If a freelance photographer is contracted to provide an educational institution with a number of images, who owns the copyright?
Copyright comes into existence at the point of creation so under normal circumstances the photographer will own the copyright for his or her work. The photographer would then be able to instruct the institution on how it might use the images. This might restrict the use of the images by the institution for particular purposes (e.g. in advertising campaigns). To avoid such problems the institution might include a clause into a contract which stipulates that it is the institution and not the photographer who owns the copyright of any images taken as part of that contract. The photographer would acknowledge this transfer of copyright by signing the contract.
