is it okay for there to be Christmas deco included in the shot?
@bennett-family, yes that is ok.
you don’t need some sort of written permission, do you?
That’s a good question. Statements like this from Shutterstock really make me think twice: “If you’re shooting on private property, or shooting private property that is distinctive from a public place, be sure to obtain a property release from an authorized representative of the owner of the property in order to avoid issues with licensing your content.”
That is coming from a stock website. Personally, for this booklet cover project, I didn’t get a property release because I had verbal permission from an “authorized representative” and they knew exactly what I was hoping to do with the pictures. Now, if I decide to sell the photos I took for some other commercial purpose (ie. stock), then I would want to make sure I had their permission for doing that too. Selling on stock is quite a bit more broad than “printing the photo on the cover of a booklet”, so I would probably opt for written permission over verbal permission, “in order to avoid issues with licensing”. A Property Release is the formal way of doing that.
So, to be safe, and to use the picture however you want, get a Property Release, even if it’s only for the booklet cover. I don’t have a generic one, but one could be pulled together using a template such as Shutterstock’s or Adobe Stock’s Property Releases.
Does anyone have a generic Property Release that they use?