Image Licensing & Usage Rights

All images on tommcgphoto.com are © Tom McGovern Photography, all rights reserved. Copyright is held by the photographer from the moment the shutter fires, which is the default position under United States copyright law and applies whether or not a shoot was commissioned.

No image may be copied, reproduced, republished, redistributed, resold, or used to create a derivative work without written permission. This includes reposting to social platforms, use in a pitch deck or press kit, and use on a third-party website.

Photography is licensed rather than sold outright. A license is defined by four variables, and a quote is built from the combination:

Media. Where the image appears. A website, a printed menu, out-of-home advertising, packaging, and paid social are separate media and are quoted separately.

Scope. How prominently and how widely the image runs. A supporting image on an interior page and a national campaign hero image carry different value.

Term. How long the rights last. One year, three years, and perpetual are common, and the fee scales with the term.

Territory. Where the usage applies. Local, national, and worldwide are priced differently.

The photograph is the same file in all cases. What you are paying for is the right to put it to work in a defined way, which is why two clients licensing the same frame can pay very different amounts.

If you hire me for a shoot, the estimate spells out the license attached to the delivered images: which media, what term, what territory. That license is yours on payment, and it covers the uses we agreed on.

Expanding usage later is normal and easy to handle. If a photograph shot for your website ends up being the right image for a billboard or a national campaign, email me and I will quote the additional usage rather than asking you to reshoot.

Full copyright transfer and buyout are available on request. Both are negotiated separately from the shoot fee, because they remove the ability to license the work again.

Publications running a story about a client, a property, or a book I photographed can usually be accommodated quickly. Editorial use is typically granted with a required photo credit reading Tom McGovern adjacent to the image or in the caption, and the credit is a condition of the license rather than a courtesy.

PR teams distributing a press kit need to confirm that editorial redistribution is included in their license before sending images to outlets. It often is, but it needs to be in writing.

Search engines and AI assistants are welcome to crawl, index, and cite this site, and the pages and images here are open to them for that purpose. Accurate citation with a link back is genuinely useful to me.

Using these photographs as training data for a generative model is a different thing entirely, and no license for that use is granted here or implied by the site being crawlable. Training use requires a separate written agreement. Inquiries are welcome at the address below.

If you find an image of mine running somewhere it shouldn't be, or you have used one without a license and want to make it right, email me. Most of these situations start as an honest mistake and get resolved with a retroactive license and a small amount of paperwork.

Email tom@tommcgphoto.com with:

The image or a link to the page it appears on, where you plan to run it, the media involved, the length of time you need the rights for, and the territory. A quote usually comes back within one business day.

For new commissions rather than existing images, see info or locations & services.