Terms of Service (2016- 2024)
Please note: All bookings must be paid in full on or before your session date. When you confirm a booking with us, you have entered into a verbal contract between yourself and Northern Exposures Photography. We accept cash at your photo session or you can EMT to: contact@northernexposures.ca
We have auto deposit on so any indication of requiring a password would mean the wrong email address has been typed. Please message us when you send payment so we know you attempted that way if we do not receive we can fix the issue immediately. Under no circumstances will we edit any photos or provide an sneak peak until payment is made in full. It is your responsibility to make sure we receive your payment if you wish to speed up the post production time. All non-payment sessions will NOT go into queue with other jobs and newer jobs may pass you in line if your balance remains outstanding. We have a 30 day late policy where after 30 days we will not chase you for payment, but instead post your unedited photos into our external hard drives. There will be a $50.00 recovery fee on top of your amount owing to begin your job once full payment plus the recovery fee is paid in full and the two weeks to complete your job will then begin. If we do not receive payment within 90 days, your unedited photos / files will be destroyed and removed from our drives and you will lose the privilege to book with us in the future without a deposit. A loss of time fee will still apply to your name for $75.00 even if you walk away from this job if you wish to book again with us in the future. The Loss of time fee as well as a new deposit will both be required to book again in this worse case scenario.
1) Photo sessions may be booked locally (Elliot Lake & Area) without a deposit but the balance due is expected to be on or before your photo session date. Due to the high demand of Fall Photos during the month of October, a deposit may be required to secure your booking.
2) If you have cancelled with short notice (within 24 hours of booking) a deposit may be requested from you to book future dates with Northern Exposures Photography. Exceptions are made for Acts of Nature or if there is a serious illness or complication in your family and out of no fault of your own you cannot keep your appointment.
Please allow at least 48 hours notice to cancel an appointment. If cancelling becomes common and multiple cancelations happen, Northern Exposures Photography reserves the right to ask for a non refundable deposit equal to a 5 digital photo session to cover loss of business in the event you cancel again.
3) If you book a photo session and are a no call / no show, Northern Exposures Photography reserves the right to refuse booking with you in the future or may request a deposit to book in the future. A (No call / No show) fee of $50.00 dollars will apply to your name and will forever be on our records until you clear this balance before you will ever be considered for a future booking with us. Once the fee is paid, a deposit will be required for future bookings.
4) If you do not live in Elliot Lake and area (City of Elliot Lake to Laurentian Lodge including all Lakefront Properties on Popeye, Quirke and Dunlop Lakes are considered Elliot Lake Area) then a travel fee will apply. Travel fees are used to cover time travelling, wear and tear, as well as fuel costs. Travel fees are $0.50 per kilometer to AND from your location outside of Elliot Lake. For easy math, we use $1.00 per kilometer on one direction based on google maps estimated distance from our location to yours. Serpent River and area is around 30km-35km while Mississaugi First Nation is apx. 60km. Google Maps will ultimately decide the exact kilometers and multiply by $1.00 to give an estimated travel and time charge.
5) All out of town bookings must be paid in full before the session date to cover the fuel charges. For bookings out of town that require more then 250km or do not leave adequate time for us to return home at a decent hour, a fee of $300.00 for overnight & meal may apply. This fee does not include the Travel and Time fees outlined in section 4 if the Terms of Service.
6) We reserve the right to deny any photo session if we feel uncomfortable, unsafe or is an inconvenience to our ability to work effectively.
7) All photos will be delivered by Google Drive private link. If you have any issues opening or retrieving your files, assistance can be provided. Due to the size of our photos, emailing them is not an option as an alternative method. Please familiarize yourself with the use of Google's cloud storage, even if you are an apple user.
We can provide a flash drive with your photos at the cost of $40.00 to cover our time to purchase drive, cost of drive and delivery of drive. Prices may vary depending on market value and availability of drives.
8) All photography classes / courses must be paid for BEFORE the scheduled private lesson takes place. We will not teach a class or private lesson before payment is complete.
9) All of our photos are copyright and owned by Northern Exposures Photography. When you purchase a photo session you do not own the rights to claim the photo as your own work. You can however print your photos at will but you cannot enter your photos into a photo contest to claim as your own work or create merchandise to sell any type of product where the photo is the main attraction to the item being sold.
10) Wedding deposits are not deposits, they are retainer fees. A retainer fee is used to secure our time and have us turn away other clients / business so that we are available for your wedding only. To secure a Wedding date with us, a $500.00 retainer fee is required. for details on Deposits & retainer fees as well as Balance owing on invoice, please refer to our special wedding deposit page here.
11) Real Estate & Air BnB photos may have the realtor logo or AirBnB logo placed on the photo in the MLS listing or ad, as it retains to promoting the rental, listing & agent rather then the photography. under no circumstances will the photos will not be released to the client/agent until payment is made in full.
12) Fund raisers, volunteer events, charity and any service where we do not charge a fee but offer our time or our photos at no cost are required to credit Northern Exposures Photography correctly with the correct name and contact information. This extends to social media use and print use. In the event our photos are being used and we are not credited or compensated, we reserve the right to have all photos removed from circulation including prints at no cost to Northern Exposures Photography. Failure to due so will be a copyright violation and a DMCA will be filed against the individual or cooperation who uses our photo incorrectly or without consent.
13) Under no circumstances will our photos be allowed to be used publicly without our consent. Any photo used without consent will be a copyright violation and will have a DMCA filed against whoever is responsible for the use.
14) Photo licensing is available for personal prints or business use such as ads or brochures. Please refer to our licensing policies here.
15) All videos created by Northern Exposures Photography including all unedited footage captured using any device we own is subject to copyright laws and requires our permissions or licensing to use. All previous Terms of Service mentioned for photography and photos also applies to our videography and video clips.
16) All of our Facebook and social media posts are made shareable and we encourage you to share with your family and friends! Under no circumstances are you allowed to right click, copy to repost elsewhere without mentioning our name or linking to our page. Under no circumstances are you allowed to right click copy and print or use for business, or personal gain including photos, canvas or any other means. We work hard to create all of the content you enjoy!
17) Unlike the United States or some European countries, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees everyone's right to take photographs of anything they want, as well as publish them in Canada. We have the freedom to take photos of people or mundane scenes in a public space. One cannot be punished by law in Canada for taking candid photos or people in public, whether or not they consented to it.
Now, with that being said, We will however respect someone's wishes to not capture or target them specifically in a photo but we cannot guarantee this if they are part of a crowd or scene in a public space we are photographing such as a beach, attraction or event. Your consent is not required, but we will certainly respect it.
18) We reserve the right to use any photo we capture as per the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the form of promoting our business, advertising, social media, assisting another business with candid's or entering photo contests to promote our own business. This includes all photos taken of clients. You can view our rights as a photographer in one of the links we provided below.
Please note: We do not mention children's names, locations or family members as a safety factor and prefer to keep our children photos as private and nameless as possible while promoting our work.
We do however respect your privacy and will not share photos of children in protective care or foster care, parents/children who prefer not to be shown on social media, surprise photos like a baby announcement or engagement, or intimate photos such as boudoir photography. We know our rights, but we are also human too! We have no problem keeping you out of the lime light as long as you tell us!
We will, however, apply our logo to ALL photos that are requested to not be shared with the public and the client will NOT receive any bonus photos we often include with their requested packages if the reason to not be shown publicly is just cause.
Promotion and advertising our work helps us generate new clients and supporters and benefits the business directly as a result. By asking us to not share photos we have taken from a session eliminates those promotional benefits we enjoy and therefore we will not pass on any benefits to the particular client requesting privacy such as extra (bonus) or logo free photos.
We take pride in our work and prefer to share our results with our clients, supporters and followers.
19) We reserve the right to fly, film and photograph with our drone anywhere the law allows us regardless of personal opinion. We use the NAV drone app from Transport Canada as our guidance to where the boundaries are. We are licensed & insured drone pilots to fly any drone above 250grams. Our drones are registered with Transport Canada and have our name and registration number recorded and secured to our drone under the removable battery. We reserve the right to fly our drone and photograph public spaces and scenery, regardless of opinions. We are classified as recreational drone pilot on most occasions while photographing scenery. We fall under the commercial drone pilot class only when drone is hired for service such as to make a video clip such as promotional video or real estate. Under the commercial drone pilot act, we follow the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). We do not film people's faces during commercial flights nor do we collect license plates or other personal information. During public events, we fall under the journalism class which PIPEDA does not apply to.
To respond to common comments you see online about drones bothering or spying on people and how you would "knock it out of the sky" We do not use our drone unprofessionally and any attempt to damage, steal, dismantle or crash our drone on any public place will result in legal actions against the culprit to the fullest extent of the law. We will go after not only damages to our drone, but lose of income for the entire duration the drone is out of service. You can educate yourself on Drone laws with one of our links below. If you feel we are in violation of your rights or personal space, you can locate us and we will respectfully try to help rectify the situation or you can call the police to hear the laws and our rights from them. We do our best to not upset anyone in our flights and try not to be invasive, but we still want to get our shots! Work with us and we will work with you!
20) We reserve the right to alter, change or interpret these Terms of Services for the benefit of the company. Ultimately, we are in business to share our work and serve our clients to the best of our ability, but we also believe we need to protect our work from misuse, theft, plagiarism, or misconduct. We will exercise our right as the copyright holders and creators of all photos owned by Northern Exposures Photography against any unlawful acts where our photos are used without permissions.
21) Non-Payment: No photos or videos are provided before payment is made. Payment is due anytime on or before the booking of a photo session or wedding. For businesses, events, real estate or sports, payment is due once the client receives the invoice. Cancelling or No Shows are covered in sections #2 and #3 of the terms and conditions. If the work is preformed and the clients photos or video is captured, work is preformed as intended in post-production and is prepared for delivery. If the client has not paid before delivery the photos and videos will not be delivered until payment is received. If the client decides at this point that they no longer wish to purchase the photos or video or if the client becomes unresponsive, ignores, avoids or refuses to make payment, the product will not be delivered but the working hours will be billed to that client's legal name under the title "Loss of work". Work will be billed at $40.00 / hour of labour and will include the session time, the post production time and all forms of communications with the client as well as a fuel charge of $1.00 per kilometer from our studio to the location of the clients booking, even if booked locally. If the client chooses to not pay the "Loss of work" fees in a timely manner, we may escalate this legally depending on the circumstances. All legal fees will become part of the "Loss of work" invoice and balance owing and will be pursued through the courts at the clients expense. If the client fell upon hardship and cannot pay, it is in the client's best interest to inform us of the situation so we can make a decision on what action to take next. In some circumstances we may provide an extension if the client has an absolute sincere reason for not wanting the photos or videos after we have finished the post production.
22) There are NO PREVIEWS OR GALLERIES. Due to the digital age, we are unable to provide any form of preview before payment nor do we provide a gallery where you can pick the photos you want from. In this digital age, it is extremely easy to copy, screenshot, steal, and remove watermarks. By us not providing the photos before payment ensures us that we will be paid for our services preformed. No matter if the client likes the finished photos or not, we still spent time and effort into planning, capturing and producing photos as per the booking and we do expect to be paid for our services. Our resume is our website, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Youtube, all of which showcase years of our work. You are hiring us to be your artist. We make our selections as to which photos we edit based on what you tell us at the photo session, along with giving you a camera screen preview of the RAW files. Generally, if a family with children decides to book us for a "digital 5" photo session, we will make sure to have at least one full family photo, one children or child only photo and a couples only photo in the 5 photos unless directed differently.
Legal links
Copyright laws in canada regarding photography, photos and digital images
Who can I take a photo of in Canada? PDF file
Charter of Rights and Freedom regarding Photography
Is it illegal to take photos of people without consent?
Flying your drone safely and legally in Canada