LightVision

Recently I was asked this good question by Sydney fashion photographer/art director, Edmund Chiu, regarding model releases and payment for stock photo shoots:

Q. “if a model wants a cut of the sale of the images, how does it work? I assume a written agreement is in order before the shoot, but what is a decent percentage that the model should get?

Some models are fine with their pics taken and don’t want any money from it, just  time in exchange for a CD of digital images (TFCD) is good for them.”

A. If you really have to go down that road then most models get 10% of any sale where they are the subject. Be sure to limit the duration to a couple of years, you don’t want to be paying them for 10 years! In practice it is difficult to administer such ‘cuts’, and certainly if you were to submit those pictures to a library, the library will not pay the model, it would have to come out of your percentage. Example, the library sells the picture for $100, you get $40, then you have to pay $10 to the model out of your share. Then there is the paperwork, you will have to get a Tax Invoice from the model each time you pay them, or you need to fill out an ATO form saying that the income is part of their hobby and is not subject to 46.5% withholding tax. You see, it’s much cleaner to ‘pay’ them once upfront and not worry about it later. This doesn’t mean you have to pay them wads of hard cash, remember, paying them could mean printing some images for them or an extra photo shoot of them, their partner or their kids…etc. It’s called valuable consideration.
Yes, a written agreement is mandatory. Both a model release and an agreement of what, how and when they will be paid and for how long.