Terms of Service

What these terms are, and what beats them

These terms apply to photographic commissions accepted by the studio. They are the background against which a job runs: what is fixed for a particular commission — the brief, the fee, the dates, the deliverables and the licence — is set out in the quotation or booking confirmation for that job.

Where the quotation and these terms disagree, the quotation wins. A client’s own purchase-order or supplier terms do not apply unless the studio has accepted them in writing; sending them with a signed quotation is not acceptance.

Nothing on this website is an offer capable of acceptance. Enquiring through the form starts a conversation; a commission exists once the studio has issued a quotation and the client has confirmed it in writing.

Booking

A date is held once the booking is confirmed in writing and any deposit stated in the quotation has been paid. Until then the date is available to others. Where a commission depends on something outside the studio’s control — a location permit, a vehicle, a product sample, a person’s availability — the quotation says whose job it is to secure it.

Fees, expenses and payment

Fees are quoted in Swiss francs. The quotation states whether VAT is included or added, and what is covered: shooting time, crew, equipment, post-production and the licence described below.

Costs that are genuinely part of the job but not knowable in advance — travel and accommodation outside the agreed area, location and permit fees, casting and model fees, props, hire, catering, retouching beyond the agreed scope — are charged in addition, at cost, and are agreed before they are incurred wherever there is time to agree them.

Invoices are payable within the period stated on them. Where a payment date has been agreed, the client is in default when it passes, without the studio having to send a reminder first (Article 102 paragraph 2 of the Code of Obligations), and default interest of five per cent a year then runs on the sum outstanding (Article 104 paragraph 1).

Changes, postponement and cancellation

Briefs change, and small changes are part of the job. A change that alters the scope — more shooting days, a different location, materially more post-production, a wider licence — is quoted before it is done.

Either side may need to move or drop a date. Where the client postpones or cancels, the studio is entitled to be paid for the work already done and for commitments it has already made and cannot recover — crew and assistants booked, equipment and studio hire, travel booked, and time held for the job that can no longer be sold to anyone else. The scale on which that is calculated is stated in the quotation, and it rises the closer the cancellation is to the shoot date, because that is when those commitments become irreversible.

A commission under these terms is a contract for work (Werkvertrag, Article 363 of the Code of Obligations): the studio undertakes to produce a defined result, not to be available for a number of hours. Article 377 is then the provision that applies, and it says what this clause says — the client “may withdraw from the contract at any time before the work is completed provided he pays for work already done and indemnifies the contractor in full”. The scale in the quotation is that indemnity, agreed in advance so neither side has to argue about it afterwards.

It is therefore compensation for what a cancellation actually costs, not a penalty for cancelling, and that distinction is load-bearing. If a particular engagement were characterised instead as a mandate — because its centre of gravity had moved to scouting, casting or consulting rather than to a delivered set of photographs — Article 404 would give either party the right to revoke at any time, a right the Federal Supreme Court has long treated as one the parties cannot sign away, leaving only compensation for revoking “at an inopportune juncture”. A charge that reflects real loss survives either characterisation. A flat fee for the inconvenience would not.

If the studio has to cancel — illness, accident, equipment failure, or anything else outside its control — it will first try to supply a photographer of comparable standing with the client’s agreement, and failing that will offer the next available date or refund what has been paid for work not done. Beyond that refund the studio is not liable for the client’s own costs of a shoot that did not happen.

On the day

The client provides safe and lawful access to the location, together with any permission the location itself requires. Where the studio is working in a place the client controls, the client is responsible for its safety. The studio carries its own equipment and its own insurance, and remains responsible for how it works.

Schedules on a shoot day are estimates. Where a shoot overruns for reasons on the client’s side — late access, a subject arriving late, a product that is not ready — additional time is charged at the rate stated in the quotation.

Delivery, selection and archiving

The studio delivers a set of edited photographs to the agreed specification, within the turnaround stated in the quotation, through an online gallery from which the client can view and download them.

Selection and editing are the studio’s. Which frames are delivered, and how they are graded and retouched, is the work being commissioned — it is not a post-delivery negotiation. Unedited files, raw files and out-takes are working material and are expressly not part of the delivery; where a client genuinely needs raw files, that is agreed and priced separately, and it is rarely the right answer.

Said expressly because for a private client the default runs the other way: on a consumer commission Swiss commentary treats the originals — the negatives, or the file carrying the original data — as passing to the client along with the prints unless the contract says otherwise. It says otherwise. This changes nothing about the rights in those files, which stay where the next section puts them.

The studio keeps delivered files for a reasonable period after a commission so that a client who loses them can be helped, but it is not an archive service. Keep your own copy of anything you rely on.

Rights in the photographs

This is the section that matters, and it is the reason this document exists.

Who owns the copyright

Under the Swiss Copyright Act (URG / CopA), “the author is the natural person who has created the work” (Article 6). Copyright therefore arises in the photographer who made the image, and is held by the studio. Swiss law has no work-for-hire rule for a commissioned photographer: commissioning a photograph does not make you its author, and the Act makes that plain by naming the one case where an employer does take the rights automatically — computer programs, under Article 17. Photography is not on that list.

Two further provisions are the reason this section has to say what it says. Article 16 paragraph 3: “The assignment of the ownership of a copy of a work does not include the right to exploit the copyright, even in the case of an original work.” Being sent the files is not being given the rights. And Article 16 paragraph 2: assigning one right out of a copyright “does not include the assignment of other partial rights, unless such was agreed” — so a licence covers what it names and nothing beyond it.

It also does not matter how plain a frame is. Article 2 paragraph 3^bis makes photographic depictions works “even if they do not have individual character”, so a straight product shot on white is as protected as a composed portrait.

What you receive is a licence, and the rest of this section sets out what it covers.

What the client may do with the photographs

On payment in full, the studio grants the client a licence to use the delivered photographs for the purpose the commission was for. Unless the quotation says otherwise, that licence is:

• Non-exclusive — the studio keeps the right to use the same photographs as described under “What the studio keeps” below.
• Worldwide, and for the client’s own communication — its website, social channels, presentations, press and PR, internal communication, trade and event material, and printed collateral.
• Not sub-licensable and not transferable, except to an agency or supplier using them on the client’s behalf and for the client’s own communication.
• Non-terminable while the client is not in breach, and unlimited in time.

A wider licence — paid advertising, out-of-home, packaging, resale, exclusivity, or a buyout in which the copyright itself is assigned — is available and is quoted for. It has to be asked for rather than assumed, for the Article 16 paragraph 2 reason above: a grant carries the rights it names and no others.

One thing a buyout cannot carry, however much is paid for it. Swiss law does allow the copyright itself to be assigned — Article 16 paragraph 1, and this is where it parts company with German law, which forbids assignment outright — but the author’s personal rights, the right to be named and the right to the integrity of the work, are not assignable at all. They can be waived case by case, for a stated use, and that is how a buyout deals with them here. A clause purporting to transfer them outright would simply be void.

What the licence does not cover

• Reselling, licensing on, or supplying the photographs to a stock library.
• Use by a company other than the client, including a parent, subsidiary or sister company, unless the quotation names it.
• Using a photograph, or any part of one, as training data for a machine-learning or generative model, or supplying it to a third party to do so.
• Registering any photograph, or an element of one, as a trade mark or design without the studio’s written agreement.

Editing, cropping and credit

Cropping and format changes for a particular placement are fine. Alterations that change what a photograph says — compositing it with other images, substituting a background, materially regrading it, or generative editing that adds or removes content — need the studio’s agreement. This is not fussiness about house style: Article 11 of the Copyright Act gives the author the exclusive right to decide “whether, when and how the work may be altered”, and keeps a right to oppose distortion of it even where a contract permits alteration. A photograph that has been recomposed is still published under the studio’s name.

Where the medium reasonably allows it, the client credits the studio — “Benjamin Juhasz” or the named photographer — alongside published photographs. The right to be recognised as the author of a work is a statutory one (Article 9 of the Copyright Act) and not a courtesy. On social media a mention of the studio’s account is enough.

What the studio keeps

The studio keeps the right to show the photographs as an example of its own work: on this site, in its portfolio and showreel, on its social channels, in submissions to awards and to the press, and in pitches to prospective clients. That is how photographic work is sold, and it is part of the price.

Where a commission is confidential, unreleased or embargoed, say so before the shoot and the quotation will carry a hold: the studio will not publish anything from it until a date you set, or at all if that is what is agreed.

People, property and permissions

A photograph of an identifiable person engages that person’s own rights, independently of copyright — the right to one’s own image, protected under Article 28 of the Civil Code, and data protection law where the image is processed.

Where the client brings the people — employees, guests, models, customers — the client is responsible for telling them the shoot is happening and what the photographs are for, and for obtaining the releases its intended use requires. At an event, that includes signage that is up and visible before the first frame is taken, saying that photography is happening and where the pictures will appear.

Signage is not the end of it, and two cases need more. A person who is individually the subject of a frame — rather than incidental to a room — needs an actual release, and the Swiss regulator’s position is that they must be able to see the images intended for publication and be told the context they will appear in. And where a person is under 18 and recognisable, the consent of a parent or guardian is obtained as well as theirs. The “incidental in a crowd” latitude that applies in a public street is not established for a private, invitation-only event on hired premises, and nothing here assumes it.

Whoever the release covers, an objection is honoured. If someone asks not to be photographed, or asks afterwards that a frame not be used, that is the end of it — on the day or at any point later. The studio will not publish a frame in which a person is recognisable, as its own portfolio work, without a release or the client’s confirmation that the consents it obtained extend to the studio’s own promotional use.

The same applies to what is in shot: trade marks, artwork, buildings and private property may carry their own permissions, and where the client specifies the subject, the client warrants it has the right to have it photographed for the intended use.

Liability

The studio works to a professional standard and is insured. Where it is liable, its liability is limited to the fee paid for the commission, and it is not liable for indirect or consequential loss — lost profit, a campaign that did not run, a print run that had to be repeated.

That limit has a floor the studio cannot lower and does not try to. Article 100 paragraph 1 of the Code of Obligations makes void in advance any agreement at all that excludes liability for unlawful intent or gross negligence, and nothing in this document is to be read as attempting it. Liability for personal injury is not excluded either.

Photography is not risk-free: files can be lost and equipment can fail. The studio keeps duplicate copies of a shoot and works with backup equipment on jobs that cannot be repeated. If the worst happens, the remedy is a reshoot where a reshoot is possible, and otherwise a refund of the fee for what was lost.

Confidentiality

Both sides keep the other’s confidential information to themselves — unreleased products, commercial terms, anything marked or obviously confidential. The studio’s portfolio right above is subject to this, not an exception to it.

What is left to the quotation

This document deliberately states no figures. The deposit, the payment period, the cancellation scale, the overtime rate, the turnaround, and any licence narrower or wider than the default above are commercial terms that differ by job and belong in the quotation for that job. A number invented here would look authoritative and contradict the studio’s own paperwork, which is worse than no number at all.

Applicable law and place of jurisdiction

These terms, and any commission under them, are governed by Swiss law, excluding its conflict-of-law rules and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

The place of jurisdiction for any dispute is Zürich, Switzerland, as agreed under Article 17 of the Civil Procedure Code. That agreement applies between businesses. It does not take away a forum that Swiss law reserves to a protected party — a consumer client keeps the court Article 35 of the Civil Procedure Code gives them, whatever this clause says.

If a clause of these terms turns out to be invalid, the rest stands, and the invalid clause is read down to what the law does allow.

Status of this document

These terms are a draft prepared for Benjamin Juhasz and have not been reviewed by a lawyer. Two clauses in particular need one before the studio relies on them: the cancellation charge, for the reason given in that section, and the jurisdiction clause where a client is a consumer or is outside Switzerland. Nothing here is legal advice.