Exclusive Licence

An exclusive licence is a promise by the photographer not to license the same images to anyone else for the uses, places and period the licence covers, usually in return for a higher fee than a non-exclusive one.

General information, not legal advice. Laws differ by country and state — check with a lawyer where you work before you rely on it.

Draft a licence for personal, editorial or commercial use, then download a PDF.

Why it matters

A brand may not want a competitor using the same photo, so it pays for exclusivity. For the photographer, exclusivity means giving up other sales of those images for a while, which is why it costs more.

A non-exclusive licence lets the photographer license the same images to other people too. Exclusivity can be narrow — one industry, one country, one year — rather than everything, everywhere, for ever, and the photographer can still keep the right to show the work in their portfolio.

Example

A food photographer licenses a set of breakfast photos to a cereal brand: exclusive for packaging and advertising in the UK for 18 months.

During that time she can't license those images to another food brand for those uses there, but she can show them on her website, and after 18 months she can license them again.

Write posts that bring in clients

Spotlight's Get clients mode turns a photo from a shoot into posts for every platform that say what you shoot, where you work and how to book or license from you.

Get clients is a mode of the Spotlight workspace on CAPTD's paid plans — see pricing.

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