Invite Models to Your Pad
Posted on 08 March 2010
I’ve always known that having a model release was necessary if I planned to sell a photo to a magazine, but lots of people just have a verbal agreement with their models for all kinds of things like company pictures (where the company plans to use the images for publicity), stock photography, or even pictures of clients you plan on using in your portfolio to illustrate the quality of your work to potential clients. I knew that wasn’t the best approach, but I also thought on numerous occasions, ‘what the heck. Nothing bad will happen.’ Not only is a lack of a model release a bad idea for general business purposes, having the right model release is the mark of a professional and it helps you be more credible.
I’m not an attorney, but Ed Greenberg is an attorney and along with master photographer Jack Reznicki, they have a class on Kelby Training all about various types of model releases and when you should use each one. If you shoot people, I couldn’t recommend this class more highly. The bonus is that the online video class has a companion PDF download of all seven releases they discuss.
You might even go so far as to do what we did at my office. We took the most versatile release and laid it out to fit on a 5.5″ x 8.5″ sheet of paper. Then we had a bunch of them printed and turned into a pad of 50 releases per pad. Just about everyone in the office carries a pad of model releases in our camera bag. Of course, the best way to travel would be to have all seven options available in a folder you carry with you wherever you go, but this pad of releases is a great, easy alternative.
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6 responses to Invite Models to Your Pad
Carrying releases is always a good idea. Putting them on a tear off pad even better. As always, thanks LB.
I’m a Kelby Training subscriber, out of curiosity which model release did you have printed on the 50 sheet pad? Great idea!
The graphic is of an old release we used to use, for illustration purposes in my article. On the other hand, RC and I have been talking about redoing the pads with the “intergalactic” release. RC even reworked the layout to a smaller 5.5″ x 8.5″ version and it looks nice.
I’m planning on reworking them all to 5.5″ x 8.5″ and then put 10 copies of each in a small folder in my camera bag.
I might recommend a release to anyone shooting identifiable buildings and even pets.
Dave-
Interesting point. There are actually some discussions (and views from both sides) about property releases in that online class and one of the downloadable PDFs is a property release for just these purposes.
[...] Becker’s post, “Invite Models to your Pad” gives great advice about creating a pad for your model release forms. After reading it, I [...]