Regularly I receive calls and emails, asking if they can use my photos for free. I don't know about you. If you are a professional photographer, and you give away your photos and your rights for free, you will not stay a professional photographer for long. I rarely give my photos for free. The keyword is rarely, meaning that I have done it.

How fortunate I am, that they have chosen to use my photos for free! It will raise my profile in the “industry.” Most of them are outraged that I dared not give my photos for free. Some have even suggested that I should pay them for the benefit of being published.

I don't give way photos willy-nilly. I have a policy. Depending on who asks and how they ask, I have agreed but under the condition that they fulfill my policy:

Once they receive my policy via email, they usually ask me to modify it or rescind it, just for one time. That's when I say: