The landscape of photography is fulfilling yet very competitive.
No matter where your expertise lies, with new photographers claiming to be an expert every other day, guaranteeing success has become harder. This makes creating a professional photography contract so critical.
This creates realistic expectations for clients and fosters reliable relationships. It is more like a guarantee for your clients that they get what they see.
It is safe to say that it is the very first start to a smooth workflow and a sustainable brand for yourself.
This is exactly what we are going to discuss in this post. We bring you six tips that can ensure you have a high-performance photography contract in 2021.
6 tips every professional photographer needs to include in their photography contract
If you are a professional photographer, acting like one from the very opening day of your business is very critical.
Having an eye for the camera and a unique aesthetic sense will not help you stay in business for long. This naturally starts from showcasing yourself as an organized and structured professional who knows the responsibilities towards the client.
This means the first thing you need to ensure is that your perceived value in front of your clients is worthy. Only then you would get a chance to showcase your quality. Investing some time in preparing a comprehensive, fairly detailed yet short photography contract is one of the best decisions that you can take towards a successful photography career. However, here’s a word of caution.
Creating a well-rounded photography contract might be a little more tricky than you are expecting, especially if you have never created one. But fret not.
You can easily triumph this challenge with a little Google search. There are many templates available on the internet. Infact, we have covered you with a free photography contract template right here. The only thing, do not shy away from customizing it to meet your unique demands and work style.
Now you know what an ideal photography contract looks like, let’s drill deeper into the elements that you should keep a close eye on.
1. Overview
Your contract must unfailingly open with a high-level walkthrough of your project.
This is the area where you mention the foundational details without going deep. Ideally, this section should be dedicated to briefs about the scope of work, the landscape, client details, project timelines, budget, and a few more.
As a standard procedure, you should try to be as comprehensive as possible here. Try to capture your project-related details from every facet but maintaining brevity. This will help you plan and execute your project better and create smoother workflows and happy end customers.
2. General information
Creating a general information section might look like the least of the priorities at first. But you need to look closer.
When reconsidered, it can save you from a lot of hassles at a later stage. But this doesn’t mean that this section has to be lengthy. In fact, this might be the shortest section of your contract paper.
Ideally, this section should hold 3 core elements here: your business’s legally registered name, trade details, and finally your client’s official name as found on any government-issued ID.
This will protect your business from all legal disputes and their respective resolutions. But that is not all this section serves you with. There is more.
Including your registered details in the contract gives you an opportunity to establish trust amongst your clients and thus improve your brand equity.
3. Service level agreement (SLA)
The SLA is perhaps the most vital section of your contract. It holds all the nitty-gritty of your project while ensuring that all the stakeholders are on the same page. Consider it more like a legalized agreement between you and your clients. But to really have a useful SLA, you need to ensure it covers a few critical points.
4. Timelines
Timelines are one of the basic yet critical aspects of smooth project management and quality deliverables. Infact, it can ensure you understand the viability of the expectations and negotiate your terms, if necessary. But this is not the only reason why a clear, precise timeline statement is important. There is more to it.
Having a finite active project timeline ensures you an opportunity to limit your services to the relevant project till a particular timeline. This means if it passes the timelines, you can initiate a new one and charge a premium for your valuable business time.
- Deliverables
Just like timelines, ensuring you set expectations around deliverables to your client is required too. More than often, the photography industry witnesses malpractice where clients create false allegations for not meeting the deliverables. Having set deliverables enforceable by law ensures that both the parties are secured from any kind of abuse or dispute in agreement.
A pro tip for this section would be to ensure you are hyper-specific about your details.
- Post-production agreement
This section of your SOW (scope of work) is relatively new but incredibly powerful in the modern photography landscape. Unsure?
Here’s how.
Rigorous editing is a vital part of modern photography. This makes detailing the scope of editing critical to set realistic budgets, timelines, and quality. More so, it gives you the leverage to say a polite ‘no’ if required to your clients whenever the post-production work exceeds the agreed scope. You can do this by stating the number of reiterations you would take, the software you would use, the editing categories you would offer, and more.
A pro tip here would be to limit your client’s further editing access for public view as it is a direct reflection of your work?
4. Cancellation policy
There is probably no stone that you would leave unturned to fulfill the project needs of your clients. But then again, there are situations that are completely out of your hands that may cause a cancellation of the event.
For instance, sudden bad weather, impromptu lockdown, or a medical emergency can completely change the face of your scheduled program. This makes creating a dedicated section to cancellation policy critical.
It ensures that you as a service provider are absolved of any responsibilities whatsoever. So the question here is how can you protect yourself?
Here’s how.
There are quite a few ways to achieve this. Policies like non-refundable service, indemnity bonds, milestone payments, and percentage charges are great ways to ensure your business time is not invested wrong. Also, you are not withheld for any liabilities. A smart way to do so is to list out the specific circumstances where it is applicable.
5. Payment policy
Having a dedicated section for project payment plans is a great way to bring clarity and sanity to your project. The best part?
This is the anchor to create your invoicing automation. Fail this and you might have to run every place to collect your service charges. This means this section is completely dedicated to creating a clutter-free and clean payment protection policy. So, the question is what to include in this.
Here’s what?
The first step to safeguarding your financials is to start being specific about every detail, small or large about the transactions. From how, when, to whom all the details must be mentioned. No matter whether you create milestones for your payment as your work progress or you take complete charges as down payment mentioning is critical. This will keep disputes at bay. But this is not all.
Having a section documented about delayed payments is critical here. Your clients’ payments can bounce because of multiple reasons. Creating a certain amount of flexibility in the payment is extremely beneficial for a sustainable relationship.
6. IPR (intellectual property rights)
Your photographs are your piece of work. This means whatever you produce, you hold the ownership and copyrights to all of the intellectual assets which you need to protect at all times.
Giving access to your work can potentially tamper with your brand and authority. This means you need to be strategic about it.
Sure, you can give your clients lifetime user access but you have the ownership of them. In some extreme cases, your client might want complete ownership of the assets. In such cases, you need to evaluate how the value of your work in selling the rights to your client.
If you feel you can give away ownership rights in exchange for a considerable amount of monetary transaction, go for it. But if it is not, restrain from it.
Conclusion
By now you would have got a comprehensive understanding of what should be included in an ideal photography contract. The adobe points are sure to make it well-rounded and apt to the modern landscape. But here’s the thing.
Legal matters are subtle and vulnerable to loopholes.
To ensure your contract is watertight, it is always advisable to have a legal expert review it.
Sure, the above template makes your work a lot easier. Chances are you will end up saving a significant amount on your legal fees but having a third-party review is critical for complete success.
The best part? Your contract will be flexible and can be kept updated with the latest legal issues in your landscape.
So, now there is just one question left to answer. When are you creating one?
