Well, we too try to avoid outside photographers photographing objects unless for scholarly purposes, but we have broken that rule occasionally. When an outside photographer wants to shoot an object or an interior for their own commercial purposes, we tend to let them retain the copyright and the images, although it does make us somewhat uncomfortable. It sort of depends on how artsy they are going to get. If the object is 3-dimensional and so they could get creative with lighting or have certain angles they want as opposed to two-dimensional objects where they might just be creating a "slavish reproduction", then the photograph of the object starts to have merit on it's own and becomes a separate copyrightable creation. We have asked for copies of the images before, and our own institution has been required to give up the copyright of images that our photographer took of another institutions objects (we needed the images for a publication), so some places do try that route.

Of course, if it is a two-dimensional object and the object is old enough we start getting into public domain issues, but let's not go there.

And certainly, we might charge the photographer for the staff time and other services we provide so that they can do their photography.

Insofar as stipulating that the entirety of an image be used for publication or whatever other purposes, you have every right to make that a default condition and specify in your agreement that those requesting reproduction or publication of the image must ask for special permission to crop, silhouette or manipulate the image in any way.

Penny Leveritt
Visual Resources Manager
Historic Deerfield, Inc.

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