Digital Sign Wedding Photography Contract Template Made Easy

Esign maternity photography contract

what's going on youtube welcome back to the channel so today we're going to be talking about the top 10 things that you need in your photography contract so these are the things that i think are some of the most important things that you need in your photography contract now give or take some of these things you may not have certain stuff or you may even want to add more than what i'm talking about um and as the longer you do photography you'll see that you'll start to see different things come up you'll be like okay i need to add something else to my contract so it's kind of one of those things that's always changing and evolving so even if you don't have um you feel like your contract isn't you know complete as time goes by you'll see that you can add different stuff in your contract so why do you need a contract why are contracts so important so number one is professional you know if you're doing business um nine times out of ten you're signing a contract think about when you do any type of business gonna have to sign a contract it's no different just because you're doing photography treat your business as a business you know businesses that you support and go to treat it exactly the same most of the time those people are doing contracts so you need to have a contract too makes you look professional and up to par and that's like i'd say half of the game is just looking up to par even if you're not even if you haven't even really arrived and you're not just you know the best photographer you still need to look up to par look like you know what you're doing even if you don't know what you're doing professionalism is super important number two it protects both parties so with this contract not only does it protect you but it protects your clients so uh you know you may think that clients are kind of scared of contracts but they like it because you know it sets those expectations and it protects them just in case anything happens so it protects both of y'all not just you but just for the clients also number three it outlines client expectations y'all have seen me talk about this a lot because it's super important you know you have to set those expectations just so your clients know exactly what to expect you know think about if you're doing business and you don't know what to expect that's not that's not a good look you're probably not going to go back to that business because they didn't lay out those expectations and you were confused and you didn't know what was going on so you don't want your clients to feel like that and that's why you have a contract in place and number four it helps with client issues listen we have had some issues nothing super crazy but even if you haven't had anything come up it's gonna come up sooner or later so you know you need to prepare yourself and just have everything in place you know for these situations that come up you know pretty much the contract that's gonna help with those issues and help resolve those issues so all right so number one oh well before we get into number one i wanted to put this little quote never do work without a contract even if it's a free shoot so super key that's a dj khaled major key right there even if you're doing free work you still need to have your client sign that contract it doesn't matter because it's free you're still doing work stuff can still come up you know you may have a client come back and say you can't use the images and stuff like that the contract is gonna save your i don't wanna cuss because how youtube is but y'all know what i'm talking about so even if you're doing free work make sure you get those clients to sonic sign that contract even if it's a free shoot treat it just like a paid client alright so coming in at number one you have the parties to the contract so this includes your name and client info we usually put the location and the date also so this is pretty much just basic information you know with any contract or just kind of paperwork you know just basic information that you need so you want to get your client's name if you're doing like a wedding you want to get the bride and the groom just whoever you're working with get their names you know you could get the email with the location the hours so number two is services so the services that will be provided be as detailed as possible so with this clause right here we're super detailed so we're laying out everything that we're doing you know don't even look at it like oh i don't want to put too much no list everything once again just send those expectations and you know exactly what you're supposed to do because let's say something happens you know then you can refer back to your contract and you know you have on the other services that you were supposed to provide whether the client said you were supposed to do something else you have it laid out what you were you know hired to do um for that shoot on your contract so so coming in at number three we have the deliverables so this is what the client will receive after the shoot for example how many photos the client will receive so once again you're going to see me say this a lot setting those expectations the client needs to know exactly what they're going to get from the shoot so if they're just getting digital's just with the digitals if they're getting prints you want to put that on there any other products you want to list out itemize every single thing that they're going to be receiving you know just so they have it and they know exactly what they're going to get and you're covered just in case you know the client says oh i didn't get this i was supposed to get it and listen those things will come up you know we've had situations like that um not nothing too crazy because we really focus on those expectations but you just need to let them know exactly what they're gonna get so number four we have client usage so this covers how the client can use the images you can also cover how you will use the images so this is pretty much exactly what it says just how your client just laying out exactly how your client can use the images because you know like i said you don't know what a client is going to do maybe they try to take your work and you know get paid for it or something like that so you need to be very specific about what they can do with your images these are your images and you need to lay out what they can do with them and what they can't do with them and like i said you could also cover what you're going to do with these images so are you going to use them for marketing are you going to try to get them published it could be anything you know just list it out just so the client knows and you're covered just in case anything comes up so coming in at number five is copyright this is pretty much just upfront and simple this clause explains that you own the images so as the photographer you have the copyright they are your images the client does not own the images if you took the images you own them so if you have a client saying you know these are my images i own them you know say no refer back to the contract you know the photographer owns the images and i have heard about um photographers i guess selling the copy right now they charge a crazy amount because you're handing over you know ownership to the images but this is something that we don't plan on doing so i have heard about people doing that but you do own the images so quick little break right here y'all already know the routine if you're getting value from this video smash that like button it really helps the channel out i'm a smaller channel it's just a way of helping me out and helping my this video get pushed out to more people so if you're getting value hit that like button and subscribe for more videos i would greatly appreciate it let's get back into the content so number six this is very important this is the cancellation and refund policy so explain how and when your clients can cancel also cover fees and the deposit slash retainer i don't know why i picked deposit i don't like that word you're supposed to say retainer retainer fee so i don't know why i put that but i don't even think we've ever had a cancellation or refund we've had like reschedules but not this but once again these are this is something that's gonna come up it's bound to happen uh you need to have a cancellation clause in place letting your clients know um and protecting yourself just in case a client cancels i've seen so many stories about clients canceling uh you know just horror stories of stuff just going going wrong when the client cancels so that's why this clause is so important like as far as do you give the client back money back when they cancel or for the refund you need to you know clarify that in your contract i'm not 100 sure what our policy is i would have to look on our contract but explain like what they get explain if it's you know the retainer is not refundable uh super very very important you need to cover this stuff uh in your cancellation or your refund policy so number seven we have the terms of payment so this covers how much the client owes uh payment schedules and how they can make payments so this is pretty much everything explaining everything when it comes to payments like i said you know if you're gonna do well we actually do payment schedules for weddings or just like a bigger gig that's a lot we do offer like flexible payment plans so we'll list that out in our contract very important because the client can see exactly you know how the payments are set up they need to see this stuff you could pick how much they owe and um just how they can make payments like what do you take do you take credit cards paypal or whatever this is stuff that you want to list as far as payments and clients will have a lot of questions about payments so it's important in the contract to kind of outline that so they know what to expect as far as payments so coming in at number eight we have the model release so this is client permission to use their images include what you will use the images for example ads website etc so another one that's very important so like i said it's stating that you can use their images so imagine doing a shoot and you didn't have the contract in place and now you can't use the images and you're just starting out you're a beginner so you need work to show people but because you didn't do the back end work you can't even use the images think about it i'll be destroyed if i'm just starting out and i know i need that work i know i need to show people what i can do but i didn't have my contract in place now i can't show nobody nothing all i can show them is my gear in my my lens and they don't even care about that so uh you need to have this model release in place um so you can use images and do not take a client's word for it people lie people are crazy out here if they're like oh cool you could use images i don't really care don't take the word for it have them sign the paperwork so you're covered and you can use those images for your marketing like i said um specify what you're gonna use the images for too i think i said that right include what you would use the images for so are you going to use them for ads websites your portfolio you know last thing you want is a client coming to you like oh i didn't you know sign to for my image to be used on facebook for ads you know you don't want to be in that put in that situation so be specific about what you're going to use the images for so coming in at number nine we have editing so explain what type of editing you do and don't do also mention fees for additional editing look look y'all i've seen lots of horror stories i follow a lot of facebook groups i've seen lots of horror stories about editing you know and you'd be surprised like you know sometimes clients they just look at like your social media work but you want them to go to your website and like check out your portfolio especially if you do like weddings you know on social media you're just kind of posting photos here and there you're not showing like complete albums so you want them to see your work and see how you edit and that's something that we've we even asked clients like have you been to our website and seen our work just because we want them to get you know a better feel for how we edit because i've seen people say that clients come back you know maybe after the shoot they they ask can they you know can you edit a certain way or they say oh i didn't know you edited that way so you need to be specific as possible with this explain your editing style like i said explain what you don't do as far as editing you know i've seen people say they want you know trying to change their body shape and stuff like that like we don't do all that stuff so you know be specific about that and up fronts once again send those expectations so they know um exactly what they get getting with the editing and also additional editing um just you know your fees with that because you know if you get back to work the client wants this and that you know maybe it takes maybe it's gonna take you an hour and a half you know that's work so you need to charge for that you know we're not out here just doing free stuff and not charging uh you need to charge for everything so that's important all right so the last thing number 10 is late arrivals and no shows and i don't think i'm trying to think have we had no shows i don't think we we haven't had no shows but we definitely had late clients that's something you're definitely going to experience so cover what happens when these things come up examples late clients will lose that time for their sess from their sessions so this is something that we do i know a lot of photographers do it so if the client is late that time is taken from their session so let's say the session excuse me let's say the session is an hour and 30 minutes they're 30 minutes late okay so we only have an hour to shoot and i think that's fair uh you know clients need to respect your time this is something that me and my wife don't play this we had you know a couple situations where we were at the location just waiting and you know sending a client uh text messages they're not responding and you know we're just sitting there waiting in that's not cool i don't that shouldn't be happening to anybody people need to respect your time and this is why we do the retainer um the retainer up front so it's usually like half of our uh full session feed so um because it lets you know if people are serious and if you know money is invested people are gonna take you more serious and they're gonna show up on time so that's a whole nother video i'm freaking hitting my mic that's a whole nother video but i'm looking forward to making a video about that because it's something that kind of helped us out a lot and um kind of shut down a lot of that bs you know what i'm saying so all right so if you need a software to send contracts to your clients and to have them sign them digitally have them in one place i talk about i talked about this before on the channel but you should definitely check out shoe proof i have a link in the description so this handles like all the business stuff for our photography business so contracts um sending payments invoices uh email marketing sending gallery shoe proof is an all-in-one software to help you run your business and honestly we could not run our business without shoe proof and i just absolutely love them if you want to check them out um this can really help you out with the contracts and making sure that you have those in place and you know you get those to your clients and signing them so check i highly recommend checking out shoe proof so just check them out like i said link is in the description and also check out my free guide five ways to get more clients so if you're struggling to get clients you know with this whole covert thing the struggle is real out here i talked about this in one of my recent videos this can give you some ideas and help you out or maybe you're just a beginner trying to get started and get those clients rolling in definitely check out my free guide link is in the description if you enjoyed this video be sure to drop a thumbs up subscribe to the channel i post new videos every single week i will see you on my next video peace