Commercial Photography Insurance

Commercial Photography

Specialising in creating the images you see on billboards, in magazines, catalogues or being used by companies to promote their goods or services, the life of a commercial photographer is a varied one.

Subject matters can be an inanimate object one day to an animate one the next; from something small and minute to something large and imposing. Their challenge is, whatever it is make it appealing to the buying public. 

Commercial photography encompasses various disciplines such as advertising, music, fashion, glamour, still life, food, editorial and journalistic (including freelance journalism).

Your own premises or away

To all extent and purposes having your own premises to work form can be a major advantage as it allows you to control the shoot.

Commercial Photography doesnt always take place at your own premises, a lot of the work takes place on location such as at a clients premises if they require that, or key members of staff included.

It may be that the item to be photographed can’t be shot anywhere else so this may be your only option. Or, if you are specialising in fashion photography you will find that you have to attend shows to get the shots. Similarly commercial photography involving music will almost certainly find their subjects at concerts or the growing number of festivals.

Your Insurance

Photographers involved in Commercial photography need to consider including, other than the obvious being kit, Public Liability, Employers Liability and quite possibly Professional Indemnity. There are of course a multitude of other covers but lets look at the essentials.

Kit will need to be insured for going out on location. If the commercial photographer in question obtains work abroad they will need to ensure that they have the cover in place for going out of the UK and to the country requested. They will also need to make sure sums insured are correct too as the last thing you need adding to the stress of making a claim from a foreign county is finding out you didn’t have enough cover.

As a Commercial Photographer you will need Public Liability cover , if you invite clients onto your premises or you visit them, you will be coming into contact with third parties and so need protection from them injuring themselves on your property or you injuring them on theirs as well as the possibility of you damaging their property either at their premises or at yours.

Employers Liability

Those involved in commercial photography where employing staff either on a full time, part time, casual or one off basis, whether paid well, or they work for free, they will need to be covered under Employers Liability as they will be working under your direction.

This is not the costliest of covers (unless you have a large number of employees or in high risk locations) but provides statutory cover as required by law, the standard limit for this cover being £10m.

Employers Liability Insurance can be slightly confusing, it would intimate that you need this cover solely for employing people, and many associate that with PAYE. It probably should be renamed as "anyone who carries out work under your direction" whether paid or not Liability Insurance!

Professional Indemnity

People involved in commercial photography will undertake contracts to do a shoot and there will be an expected outcome. If you fail to produce images of an expected standard (and if you are marketing yourself as a professional working in commercial photography the expectation will be that you produce images of a very high standard) you may find yourself having to cover the financial costs of re-staging the shoot.

Some shoots may merely be clients bringing their product to you for you to shoot. Should these not be acceptable it is quite simple to re-shoot them. However, if a client has set up a shoot for you at a cost to them and you fail to deliver, you can be expected to re-stage the shoot at your cost.

An example of this would be a client your lead executive used to have who was lucky enough, via contacts, to secure work from a major sports car manufacturer to take various publicity shots for them from time to time. However, whenever he was asked to do these shoots, they generally involved a mountain area in Europe being secured for 3 -4 hours and the introduction of glamour models to be draped over the cars. All in all, quite a lot of money had gone in to securing the shoot and providing the backdrop required. If the photographer in question failed to deliver the high standard of images required for whatever reason, poor shots, lost images for instance, they would have been expected to pay the cost to re-stage the shoot. Now that would have involved securing exclusive use of a section of mountain road in a European country, the transportation of 2 or 3 of the expensive cars, and the hiring of models again. Although well paid for the shoot, their fee would never have covered the cost of re-staging the shoot.

If you’re not sure if your line of work means that you need Professional Indemnity insurance, just think, if the images didn’t turn out right, who would be out of pocket?

The client?

As a Commercial Photographer, Professional Indemnity is an essential part of your business insurance needs. Where taken, Cliik provides £100,000 limit of indemnity as standard.

CLiik provides Professional Indemnity Insurance for £100,000

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