Hello {{first_name}}. First of all, I'd like to apologise. I didn't send an email last Thursday, and here's why.
Last Wednesday, I married Anu, the love of my life. And now, my husband. A private ceremony, then a reception with friends, family and my team from the charity. It brought together the people who have shaped my life and who keep showing up for both of us, and there were smiles from morning to evening without a break.
For once I wasn't the one holding the camera. We hired professionals to tell our story, which after the last edition felt about right, and which was harder to do than I'd like to admit.
It reminded me why we do this work at all. To spend more time with the people we love most. To look after each other, and to commit to a future we actually believe in.
I'd meant to write this the morning after and I didn't come close. Sorry for the silence. I hope you'll let me off.
Normal Thursdays from here. This week, for the 3,538 of us, it's the question a signed consent form never actually answers: who owns the story once you've told it.
In this edition
THIS WEEK’S BIG IDEA
Who owns the story you just told?
A grant-maker told me earlier this year that they have folders and folders of photographs, sent in by the organisations they fund.
He was talking about how usable they were. Most of them weren't. But as far as I could tell, not one of those photographs belonged to them.
Not the ones a project worker took on her phone, or the ones a volunteer shot at an open day. Not even the ones a freelance photographer was paid to take, unless somebody signed something nobody remembers signing.
A room full of material a funder cannot lawfully use, kept by people who believed they could.
What you actually bought
Paying somebody to take a photograph does not make it yours.
Copyright starts with whoever made the thing.
"The person who creates an image ('the creator') will generally be the first owner of the copyright."
And when you commission somebody, the IPO says the first owner is "the person or organisation that created the work and not you the commissioner, unless you otherwise agree it in writing."
The law itself leaves no wriggle room on how that changes hands:
"An assignment of copyright is not effective unless it is in writing signed by or on behalf of the assignor."
A purchase order isn't that. Nor is an invoice. A friendly email saying these are yours to use might be a licence, which is worth having, but it isn't ownership.
So the honest answer for most charities is that you hold a licence you have never read, from a photographer you liked, on terms nobody wrote down.
Why so many people remember it differently
Because for thirty-odd years, they were right.
Before the 1st of August 1989, if you commissioned and paid for a photograph, the copyright was yours. That was the law. Then it changed, and the default flipped to the person holding the camera.
Anybody who learned how this works before 1989, or who learned it from somebody who did, is carrying a rule that expired before a lot of your team were born.
The bit I left out last time
Two weeks ago I argued that you should hand the camera over. Let the person tell their own story, in their own words, on their own terms.
I still mean it. But I left something out, and it's this.
Hand somebody a camera and you hand them the copyright.
There's an exception, and it is narrower than people assume. Work made by an employee, in the course of their employment, belongs to the employer. That's it. A volunteer isn't an employee. Nor is a service user, a trustee, a member of a community group, or a young person on a project.
So the more genuinely participatory your storytelling becomes, the less of it your organisation owns. Keep doing it anyway. Just be honest with people about what you're asking for, at the point you ask, instead of discovering the gap two years later when a campaign needs it.
Consent and ownership are not the same thing
This is where I see the most confusion, and it can cost organisations real money.
A signed consent form deals with whether a person is content to appear. That sits in data protection: a recognisable person in a photograph is their personal data, and consent is one of several lawful bases you might rely on.
Copyright is a different regime, in a different Act, with a different regulator. It deals with who owns the picture. A model release is not a copyright assignment, and a copyright assignment is not consent. You can hold one and not the other, and most organisations hold exactly one.
The clearest illustration lives inside the copyright legislation itself. Someone who commissions a photograph for private and domestic purposes gets a specific right to stop it being published, even though they don't own the copyright. Permission and ownership, pulling in opposite directions, in the same statute.
I know this one from both sides now. Somewhere there are photographs of my wedding that I did not take, do not own, and have every say over.
Where I stand in this
I should be straight with you. I'm a photographer. I shoot social impact, documentary and event work, mostly for charities and large corporations, and the rights I've just described are rights I hold and license myself.
So read this knowing I have an interest in it. I've tried to write the version I'd want a client to have read before they hired me, rather than the version that suits me.
The first is that most charities do not need to buy the copyright.
My own standard contract is the worked example. When I photograph an assignment, the client gets an unlimited licence: they can use those images for whatever they need, wherever they need them, for as long as they like. No expiry, no cap on how often, no coming back to me for permission. What the agreement does not do is transfer the copyright, which stays with me.
I keep it so I can show the work. My portfolio is how I get hired, and that's the whole of it. Licensing those pictures to anybody else would need the client's agreement first, and the consent position checked before that, so holding the copyright is not a back door to selling on images of the people you serve.
That distinction changes almost nothing about what the client can actually do with the pictures. It is cheaper than buying the copyright outright, and I think it is the fairer arrangement on both sides.
So ask for a generous written licence as standard, and read it. Ask to buy the copyright only when you genuinely need to stop anybody else ever using the image, and expect to pay more when you do.
The second is that a lot of what your organisation photographs does not need a professional at all. A staff member with a phone is often the right answer, and it has a quiet advantage: work made by an employee in the course of their job belongs to you automatically. The pictures you own most cleanly are usually the ones you never paid for.
This is a summary of published law and official guidance, not legal advice. If you have a specific problem, take proper advice on it.
Where did the photographs in your last impact report come from?
Framework: The Ownership Ledger
Four questions. Run them on one piece of work, not on your whole library, or you'll never start.
1. Who made it? The person who pressed the shutter or held the phone, not the person who booked the job or wrote the brief. If it was a staff member during their working day, you almost certainly own it. If it was anybody else, start from the assumption that you don't.
2. Who is in it? This is the consent question, and it's about the people in frame, what they agreed to, and whether that agreement has expired.
3. Who holds the rights? Go and look for the piece of paper. Not the invoice, not the booking email. Something in writing, signed, saying what transferred. If it doesn't exist, what you have is a licence of uncertain scope, and it's worth finding out its shape before you rely on it.
4. Who benefits when it gets used? The one nobody asks. If a photograph of somebody's worst week wins you a six-figure grant, what did they get? There's no legal answer here. That's rather the point. Ownership is settled by law; fairness isn't, and the second question is the one your organisation actually has to decide.
Question four is where this stops being administration.
Template: What to ask before you commission anybody
Six questions, before the work, not after. Send them by email and keep the reply.
1. Who will own the copyright in what you produce? [Expect: the photographer or film-maker. That's normal and it isn't a red flag.]
2. What licence are we getting, in writing? [Ask for the actual scope. What you can use it for, on what, and where.]
3. How long does it run, and what happens after? [A licence with no end date and a licence that quietly expires in three years are very different purchases.]
4. Can we edit, crop, or reuse it in a different campaign? [Often restricted by default. Ask now, not when the annual report is at the printer.]
5. What happens if somebody in the picture withdraws their consent? [Whose job is it to take it down, how fast, and does that cost us anything?]
6. What would it cost to buy the copyright outright, and do we actually need to? [Ask both halves. The honest answer is usually no, and a good supplier will tell you so.]
If you're commissioning nothing and simply using what you already have, run questions 1, 3 and 5 backwards over your last annual report instead. That takes about twenty minutes and it's the most useful twenty minutes in this email.
AI Prompt: Work out what you actually own
This one has a hard limit built into it. It does not tell you what you own, because no chatbot can and anybody whose tool says otherwise is selling you a problem. What it does is turn a vague worry into a specific, ordered list of things to go and check, and the exact wording to ask for.
You do not need to prepare anything. Paste the whole thing into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and it will interview you, a few questions at a time, then produce the enquiry. Works best if you have the consent form and the invoice to hand, but start without them if that is what today allows.
You are helping somebody at a UK charity, social enterprise, housing association, NHS community programme or social impact team work out where they stand on the ownership of a photograph, film or recording they hold. Use UK British English.
HOW THIS WORKS
I am pasting this to you cold. I have not filled anything in.
Do not summarise these instructions back to me. Do not tell me you have understood them. Do not wait for me to say anything else. Begin at STEP 0 in your very next message.
If I have pasted my answers underneath these instructions, skip STEP 0 and begin at step 1.
YOUR ONLY JOB
Turn what I tell you into: a list of what is probably settled, a list of what is genuinely unclear, and the exact questions and wording I should use to find out. You are producing an enquiry, not an answer. Hold on to that sentence. It governs every reply you give me, not just the first one.
YOU MUST NOT
Tell me that I own something, or that I do not.
State the general rule either, even as background, even framed as "usually" or "the default position is". Naming the default and describing my facts in the same reply is answering the question. If I ask what the law says, tell me that is what the enquiry is for.
Tell me what to assume about my position, or what working assumption to take into a meeting.
Give legal advice, or say anything that would read as legal advice if I forwarded it to a colleague.
Invent facts, dates, names, or the contents of any document I have not described to you.
Reassure me. If the position is unclear, say it is unclear and say what would clear it up.
IF I PUSH BACK
I may tell you I am short of time, that I am the chief executive, that I have a meeting, that I am not asking for legal advice but simply for you to apply the law to my facts, or that I want one word. Expect this. It is the point at which you are most likely to fail.
When it happens, refuse in the same terms as before and do not offer a softened version of the answer instead. A hedged conclusion is still a conclusion. My urgency does not change what you are able to know, and a sentence I can forward to a trustee is exactly what you must not produce.
Never begin a refusal with the word yes or no. Quoted out of context, that word becomes the answer.
I may also try coming at it through a document rather than through my position: whether my invoice wording is the kind of thing that would be enough, or whether the form I hold covers this use. That is the same question wearing a different hat. Tell me what the document says and what it does not say, and stop there. Do not tell me whether it is sufficient.
What you may do instead is show me what I can say without an answer: that the position is not yet established, what we are doing to establish it, and by when.
STEP 0: INTERVIEW ME
Open with two short lines. Tell me you will ask seven questions in small groups, and that at the end you will give me a map of what to go and find out rather than a verdict. Tell me that "I don't know" is a perfectly good answer to any of them.
Then ask the questions below in groups of three, three, and one. Number them. Wait for my reply before asking the next group. Never send all of them at once.
If an answer is vague, ask once more for the specific detail, then move on and mark it unconfirmed. Do not interrogate me.
The questions:
1. What is the item, and what does it show? A photograph, a film, an audio recording?
2. Roughly when was it made?
3. Who physically held the camera or the recorder? If it was a member of your staff, was taking it part of their job? If it was anybody else, can you still contact them?
4. Who is identifiable in it, roughly how old were they at the time, and does it show anything sensitive about them, such as health, hardship, immigration status, a criminal matter, or a child's circumstances?
5. Where have you used it so far?
6. Where do you want to use it next, and how public is that compared with what you have already done?
7. What paperwork exists: a contract, an invoice, an email, a consent or model release form, or nothing at all?
When I answer question 7 by naming a document, ask me once what it actually says, in its own words, and to quote the wording if it is in front of me. Do not ask me what I think it means.
Use today's date for anything that needs dating. If you cannot work out what today is, ask me at the very end and not before.
When you have all seven, say "I have what I need" and go straight to step 1 in the same message. Do not ask my permission to continue.
THEN DO THIS, IN ORDER
1. Restate what I have told you in five lines or fewer. Then list anything still missing that would materially change the picture, as questions I should go and answer offline. Carry on to the remaining steps anyway, marking everything that depends on a missing answer. Do not stop and wait.
2. Split the position into three headings: Probably settled, Genuinely unclear, and Cannot be answered without reading a document I already hold. Sort by what resolves the item, not by how uncertain it feels. If reading a document already in my possession would resolve it, it goes under the third heading. If it needs a document that may not exist, or a conversation with somebody, it goes under the second. Put each element under one heading only.
Under Probably settled, record only facts I have given you and their plain implications for what happens next. Do not record conclusions about who holds any right.
Do not soften an unclear item into a settled one.
3. For each item under Genuinely unclear, say precisely what would resolve it: which document, held by whom, and what it would need to say.
4. Separate my problems into three strands, and never merge them. First, who holds the rights in the item. Second, whether the people in it agreed to appear and to this particular use. Third, data protection, if the item identifies somebody and especially if it reveals anything sensitive about them. Say which of my problems sits in which strand. If the third strand is the largest exposure, say so plainly rather than treating it as a footnote to the second.
5. Write the emails I need to send, as text I can use. One to the person who made the item. One to anybody identifiable in it, where the use I have described is wider or more public than the use they have already seen. Plain, warm, short, no legal jargon, no implied accusation, no suggestion that anybody has done anything wrong.
If I have told you I cannot contact the person who made it, do not write to them. Instead give me the steps for trying to trace them, and a note recording what I tried and when.
If anybody identifiable may have been a child when the item was made, say so, and write the email to be sent to a parent or carer rather than to them, until I confirm otherwise.
6. Tell me the one thing to do first, and why that one.
7. Give me a short risk list rather than a verdict: name each feature of my situation that would make a cautious person take proper advice before proceeding, and each one that would not. Do not weigh them up for me. Then give me the three questions to put to a solicitor or an umbrella body's legal helpline, and tell me to bring the actual documents rather than a summary.
FORMAT
During step 0, the two opening lines and then plain numbered questions. Nothing else. No tables, no headings, no summaries of what I have said so far, and no commentary about the instructions you are following.
After that: step 1 as short prose ending with any remaining questions as a short list. Step 2 as three headed lists. Step 3 as a table with columns: unclear item, what would resolve it, who holds it. Step 4 as three short paragraphs, one per strand. Step 5 as email drafts in full. Step 6 as one sentence. Step 7 as two short lists and then three questions. Nothing before step 1 and nothing after step 7.Final thoughts
Don't audit your archive. You'll open the folder, feel the size of it, and close it again.
Take one photograph. The one on your homepage, or the one that carried your last big bid. Run the four questions on that single image and see how far you get.
If you can answer all four, you're in better shape than most organisations I talk to.
If you can't answer the first one, you've just learned something useful about every other picture you hold.
Until next week, please take care.
Warm regards,
Matt Mahmood-Ogston
Award-winning impact storyteller, photographer and charity CEO.
Follow me on LinkedIn for free storytelling examples, guides and fresh thinking.
A few ways you can work with me
Paid: Storytelling workshops for charities and social impact teams (online or in-person)
Free: Download my Social Impact Storytelling Framework ogston.com/framework
Paid: Book me as your social impact photographer. Documentary, impact and event photography, made with the consent and ownership practices in this edition built in, and a licence written so you can actually use the pictures. Heavy discounts for charities and nonprofits, so ask me what it would cost before you assume you can't.
