At the time of writing there has been no government assistance to the 5 million self-employed people dealing with Covid-19 outbreak. Let’s at least get fairly treated by our own industry!

Sole-traders sometimes get a pretty rough deal when interacting with other organisations, and I wanted to highlight an issue I've been having for the last three years; an issue with which many (all?) photographers will be familiar. It’s about breach of image copyright.

I shot this image, working as Nick Church Photography, at a venue way back in August 2016 and agreed with the venue, Guyers House, that they could use it in digital form online and social media in exchange for a credit / tag with each use and a link on the website. They agreed…

Since this agreement, this image has been used:

• Large billboard outside the venue (digital use only remember)

• Their wedding fair marketing throughout 2018

• Promotional print materials for the venue

• Lead image on their website

• Perhaps others…

They have clearly received commercial gain from the use of the image, but I have received ZERO compensation, tag, credit, weblink, nothing. Even the ‘digital-only’ bit was ignored.

This is intentional breach of my copyright - simple. At one point (in fairness) they attempted to add my website link to their site, but they’d made a typo in my url and despite 5 more phone calls claimed that they could not change it (?). After a redesign in 2019, even that broken link was removed and the image made even more prominent - again, as usual, no credit to Nick Church Photography.

Over the last three years, I have called and emailed 15-20 times and been asked them simply to choose:

1. Stop using it

2. Start using it as we agreed

But they simply ignore me every time, even though I have made it clear they are in breach of my copyright. As a final attempt last year I decided to invoice (a heavily reduced £90, a trivially low amount I set ‘just for the principle of it’) for use of the image. This invoice remains unpaid, despite two reminders, and they continue to benefit commercially from the image. Essentially they figure that I would never do anything about it.

ENOUGH is ENOUGH!

It's not fair or right to assume that a self-employed person does not have the resources, time or patience to fight things like this. Well guess what I didn’t back in 2017, but I do now!

My ‘Cease and Desist’ letter has been written and will be sent shortly - I will be expecting compensation for the use of this image for the 930 days that my copyright has been breached - I suspect they will wish they’d paid the £90!

Let’s get this movement started! We are a community of businesses in an amazing industry the least we should do is be respectful and professional to each other.

Photographers are ALWAYS are happy to share images with vendors and venues for a simple image credit. Almost all do so happily and I have a great network of such venues and suppliers, and they are the ones that I’ll go over and above for.

Not everyone is aware of the rules around image theft and copyright, and of course if there are breaches, education is usually enough to get the right thing to happen, but repeat breach in full knowledge is not OK. Not in a long shot!

Us photographers have a voice, and together we will be loud enough to be heard.