you may find yourself in need of model releases in a foreign language. Further, releases that are a full page in length can often be intimidating to people you are approaching in the street. For an assignment in Japan, I had a model release translated into Japanese, and adjacent to the Japanese text, I included the English version. If you are headed to a country with a foreign language, having those forms can not only be helpful, it could reasonably be argued that if someone does not speak the language that they signed, unless the witness to the document is also the person who translated it or witnessed the translation, the release might be deemed invalid. Figures 19.4 and 19.5 show the English and the English/Japanese versions of a release I used on an overseas trip.
In two states, Kentucky and Texas, the heirs to someone who is deceased are required to sign a release, and in nine states (as of this writing), a person's "right to publicity" explicitly requires a model release be signed. Those nine states are Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Figure 19.4
Figure 19.5
Resources
When you are on the road, you may find yourself having run out of releases, or an absentminded assistant may have forgotten them back in the studio. One solution that has saved me on more than one occasion is to have the model releases on my website, in a hidden folder. For example, posting a single HTML webpage at www.JohnHarrington.com/Adult_Release.html would create a URL that you could easily click to anywhere there is a computer and a printer available. I've done this in office buildings, hotel business centers, airport kiosks, and even in private homes. In the example at the beginning of this chapter for the property release, we hadn't planned to have the car in the photograph, and I did not have a property release with me. Once it was determined that we were going to use the car, I asked the subject if I could use his home computer to print out the release, and all it took was a visit to a URL on my website that had that. One added benefit is that the web browser can be set (it is usually set to by default) to print out the date and time that the page was printed, which serves to bolster the validation of the release. Most importantly, it can get you out of a tight spot when you really need a release.
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) site maintains an excellent resource for model release information, which can be found at www.asmp.org/commerce/legal/releases, where releases are discussed in great depth, with releases that are updated as new cases are decided that might call for a change in a model release form.
The Advertising Photographers of America site maintains and periodically updates model releases in their members-only section of the website, available at www.APANational.com.
The National Press Photographers Association also has a great resource for model releases, available at nppa.org/professional_development/business_practices/releases, as well as encouraging the purchase of the Tad Crawford book below.
Finally, I would strongly advise that you utilize the resources of the ASMP, APA, NPPA, or the books on this subject listed below as a starting point. Take the releases, provide them to an attorney, and have the attorney make any necessary changes to the documents to apply to your state laws, account for any changes in technology, and also factor in how they might apply in other states you might be working in.
Recommended Reading
The final section of this chapter includes some recommended further reading for you.
American Society of Media Photographers. ASMP Professional Business Practices in Photography, Seventh Edition (Allworth Press, 2008).
Chapter 20 Handling a Breach of Contract: Small Claims and Civil Court
Before you begin tossing around the phrase "I'll see you in court" (at which time, you've probably lost the person as a client), you need to actually know which court