Digital Image Rights:

Believe it or not, the digital images that I make of you become my intellectual property. I own rights to that photograph. You have to have my permission to use it--even though you can surf to my web site and right-click and it is on your hard drive. If you use the image without permission you are breaking the law. Now this paradigm for intellectual property is probably going to change, but we don't quite know how yet, so here's how I'm trying to meet the future, meet your needs, and pay my bills.

First of all, I understand that when people have photos taken they often want to have access to the digital images for propagation and sharing over the internet. In a intellectual property situation this sharing creates even more copyright violations. In order to solve this problem I offer the following customer agreement. Please also notice that neither the customer nor any of their friends or relatives have the right (by default) to substantially alter the photograph. Still, I think this kind of agreement will free you to be able to post images to your blog that Grandmas and Grandpas, and other friends and relatives can view and save and even make their own prints of, like they want to, and as they should be allowed to.

License for Personal Use:

You may use the images for personal albums (digital or printed), for personal web sites, for personal prints, greeting cards, t-shirts, posters, etc. Friends and relatives are welcome to save copies from your web site, obtain copies of up to half of the images on the disk, and make unlimited personal prints themselves.

You may not use images to advertise your business, sell the image, or prints of the image, you may not make complete copies of the disk for relatives or friends—they need to buy one from me (at the $10 plus shipping), you may not substantially edit or change images without written permission.