Answer 11 of 12
Are these meadow photos exclusive? – Curated Meadow Photos
No. Why that matters less here than in most catalogues, and what to do when a picture has to be yours alone.
The licence is non-exclusive. Another buyer may licence the same photograph.
Why it matters less here
In a general nature library, the risk is that a competitor uses your image on comparable material. In a specialist catalogue the buyers are mostly not competing with each other: a publisher, a wildlife trust, a seed company and a university course are not fighting over the same shelf.
If your use is educational, editorial or scientific, non-exclusivity is close to irrelevant. The same species photographed by the same person appearing in two different books is normal and nobody minds.
Where it does matter
Packaging and brand campaigns, as always, because that is where the image is doing identity work.
And one case peculiar to this catalogue: if you are producing an identification resource, using the same photograph another guide already uses for the same species is genuinely confusing for a reader who owns both. It is worth checking.
What we can tell you
Send an asset id and we will tell you roughly how often that frame has been licensed, and where we can, in what kind of context. For deciding whether a specific picture can carry a species entry in your guide, that is the useful number.
We will not sell exclusivity on a frame that is already widely used, and we will say so.
Making a shared frame yours
Crop decisively, grade consistently, composite, and prefer the less obvious picture. All free, all effective, and the last one is usually the better creative choice anyway.
For a species with only one good frame in the catalogue, none of that helps, and the honest answer is that you may need to photograph it yourself or commission it.
Exclusivity is not sold at this price
Fifteen dollars and an exclusivity contract are not compatible. If a project genuinely requires an image nobody else can use, commission it; for a specialist subject that is often easier than it sounds, because the people who can take the picture are findable.
What the licence does give
Perpetual worldwide commercial and educational use, at any print run, with no upgrade to buy and no term to expire. For a book that stays in print for fifteen years, that is worth more than exclusivity would be.
Second editions and reprints
Worth stating plainly because it is the question publishers ask: a reprint needs no new licence, a second edition needs no new licence, and a translation needs no new licence.
The licence attaches to your use of the image, not to a print run or an edition. If the picture stays in the book, it stays licensed, indefinitely and everywhere.