Photo Contributor Agreement

Between: The Aviation Hub (James Field trading as The Aviation Hub, james.field@theaviationhub.co.uk) (“we”, “us”), and you, the photographer named on the upload form (“you”).

Date: the date you accept this agreement on the Contribute page. The site records that date and time, the version of this page you accepted, and the network address it came from, against each photo you send.

This agreement lets us sell licences to use your photos on theaviationhub.co.uk and pay you most of what they earn. You keep the copyright. You can sell the same photos elsewhere. You can take them down.

1. Definitions

• Photo: each image you send us under this agreement and that we accept for the library.
• Library: the photo section of theaviationhub.co.uk and any later version of it that we run.
• Licence: a permission we sell to a buyer to use a Photo, limited to the licence types in Schedule 1.
• Net receipts (or Net value): what a buyer pays for a single Licence, a plan month or a pack, less VAT and less the payment processor’s fee. Nothing else is deducted. A pack credit’s Net value is the pack’s Net receipts divided by the number of credits in it.
• Buyer: anyone who buys a Licence.

2. What you give us

2.1 You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide licence, for the term of this agreement, to:

• (a) store, resize, watermark and display each Photo in the Library and in our own marketing of the Library (for example a social media post saying the Photo is available);
• (b) sell Licences to Buyers on the terms in Schedule 1, and deliver the full-resolution file to a Buyer who has paid;
• (c) use the Photo’s caption, your name and the details in Schedule 2 alongside it.

2.2 Non-exclusive means you are free to sell, license, publish or give away the same Photos anywhere else, at any price, at any time. We do not ask for first refusal.

2.3 We may use a Photo as the picture on our own articles, credited to you in the same way as a Buyer must credit you. Each such use counts as a download in the monthly pool (clause 4.1(b)), and The Aviation Hub pays into that pool each month in which it uses the Library at the Newsroom plan rate, so our own use earns you money on the same terms as a subscriber’s. We will not use your Photos for advertising or merchandise without a separate written agreement.

2.4 We may decline any Photo, or remove one from the Library, without giving a reason. We will tell you when we do.

3. What you keep

3.1 You keep the copyright and all other rights in your Photos. Nothing in this agreement transfers ownership to us or to any Buyer.

3.2 You have the right to be identified as the photographer. Every Licence we sell requires the Buyer to credit you as “[Your name] / The Aviation Hub” unless you ask us to use a different form of your name.

3.3 We will not crop, retouch or alter a Photo beyond resizing and watermarking the preview, and we will not let a Buyer do so beyond what Schedule 1 allows.

4. Payment

4.1 We sell your Photos in three ways (Schedule 1): one Photo at a time, packs of credits, and monthly plans. You receive 80% in each case, worked out as follows.

4.1(a) Single Photo sales. For every single Photo sold, you receive 80% of Net receipts for that sale.

4.1(b) Plans and packs: the monthly pool. Each calendar month we add up (i) the Net receipts from plan subscriptions for that month (an annual subscription counts one twelfth each month) and (ii) the Net value of every pack credit used that month. 80% of that total is the month’s pool. The pool is shared among photographers in proportion to downloads: if downloads of your Photos were one tenth of all plan and pack downloads that month, you receive one tenth of the pool. A re-download of a Photo the same customer already took does not count. A month with pool money but no downloads carries its pool into the next month. Pack credits that lapse unused do not enter the pool.

4.1(c) The 80% is what we have promised. We may pay more in a month but never less without a new agreement signed by both of us.

4.2 Worked examples at the current prices. A single Photo at £30: the card processor takes about 65p, Net receipts are £29.35, you receive £23.48. A month in which plan income after card fees is £400 and pack credits worth £100 net are used: the pool is £400, and a photographer whose Photos were 12 of the month’s 60 plan and pack downloads receives £80.

4.3 We pay monthly, by bank transfer to the account you give us, within 14 days of the end of each calendar month, for all sales in that month, once your balance reaches £20. A balance under £20 carries forward and is paid when it reaches £20 or when this agreement ends, whichever is first.

4.4 With each payment we send a statement for the month: each single sale (Photo, date, price, fee, your share), your plan and pack downloads, the size of the month’s pool and your share of it, and the total. The statement comes from the same records that run the library, and we will show you those records for your Photos if you ask.

4.5 If a Buyer’s payment is refunded or charged back, the sale is reversed on your next statement. We do not reclaim money already paid to you for a sale older than 90 days.

4.6 You are responsible for your own tax on what we pay you. We are not your employer and this is not employment. If we are required to deduct or report anything, we will tell you first.

4.7 We may change the prices in Schedule 1 on 30 days’ written notice. Your percentage does not change without a new agreement signed by both of us.

5. Your promises to us

For every Photo you send us, you confirm that:

5.1 You took it, you own the copyright, and nobody else (an employer, a client, a co-photographer, an agency) has any claim on it or any right to stop us licensing it.

5.2 It has not been licensed to anyone on an exclusive basis, and you will not grant an exclusive licence to anyone else while it is in the Library.

5.3 It was taken from a place you were allowed to be, with any permission that place required. If it was taken airside or inside a terminal, you had the airport’s or operator’s permission and will say so in Schedule 2.

5.4 It is a true photograph. It may be adjusted for exposure, colour, crop and dust, but nothing has been added, removed or combined from another image, and it is not generated or substantially altered by AI. If any part of it is, you will say so in Schedule 2 and we may decline it.

5.5 The details you give us for it (registration, airline, type, airport, date) are correct to the best of your knowledge.

5.6 It does not show a person in a way that would be private, defamatory or unlawful to publish, and you hold a model release for any person whose likeness is the subject of the Photo (a portrait of a pilot, for example; passers-by, crew at a distance and people incidental to an aircraft do not need one).

5.7 You are at least 18 and have the right to enter this agreement.

6. Our promises to you

6.1 We will show only a watermarked, reduced-size preview of each Photo on the public site. The full-resolution file is kept in private storage and is sent only to a Buyer who has paid, as a time-limited download.

6.2 We will require every Buyer to accept the Licence terms before paying, and we will act on any misuse you report to us: first a written notice to the Buyer, then, if it continues, whatever steps are reasonable including ending their access.

6.3 We will credit you on the Photo page and require the Buyer to credit you as set out in clause 3.2.

6.4 If anyone claims a Photo infringes their rights, we may remove it from the Library at once while we look into it, and we will tell you within two working days.

6.5 We will keep your name, contact and bank details only for running the Library and paying you, under our privacy policy and UK GDPR, and we will not pass them to anyone except our payment provider and as the law requires.

6.6 We will not sell your Photos under any licence type that is not in Schedule 1 without adding it to Schedule 1 by written notice and giving you 30 days to withdraw any Photo you do not want sold that way.

7. Withdrawing photos and ending the agreement

7.1 You can withdraw any Photo at any time by emailing us. We will remove it from the Library within 30 days, or within two working days if you tell us there is a rights problem with it.

7.2 Either of us can end this agreement by giving the other 30 days’ written notice. We will remove all your Photos from the Library by the end of that notice.

7.3 Licences already sold before a Photo is withdrawn or this agreement ends remain valid for their full term. A Buyer who paid for a Photo last year keeps the right to use it in the piece they bought it for. We will still pay you for those sales.

7.4 We may end this agreement at once, by written notice, if any promise in clause 5 turns out to be untrue for a Photo, or if you grant an exclusive licence to a Photo in the Library.

7.5 Clauses 3, 4 (for sales already made), 7.3, 8 and 9 continue after this agreement ends.

8. If something goes wrong

8.1 If a third party makes a claim against us because a promise in clause 5 was untrue for a Photo (for example, someone else owned it), you will cover our reasonable costs and any sum we have to pay as a result, up to the greater of £5,000 and the total we have paid you under this agreement.

8.2 If a Buyer misuses a Photo outside its Licence, that is a matter between the Buyer and the rights holders. We will help you pursue it (clause 6.2) but we are not liable for a Buyer’s breach.

8.3 Neither of us is liable to the other for loss of profit or indirect loss. Nothing in this agreement limits liability for fraud, or for anything the law does not allow to be limited.

8.4 Our total liability to you under this agreement is limited to the amounts we owe you under clause 4.

9. General

9.1 This is the whole agreement between us about the Library. Changes must be in writing and signed by both of us, except price changes under clause 4.7 and new licence types under clause 6.6.

9.2 Neither of us may transfer this agreement to anyone else without the other’s written consent, except that we may transfer it to a company that takes over The Aviation Hub, on notice to you.

9.3 Notices go by email to the addresses in “How you accept this agreement” and count as received the next working day.

9.4 This agreement is governed by the law of England and Wales and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

How you accept this agreement

On the site you accept this agreement by ticking “I have read and accept the Photo Contributor Agreement” on the Contribute page before sending a batch of photos. That tick is your signature for every photo in the batch. The bank account we pay into is given, and can be changed, in your contributor portal; it is stored encrypted and only the account owner of The Aviation Hub can see it. Notices to us go to james.field@theaviationhub.co.uk; notices to you go to the email address you upload with.

Schedule 1: Licences we may sell

The prices are the current ones and may change under clause 4.7. Your share is 80% whatever the price: of Net receipts on a single sale, and of the monthly pool for plans and packs (clause 4.1). Single Photo £30. Packs: 5 for £125, 10 for £220, 15 for £300, credits valid 12 months. Plans: Editorial, 10 Photos a month, £59 a month or £590 a year; Newsroom, 25 Photos a month, £119 a month or £1,190 a year. All editorial licence, ex VAT.

Every Licence: non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide, and the file is delivered once. The Buyer is told the copyright is yours.

Schedule 2: Photo submission checklist

On the site this is the upload form itself; the fields are listed here so you can see what is asked for each photo. The details become the caption and the search tags, so the registration and date matter most.

By sending a batch through the Contribute page you confirm the promises in clause 5 for every photo in it.

Last updated: 13 October 2026.