Your Brand in Somebody Else's Photograph

Who owns what

The person who took the photograph owns it, whatever it contains.

Your van, your work, and your logo appearing in it does not give you any right to use the image.

That holds even where they tagged you, thanked you, and clearly intended it as praise.

So the useful distinction is between sharing it where it was posted, which platforms are built for, and taking it elsewhere, which needs permission.

Two different actions

• Resharing on the same platform: generally fine.
• Saving and reposting as your own: not fine.
• Putting it on your website: ask.
• Using it in an advertisement: ask, in writing.
• Printing it on anything: ask, in writing.

The gap between the first and the second is where most businesses go wrong, since saving an image and posting it from your own account looks identical to sharing and is a different act entirely.

Asking is one message

And it almost always works.

Somebody who posted a photograph praising your work is favourably disposed and will usually say yes immediately.

Keep it short: we loved this photograph, would you mind if we used it on our website and social media.

Say where you intend to use it, since permission for a social post is not permission for a printed brochure.

Ask whether they would like to be credited and how, which some people care about a great deal.

Keep the reply, since a screenshot of a yes is the record you will want in three years.

A worked example

A landscaper had a customer post photographs of a finished garden that were considerably better than his own.

He asked, she agreed, and he asked a second question: whether she minded the house being identifiable.

She did, so he used two of the four images cropped to exclude the frontage.

Those two became the best-performing images on his site.

The second question was the one that mattered, since using them uncropped would have produced a complaint from somebody who had said yes.

Permission for the photograph is not permission for everything in it.

The property is a separate question

Which trips people who have handled the photograph correctly.

A photograph of somebody's home, identifiable by address or frontage, raises a privacy question independent of who took it.

Ask the property owner as well as the photographer where those are different people.

Cropping to the work rather than the building resolves it in most cases and frequently makes the better image anyway.

The same applies to anybody recognisable in the frame, including children, where the answer should always be to ask or to crop.

For a commercial client, check whether their own policy allows their premises to appear in a supplier's marketing.

Encourage the photographs in the first place

Since this is a good problem to have more of.

Customer photographs of finished work are more persuasive than your own, because the audience reads them as unprompted.

Ask at handover whether they would post one and tag you, which is a small request most people are happy to fulfil.

Make it easy by getting the tagging details right on your listing and profiles.

And respond to every one, which encourages the next.

A steady flow of these is worth more than any photography budget.

Never take one that was not offered

Which is worth stating for the awkward case.

A photograph posted to a neighbourhood group or a review site was not offered to you and should not be lifted.

The same applies to images from a customer's own business website showing work you did.

Ask in both cases, and accept a no without pressing, since a customer who declines and then sees the image used has a genuine grievance.

The cost of asking is a single message and the cost of not asking is a relationship.

Write down what you have permission for

Which takes a minute per image and prevents the later problem.

Keep a note beside each customer image: who took it, when they agreed, and what they agreed to.

Three years later, when somebody proposes using it on a vehicle wrap, that note is what tells you whether you can.

Without it the safe answer is to ask again, which is awkward with a customer you have not spoken to since.

A single spreadsheet handles this for a small business indefinitely and costs nothing to maintain.

Add the row at the moment the yes arrives, since that is the only time you will reliably remember the detail.

Say thank you publicly

Which is worth doing separately from any question about using the image.

A customer who photographed your work and posted it has given you something, and a short public reply naming what you liked about the job costs nothing.

Other people reading that thread see a business that responds, which is a different signal from the photograph itself and reaches the same audience.

Keep it specific rather than generic, since a reply saying thanks for sharing reads as automated and one mentioning the actual work reads as a person.

That habit is also what makes the next customer more likely to post, which is the supply side of this whole subject.

The counter-case

Much of this is low risk in practice.

A customer who posted praise and tagged you is unlikely to object to a reshare, and platforms are designed for exactly that.

Being excessively formal about a friendly post can also read as strange, and a heavy permission request over a casual photograph is out of proportion.

And a business with plenty of its own photographs has less need for any of this.

Reshare freely on the platform, ask before using an image anywhere else, ask again about the property, and record what was agreed.

What to do

1. Reshare rather than repost.
2. Ask before using it elsewhere.
3. Say where you will use it.
4. Ask about the property too.
5. Crop to the work.
6. Keep the reply.
7. Note what was agreed.

Step four is the one people miss having done everything else properly, since permission from the photographer says nothing about the homeowner whose frontage is in the frame.

The property question is covered in using a photo of a customer's house.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.