d3photo covers more schools and events with each passing month and along with those events comes a thank you to each of the schools we cover: We give you access to the images that we use to build in initial web galleries. They are either 1500px or 2000px long (depending on the photographer).
Those images from regular season events are provided in a web link that is only sent to the sports information or athletics communications staff for each participating school as well as their counter parts in their respective league or conference offices.
The license is as follows:
d3photography.com shares all of its images with the schools and the conferences of their events. Proof images from every event are available upon request and prepared for direct download from our website. If you need any images from past events, please contact us with the date of the event and the teams involved and we will make it available. These images are non-transferable. They are only for use of the Athletic, Communications and Marketing offices for the schools and may not be transferred to other media organizations without the expressed written permission of d3photography.com. Use of our images without copyright or without the proper copyright is considered theft and an invoice per use of up to $50 per image will be submitted to your communications office along with a copy of this email.
What does this mean?
d3photography.com shares all of its images with the schools and the conferences of their events.
I covered this at the very beginning. We share our proof-sized, watermark-free regular-season photos with you.
Proof images from every event are available upon request and prepared for direct download from our website.
This means that if you know we covered your event and you did not receive access to the photos you should inquire. Sometimes the game was 10 years ago and you cannot access your predecessor's emails. Sometimes the requests we get are for NCAA events and those are not provided (more on that later).
These images are non-transferable.
This means you cannot give the images to another group that is not mentioned in the next sentence. At all. They are for the use of the license bearers only. This includes: Student-athletes, family, friends, newspapers, television stations, bloggers, photo resale websites, anyone not covered in the next sentence.
They are only for use of the Athletic, Communications and Marketing offices for the schools and may not be transferred to other media organizations without the expressed written permission of d3photography.com.
You can use the images in any regard in those three areas as you see fit. However if you want to share the image with other organizations (the aforementioned newspapers, bloggers and television stations) you must request permission from us before you share each photo. It is far more easily handled, however, if you just have those organizations contact us directly. Most outlets qualify for free or low-cost limited-use images.
Some schools have made photo galleries on their own websites with the images of just their student athletes in the past and we've accepted that as a licensed use of the images. We have not discussed the matter with any of the schools but if you feel that you want to go this route we will ask that you include the URL to our gallery on your gallery somewhere.
Use of our images without copyright or without the proper copyright is considered theft and an invoice per use of up to $50 per image will be submitted to your communications office along with a copy of this email.
Most simply put: if you don't follow our crediting and use guidelines we will charge you $50 per image per use. We're usually pretty good on the first one or two times we catch the error but we have cracked down on consistent, blatant theft of images in the past few years.
What's the credit supposed to be? We are very flexible on this as every news department, every sports information office handles crediting images differently. But here's what we expect: Photographer name and "d3photo" or "d3photography" or "d3photo.com" or "d3photography.com" after it on the image or immediately adjacent to the image.
Some news outlets (and even a few schools) have been found to be selling our photographers' photos from regular season events. Some news outlets have the wrong credit on the photos. Some news outlets have photos they never requested from d3photo LLC, it's staff photographers nor we granted permission to be sent to them through the schools.
We recently discovered a school that had d3photography.com images from more than a dozen events for sale on their resale website. A violation of both our use license but they sold photos to the public - a violation of federal law, and a violation of the terms of use of their resale platform. We also have a number of newspapers in the Midwest that not only have photos they weren't given permission to run but have them
for sale through their website.
NCAA Tournament Games and Meets
You may have noticed the the first sentence says "of their events". The NCAA treats the playoffs as their own events and covers all the associated costs in competition. Our sharing of images stops at the NCAA tournament and there's a reason for that. Each of our photographers works the year in an "on spec" category - that means that they are working on speculation that they will have sales (prints, digital files, licensed uses) of their images and therefore might be paid for their time. Every one of them works that way - myself and my partner (Larry Radloff) are in that same group.
In the postseason, however, we incur expense to get the photographer to the venue, put them in a hotel, pay for their fuel and cover a meal. We also provide the schools (each school at the venue) with the opportunity to hire our photographer for their game(s). This hiring gives the school access to
all of the photos from that event at full resolution. In essence we have shared interest of the images - we have always held editorial rights to the photos but have allowed the schools that paid for access to the images to be able to do with those photos as they please. This means you can take the photos from your game or the record high jump or your All-American relay team and share it with your local newspapers, television stations, alumni magazine, etc., without fear of being in violation of a license.
In fact we don't even expect you to use the photographer's name in the credit box for these events.
Every school gets the pitch email for every event we know we will cover. We do the same for the following national championships: Cross Country, Wrestling, Indoor Track and Field, Swimming and Diving, and Outdoor Track and Field. We also cover the following national championships for D3sports.com: Football, Basketball, Hockey, and Baseball.
If there is interest in our coverage of any other NCAA championships please reach out to us directly. We will see what we can do to help you out. The more notice you can give us the better chances we have of finding someone for you in that area.
"We wanted to help promote your work"
If you ever have any questions about what you can or cannot do with the photos we are sending out to you please do not hesitate to ask. We are always willing to take a phone call or respond to an email or a Facebook message if you have questions or concerns.
