Photography Law and Mentoring

[jcbhurst]

Greetings,

I am a professional photographer in the state of Ohio. Recently, I was approached by an individual who said they were in need of professional mentoring for a photography class. While that's typically not my thing, I agreed as I would have hoped someone would have extended that for me when starting out.

Long story short, the individual accompanied me with a couple of my high school senior clients. I have now discovered the individual is using photos they had taken of my clients as advertising for their personal business. My issues are; the subjects were my paying clients, the individual was at the location on the premise of being a student, and neither the subjects, who are minors, nor their parents had given any sort of permission to this individual for use in an advertising fashion.

I was hoping to get a legal opinion on the above circumstances. Thank you very kindly for your time and thoughts.

 

[quincy]

Greetings,

I am a professional photographer in the state of Ohio. Recently, I was approached by an individual who said they were in need of professional mentoring for a photography class. While that's typically not my thing, I agreed as I would have hoped someone would have extended that for me when starting out.

Long story short, the individual accompanied me with a couple of my high school senior clients. I have now discovered the individual is using photos they had taken of my clients as advertising for their personal business. My issues are; the subjects were my paying clients, the individual was at the location on the premise of being a student, and neither the subjects, who are minors, nor their parents had given any sort of permission to this individual for use in an advertising fashion.

I was hoping to get a legal opinion on the above circumstances. Thank you very kindly for your time and thoughts.

The photographer owns the copyrights in any photograph he took however he is not able to use photographs of identifiable individuals for his advertising without the express written permission of those individuals. He has violated the publicity rights of the students. The minors, with assistance from their parents, can take the photographer to court.

Here is a link to Ohio's statute (ORC 2741.01 et seq Right of publicity in an individual's persona): http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2741.01v1

And here is a link to the Digital Media Law Project's information on both the statutory right of publicity but also the common law right of publicity in Ohio: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/ohio-right-publicity-law

 

[jcbhurst]

Thank you so much for your time and help, Quincy!

 

[quincy]

Thank you so much for your time and help, Quincy!

You're welcome, jcbhurst. Thanks for the thanks.

I hope you have good luck handling the photographer.