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Bridgeman Images are the world's leading specialists in licensing fine art, cultural and historical media for reproduction.
Yes, please do contact your account manager to provide you with a login and you will be able to create your password and access your platform.
You can contact us via email at contentpartnershipteam@bridgemanimages.com.
Unregistered users of the Bridgeman Images website can only see low-resolution images that have been watermarked with our company logo. Registered users have access to unwatermarked low-resolution images. Unwatermarked high-resolution images are only available to trusted clients or to clients who have agreed usage and payment terms with us, and we are able to track all downloads and image deliveries.
Our Content team will review and catalogue your images before publishing them on the Bridgeman Images website. This allows our team to optimise any content submission, ensuring that your images are easily discoverable by our clients.
Please note that our specialist team may make some adjustments to your initial metadata. We ask for your trust in our process, as our ultimate objective is to make your content readily licensable to all our clients.
If you are an artist, we recommend having a professional photograph your work to provide the highest possible image quality.
Avoid any light reflections in your images, remain aware of surface dust where possible and use studio lighting when possible.
When the photograph represents an artwork, ensure images are cropped to the edge of the artwork and displayed to the correct orientation with no edges or frames showing.
In your application, you can supply low or high-resolution files. However, once you become a Content Partner, please supply us with the largest file sizes you have.
We prefer that the files are in excess of 50 megabytes, which equates to 4000x5000 Pixel dimension, this avoids your images being rejected by the client due to size.
If you are a photographer do not send us raw files.
Keep the asset files simple, Umlauts, accents and special keywords are rejected by our image uploader such as & $ £ / ‘’’ @ ~ #.
Images must be:
- Supplied as jpeg (.jpg) or tiff files
- Between 50-90MB in size
- At least 3000 pixels on one side
- Scanned to 300dpi
- Scanned with colour profile sRGB/Adobe RGB, colour space RGB and colour ratio 24 bit (8 per channel)
Images may be rejected for the following reasons:
- Dust, hairs, marks and oil stains
- Histogram clipping or excessive contrast
- Newton rings
- Excessive noise and sharpening (visible halos appearing)
- Oversharpened or with cloning marks, pixilation or other computer generated errors
- Posterization (steps of colour appearing in graduations)
- Noticeable retouching
- Compression, resizing / interpolation, extra layers or channels
- Camera shake, excessive contrast, light spots, reflections, colour casts, lack of focus
For more information, you can consult our Content submission guidelines
Keep the clip or image file names simple.
Umlauts, accents and special keywords are rejected by our image uploader so avoid the following symbols in the file name; & $ £ / # ’” % @ ~
Prior to submitting your content, we kindly recommend that you refer to our submission guidelines. These guidelines outline the accepted file sizes and quality criteria, as well as the type of content that meets our selection criteria.
Upon submission, our system will conduct a quality and size assessment, and notify you of any images that do not meet our standards.
Please note that any images that fail to align with our Content Strategy or submission guidelines will be withdrawn from our platform, but will remain visible on your Partner account.
Our system will automatically reject images that do not fit our quality and size requirements. Our Content Teams will also review all images to make sure they fit our content strategy.
Images that fail to align with our Content Strategy or submission guidelines will be withdrawn from our platform, but will remain visible on your Partner account.
Clients can search for your work on the main Bridgeman Images website. You will also have a dedicated Partner page on our main website where clients can browse through your entire collection.
When submitting footage, you will need to include metadata, for instance: title, original format, time period and keywords.
Keywording clips is extremely important and a key factor in achieving successful licensing. The Content Team can advise you on keywording techniques and provide you with a metadata template.
Keep the clip or image file names simple.
Umlauts, accents and special keywords are rejected by our image uploader so avoid the following symbols in the file name; & $ £ / # ’” % @ ~
Keep the file names simple. These should not contain Umlauts, accents and special characters (& $ £ / ‘’’ @ ~ #). If possible, please also replicate some element of the description or title field in the filename (i.e. crowd_on_london_bus_1957.mov).
We accept footage content (in order of preference) as:
a) short-form clip sequences, from between 30 seconds to 5 minutes.
b) longer clips with detailed metadata of all-encompassing topics within the clip.
c) full-duration films with full logs/transcripts.
The formats accepted by Bridgeman Images are (in order of preference):
- 1920x1080, Progressive, QuickTime ProRes (HQ), YUV, with uncompressed sound.
-IMX 50 (*wrapped as QuickTime only), Progressive, QuickTime ProRes 4444, LT, YUV, with uncompressed sound.
-For HD or UHD film scans we would consider dpx image sequences but also require a mezzanine Pro Res proxy version for playback.
(If these formats are not suitable, we can offer transcoding services, but this may impact our royalty terms).
-For screeners, h.264 and h.265 files will also be accepted.
Bridgeman Images strives to move away from the offerings of a traditional stock footage company. We are looking for both contemporary and archival footage collections which have digitised clips specialising in covering the topics of art, culture and history from around the world, spanning the last century and with an edge on resolution quality. Many of our current partners feature clips showcasing social, political & natural history, artist profiles and biographies, amateur/home movies, vintage animation, world travel, culture and more. We are also interested in collections of motion art as well as cutting-edge aerial footage. All in all, if you have unique footage, we may be interested.
Bridgeman Images employs a rigorous quality control process to curate our footage collection, ensuring that we offer the highest quality and most distinctive clips to our clients. Please note that we reserve the right to remove any footage that is considered unsuitable for our audience.
We work with clients across multiple industries worldwide, including archival researchers, producers, documentarians, educational platforms and more.
Clients who directly approach our Sales Team have the opportunity to collaborate with our Research Team. Our team of experienced researchers curate bespoke lightboxes tailored to meet the specific requirements outlined by the client's brief.
Footage will be featured on our homepage, news section or blog, utilised within curated lightboxes and be included in both internal and external facing newsletters.
Your footage will appear on the Bridgeman Images website after our Content team reviews and completes cataloguing with the supplied metadata. This allows our team to optimise any content submission, ensuring that your clips are easily discoverable by our clients.
Please note that our specialist team may make some adjustments to your initial metadata to enhance findability. Clients can search for your work on the main website by partner, keyword or other video-specific filters. All footage viewable in the Bridgeman archive is watermarked with our company logo.
Unregistered users of the Bridgeman Images website can only see low-resolution images that have been watermarked with our company logo. Registered users have access to unwatermarked low-resolution images. Unwatermarked high-resolution images are only available to trusted clients or to clients who have agreed usage and payment terms with us, and we are able to track all downloads and image deliveries.
Our Content team will review and catalogue your images before publishing them on the Bridgeman Images website. This allows our team to optimise any content submission, ensuring that your images are easily discoverable by our clients.
Please note that our specialist team may make some adjustments to your initial metadata. We ask for your trust in our process, as our ultimate objective is to make your content readily licensable to all our clients.
If your application to become a Content Partner is successful, the Content Partnership Team will be pleased to discuss contract options with you in person. We offer flexible agreements tailored to your requirements.
To begin your application, click on “Apply as a Partner” and submit all required information including a selection of images or videos which will be reviewed by the Bridgeman Content Partnership Team along with an assessment of your existing online presence. This may take up to two working days and we will contact you once this is completed.
If you are an artist, we recommend having a professional photograph your work to provide the highest possible image quality.
Avoid any light reflections in your images, remain aware of surface dust where possible and use studio lighting when possible.
When the photograph represents an artwork, ensure images are cropped to the edge of the artwork and displayed to the correct orientation with no edges or frames showing.
Clients can search for your work on the main Bridgeman Images website. You will also have a dedicated Partner page on our main website where clients can browse through your entire collection.
Bridgeman Images offers comprehensive copyright clearance and reproduction rights management services. Our platform provides a global reach, showcasing your work to our extensive international client base, and you will benefit from dedicated PR and marketing campaigns across all channels.
We also provide guidance on Artist Resale Right (ARR) through our sister company ACS. Additionally, we offer collective rights management services, commonly known as secondary rights or payback, to ensure your work is protected and properly compensated.
Visit our Services page for more information.
Bridgeman Images will ensure that the underlying copyright in your work is fully cleared through a copyright fee charged to our client. Copyright to your works is always retained by you, Bridgeman Images will never assign copyright in the works of our artists to anyone. We will also ensure that any image is fully credited to the artist and that any substantial changes made to the image are pre-approved by our Content Partnership Team, acting on behalf of the artist before the change is carried out.
We don't operate like an agency, rather we work more broadly without a house style, offering a wide range of artistic styles and curated content to specific client sectors.
Our clients range from all sectors of the industry, from educational and trade publishers, to newspapers and magazines; from documentaries and film sets to products and marketing campaigns. With agencies who work on our behalf in China, Japan, South Korea, South America, Australia and beyond, we ensure that your work is presented to a global audience.
We offer a service to our clients where they can commission artwork, illustration, graphic art and photography from selected artists. Bridgeman Images negotiates the terms of the commission on your behalf and manages the contractual and financial aspects of the arrangement, so you just need to concentrate on the brief. Please contact us if you are interested in being considered for commission work.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a type of digital token that are unique and cannot be replicated. They are stored on the blockchain and represent ownership of a digital asset. Non-fungible means each NFT is unique and cannot be replaced with something else. They are bought and sold with cryptocurrency, the majority of which are part of the Ethereum blockchain.
An NFT can be assigned to any digital file from an image to a piece of music or film, and represents ownership of the ‘original’ work. Much of the excitement around NFTs have been around the use of the technology to sell digital art.
NFTs offer artists a way to sell work that may otherwise have been difficult to bring to market and can introduce their work to a growing audience of enthusiasts and collectors.
For artists who are interested in exploring creating on the blockchain, you will need to mint an NFT.
In order to do so, you will need to be set up to spend and receive cryptocurrency, which you store in a crypto wallet. The vast majority of NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum, or ETH, is also the name of the cryptocurrency for that blockchain. You will then need to sign up with a marketplace for crypto-goods. The largest and most established of these is OpenSea.
Once you are set up with a crypto wallet and have linked this to your account on your chosen marketplace, you can then create your NFT by uploading a supported file from your computer and recording its title and any other details you may wish to add.
No, it is not legal to make an NFT of someone else's artwork without their permission or clearing copyright. Just like any other form of digital or physical reproduction, creating an NFT of someone else's artwork without proper authorisation would constitute an infringement of their intellectual property rights, and could lead to legal action.
Most NFT marketplaces won’t charge fees to convert your images into an NFT, but there are upfront costs in getting set up to create and sell your own NFTs. These will be dependent on a few factors such as which marketplace you are using and how your NFTs are available for sale.
For example, if you are selling your NFT for a fixed price, the buyer pays the transaction fees. However, if you list your NFTs for sale by auction, then the seller takes on this cost. You will also have to remember that the marketplace will charge a commission fee per sale. This will vary according to the marketplace you are using and can range from 2.5% - 15% and higher.
When you first come to sell an NFT, you will need to initialise your crypto wallet, which will incur a fee. This is a one-off charge for first time sellers and is calculated by the marketplace you are using.
Copyright is a type of intellectual property right that is automatically granted to creators, such as artists and photographers, for the duration of their lifetime and beyond.
The specifics of this protection, including its type and duration, may differ from country to country. However, in general, this right provides creators with economic control over their work, including the right to control copying, adaptation, distribution, performance, and broadcasting. Additionally, creators may be granted moral rights, such as the right to be identified as the author of their work, the right to object to any derogatory treatment of their work, the right to privacy, and the right to prevent false attribution of their work.
Read the full article here.
Print On Demand (POD) is an API subscription service that Bridgeman Images offers to a select number of professional POD partners around the world. Our POD partners offer a variety of products (most commonly prints and posters, but also phone covers, mugs, t-shirts and other stationery items) which can be customised with one of your images. When a customer orders a POD product, the POD partner will print and ship a one-off product with your image.
Bridgeman Images works with primary partners in specific countries (USA, UK, France, Germany and internationally) and also collaborates with a much wider network of secondary partners to generate greater revenue for all Content Partners.
Do you have any pre-existing deals with other third parties that may compete or overlap with Bridgeman Images' POD partnerships? Do you feel selling your works on our POD channels would diminish the value of your originals?
If you are an artist, do you currently sell prints yourself (limited editions or otherwise)? Would any galleries you work with object to you selling your works via POD channels?
If you answer yes to any of the above, then please reach out to us to discuss further.
All Content Partners can request to be included in the POD offer by requesting it from the Content Partnership Team at any point. Whilst individual price points may be low, POD sites are often found to be the most reliable source of revenue for Content Partners.
Your images will be made available for use across the full range of available products.
For every sale made by our POD partners, Bridgeman receives a royalty commission on that sale, usually between 10% and 20% of the retail price. From that commission, Bridgeman returns revenue to the Content Partner in line with their agreed royalty between us.
Please note that the received commission per sold image is low, but the potential to realise greater revenue is generated from the volume sales that this business generates, especially around the Christmas/Holiday period.
Furthermore, owing to the time lapse between the uploading of fresh content, consumer acquisition, and the delay in POD reporting, followed by the subsequent disbursement of royalties by Bridgeman, it typically takes approximately 12 months to accurately evaluate the potential revenue that can be generated.
Adding your work to our POD partners' websites is a time-consuming process that requires a significant amount of effort on our part at Bridgeman Images. As such, once you have notified us of your desire to have your content added, we suggest that you keep it available for POD for a minimum of two years to capitalise on its sales potential.
When your current contract with Bridgeman Images comes up for renewal, you may then instruct us to withdraw your images from our POD partners.
All POD payments you receive will be made from Bridgeman Images and will appear on your royalty statements along with other sales.
Mocked-up images of your artwork on a product will appear on the POD sites. These images are low-res mock-ups of what the work would look like if it were purchased. It is not a physical product and does not represent a sale in any way.
ARR is a royalty generated on the sale price of original works of art that are sold on the secondary market and it applies to all artists who are UK or EEA citizens.
You need to be registered with a collecting agency such as our sister company ACS to receive this additional royalty.
Visit the Artists' Collecting Society website for more information.
Content Partners are encouraged to utilise all services offered by Bridgeman Images to generate income.
When you join Bridgeman Images as a Partner, you can choose to opt into a number of services, including Print on Demand and Sublicensing.
Visit our Services page for more information.
We offer a service to our clients where they can commission artwork, illustration, graphic art and photography from selected artists. Bridgeman Images negotiates the terms of the commission on your behalf and manages the contractual and financial aspects of the arrangement, so you just need to concentrate on the brief. Please contact us if you are interested in being considered for commission work.
For artists who are interested in exploring creating on the blockchain, you will need to mint an NFT.
In order to do so, you will need to be set up to spend and receive cryptocurrency, which you store in a crypto wallet. The vast majority of NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum, or ETH, is also the name of the cryptocurrency for that blockchain. You will then need to sign up with a marketplace for crypto-goods. The largest and most established of these is OpenSea.
Once you are set up with a crypto wallet and have linked this to your account on your chosen marketplace, you can then create your NFT by uploading a supported file from your computer and recording its title and any other details you may wish to add.
No, it is not legal to make an NFT of someone else's artwork without their permission or clearing copyright. Just like any other form of digital or physical reproduction, creating an NFT of someone else's artwork without proper authorisation would constitute an infringement of their intellectual property rights, and could lead to legal action.
Most NFT marketplaces won’t charge fees to convert your images into an NFT, but there are upfront costs in getting set up to create and sell your own NFTs. These will be dependent on a few factors such as which marketplace you are using and how your NFTs are available for sale.
For example, if you are selling your NFT for a fixed price, the buyer pays the transaction fees. However, if you list your NFTs for sale by auction, then the seller takes on this cost. You will also have to remember that the marketplace will charge a commission fee per sale. This will vary according to the marketplace you are using and can range from 2.5% - 15% and higher.
When you first come to sell an NFT, you will need to initialise your crypto wallet, which will incur a fee. This is a one-off charge for first time sellers and is calculated by the marketplace you are using.
Bridgeman Images offers one of the most competitive revenue shares in the industry. The royalty percentage we agree with you will be dependent on the level of exclusivity you are able to give and any permissions or restrictions you require. Royalties are paid out on a monthly basis once we have received payment from our clients and are accompanied by a detailed record of how the images have been licensed - listing the client, the project, the image, the usage/sector and the revenue, with a monthly overview of how that revenue is generated between our 5 Bridgeman offices. Royalties are paid out in either British Pounds, Euros or US Dollars, depending on your location.
Bridgeman Images negotiates all usages on your behalf, which dictate: the usage of the image; the duration; the exclusivity; the number of images reproduced and the number of times each image is reproduced; and the price.
In addition, if you are a Bridgeman Copyright artist, we will negotiate a separate copyright fee.
We don't operate like an agency, rather we work more broadly without a house style, offering a wide range of artistic styles and curated content to specific client sectors.
Our clients range from all sectors of the industry, from educational and trade publishers, to newspapers and magazines; from documentaries and film sets to products and marketing campaigns. With agencies who work on our behalf in China, Japan, South Korea, South America, Australia and beyond, we ensure that your work is presented to a global audience.
ARR is a royalty generated on the sale price of original works of art that are sold on the secondary market and it applies to all artists who are UK or EEA citizens.
You need to be registered with a collecting agency such as our sister company ACS to receive this additional royalty.
Visit the Artists' Collecting Society website for more information.
Content Partners are encouraged to utilise all services offered by Bridgeman Images to generate income.
When you join Bridgeman Images as a Partner, you can choose to opt into a number of services, including Print on Demand and Sublicensing.
Visit our Services page for more information.
If your images have ever appeared in a book, magazine or TV program, you may be eligible to claim Secondary Licensing Revenue (SLR).
This scheme administers the reprographic rights which come under the category of Collective Secondary Licensing.
Primary Licensing is quite straightforward and what Bridgeman Images does on a daily basis with all of our clients - a fee charged by Bridgeman that gives the client specific rights to reproduce the image in, for example, a book, a documentary or a scholarly journal. As agreed in our contract, we pass a percentage of that revenue back to you as the image provider.
Often that book, documentary or journal then ends up in a school, university library, college, local council or government institution. In this instance, a collective licence is raised by a collective licensing scheme (e.g. the Copyright Licensing Agency or CLA in the UK) that allows the members of that institution to photocopy, scan and email articles without having to seek permission each time - this is Secondary Licensing.
Each year various collective licensing schemes issue licences that cover secondary uses of your images, such as in photocopying. Although you may be entitled to these royalties, they are not automatic and must be claimed for.
Either select Yes on page 2 of your draft contract or complete the specific SLR form sent by Bridgeman Images and we will do the rest.
We file annual claims for these royalties as one of the services we offer. Last year we filed over 1400 successful claims for our members, so it is worth doing.
Any uses licensed through Bridgeman Images will automatically be added to your claim. If you have any other uses you would like to add to your claim, we will be happy to do so.
If your images have been used in a TV programme, please let us know the title of the programme, channel, number of images and air date.
For each book or magazine use all we need is the title of publication, number of images, publication date and an ISBN for any book use if you have it.
Bridgeman Images does not charge you any upfront fee for the time and paperwork involved in claiming for secondary licensing revenue on your behalf. Any revenue we claim successfully on your behalf is shared equally between you and Bridgeman.
No, only a few countries recognise this right.
Bridgeman Images can claim on your behalf for images used in the UK, France, Belgium, Ireland and Australia.
Claims within France, Belgium, Ireland and Australia must be based on images licensed in the past year.
Claims in the United Kingdom have no time frame for claiming SLR, so we can offer this service for images reproduced before one year ago.
Bridgeman Images continually monitors changing laws within key territories to ensure that we are ready to apply when SLR becomes available to claim.
You may hear Secondary Licensing referred to as:
Payback
Secondary Rights Claims
Secondary Licensing Revenue
Secondary Rights Revenue
Collective Licensing Fees
It is impossible to predict the revenue likely to be due because it depends on the amount of recent primary licensing as well as any changes to the payout process and algorithm for which Bridgeman has no control over. Revenue per license is definitely small, but the total amount received can accumulate. And always remember, this is revenue being left on the table if you do not claim or have Bridgeman claim on your behalf.
This will depend on when the deadlines are to submit claims and when the collective licensing scheme we apply to subsequently issues payment to Bridgeman Images. These deadlines can change year on year. Bridgeman Images strives to pay out as soon as it receives payment on all its claims on behalf of our Content Partners and has been able to ensure that every Content Partner has been allocated its correct revenue.
As a Content Partner, you will be able to log in to the Partner Platform and access and download royalty reports from the dashboard.
You can contact us via email at contentpartnershipteam@bridgemanimages.com.
Prior to submitting your content, we kindly recommend that you refer to our submission guidelines. These guidelines outline the accepted file sizes and quality criteria, as well as the type of content that meets our selection criteria.
Upon submission, our system will conduct a quality and size assessment, and notify you of any clips that do not meet our standards.
Please note that any clips that fail to align with our Content Strategy or submission guidelines will be withdrawn from our platform, but will remain visible on your Partner account.
Once you submit your application, we will review your profile and your content. We will then get in touch with you to let you know if your application has been successful. If successful, you will be directed to your new account on the Content Partner Platform, where you will be asked to create a password and finalise your profile.
Yes, please do contact your account manager to provide you with a login and you will be able to create your password and access your platform.
Prior to submitting your content, we kindly recommend that you refer to our submission guidelines. These guidelines outline the accepted file sizes and quality criteria, as well as the type of content that meets our selection criteria.
Upon submission, our system will conduct a quality and size assessment, and notify you of any images that do not meet our standards.
Please note that any images that fail to align with our Content Strategy or submission guidelines will be withdrawn from our platform, but will remain visible on your Partner account.
Please contact the Content Partnership Team who will be pleased to provide you with a login from which you will be able to create a password and finalise your online profile.
Once you submit your application, we will review your profile and your content. We will then get in touch with you to let you know if your application has been successful. If successful, you will be directed to your new account on the Content Partner Platform, where you will be asked to create a password and finalise your profile.
Our priority is to work with Content Partners whose content matches our customers' requirements and is in line with our Content Strategy and with the rest of our collection. If your submission does not meet our criteria, you will be notified by email.
Once you submit your application, we will review your profile and your content. We will then get in touch with you to let you know if your application has been successful. If successful, you will be directed to your new account on the Content Partner Platform, where you will be asked to create a password and finalise your profile.
Yes, please contact our Content Partnership Team via email.
You can contact us via email at contentpartnershipteam@bridgemanimages.com.
If you already have a Partner account with us, you can click on "Partner login" at the top right-hand corner of the webpage.
If you are an existing Content Partner but do not yet have an account with us, please contact the Content Partnership Team who will be pleased to provide you with a login from which you will be able to create a password and finalise your online profile.
On the login page, click on “I forgot my password” and provide the email address you registered with. You will then receive an email to reset your password.
As a Content Partner, you will be able to log in to the Partner Platform and access and download royalty reports from the dashboard.
Print On Demand (POD) is an API subscription service that Bridgeman Images offers to a select number of professional POD partners around the world. Our POD partners offer a variety of products (most commonly prints and posters, but also phone covers, mugs, t-shirts and other stationery items) which can be customised with one of your images. When a customer orders a POD product, the POD partner will print and ship a one-off product with your image.
All Content Partners can request to be included in the POD offer by requesting it from the Content Partnership Team at any point. Whilst individual price points may be low, POD sites are often found to be the most reliable source of revenue for Content Partners.
Your images will be made available for use across the full range of available products.
For every sale made by our POD partners, Bridgeman receives a royalty commission on that sale, usually between 10% and 20% of the retail price. From that commission, Bridgeman returns revenue to the Content Partner in line with their agreed royalty between us.
Please note that the received commission per sold image is low, but the potential to realise greater revenue is generated from the volume sales that this business generates, especially around the Christmas/Holiday period.
Furthermore, owing to the time lapse between the uploading of fresh content, consumer acquisition, and the delay in POD reporting, followed by the subsequent disbursement of royalties by Bridgeman, it typically takes approximately 12 months to accurately evaluate the potential revenue that can be generated.
All POD payments you receive will be made from Bridgeman Images and will appear on your royalty statements along with other sales.
Mocked-up images of your artwork on a product will appear on the POD sites. These images are low-res mock-ups of what the work would look like if it were purchased. It is not a physical product and does not represent a sale in any way.
Adding your work to our POD partners' websites is a time-consuming process that requires a significant amount of effort on our part at Bridgeman Images. As such, once you have notified us of your desire to have your content added, we suggest that you keep it available for POD for a minimum of two years to capitalise on its sales potential.
When your current contract with Bridgeman Images comes up for renewal, you may then instruct us to withdraw your images from our POD partners.
Do you have any pre-existing deals with other third parties that may compete or overlap with Bridgeman Images' POD partnerships? Do you feel selling your works on our POD channels would diminish the value of your originals?
If you are an artist, do you currently sell prints yourself (limited editions or otherwise)? Would any galleries you work with object to you selling your works via POD channels?
If you answer yes to any of the above, then please reach out to us to discuss further.
Bridgeman Images works with primary partners in specific countries (USA, UK, France, Germany and internationally) and also collaborates with a much wider network of secondary partners to generate greater revenue for all Content Partners.
We offer a service to our clients where they can commission artwork, illustration, graphic art and photography from selected artists. Bridgeman Images negotiates the terms of the commission on your behalf and manages the contractual and financial aspects of the arrangement, so you just need to concentrate on the brief. Please contact us if you are interested in being considered for commission work.
Bridgeman Images offers one of the most competitive revenue shares in the industry. The royalty percentage we agree with you will be dependent on the level of exclusivity you are able to give and any permissions or restrictions you require. Royalties are paid out on a monthly basis once we have received payment from our clients and are accompanied by a detailed record of how the images have been licensed - listing the client, the project, the image, the usage/sector and the revenue, with a monthly overview of how that revenue is generated between our 5 Bridgeman offices. Royalties are paid out in either British Pounds, Euros or US Dollars, depending on your location.
If your images have ever appeared in a book, magazine or TV program, you may be eligible to claim Secondary Licensing Revenue (SLR).
This scheme administers the reprographic rights which come under the category of Collective Secondary Licensing.
Primary Licensing is quite straightforward and what Bridgeman Images does on a daily basis with all of our clients - a fee charged by Bridgeman that gives the client specific rights to reproduce the image in, for example, a book, a documentary or a scholarly journal. As agreed in our contract, we pass a percentage of that revenue back to you as the image provider.
Often that book, documentary or journal then ends up in a school, university library, college, local council or government institution. In this instance, a collective licence is raised by a collective licensing scheme (e.g. the Copyright Licensing Agency or CLA in the UK) that allows the members of that institution to photocopy, scan and email articles without having to seek permission each time - this is Secondary Licensing.
Each year various collective licensing schemes issue licences that cover secondary uses of your images, such as in photocopying. Although you may be entitled to these royalties, they are not automatic and must be claimed for.
You may hear Secondary Licensing referred to as:
Payback
Secondary Rights Claims
Secondary Licensing Revenue
Secondary Rights Revenue
Collective Licensing Fees
Bridgeman Images negotiates all usages on your behalf, which dictate: the usage of the image; the duration; the exclusivity; the number of images reproduced and the number of times each image is reproduced; and the price.
In addition, if you are a Bridgeman Copyright artist, we will negotiate a separate copyright fee.
Either select Yes on page 2 of your draft contract or complete the specific SLR form sent by Bridgeman Images and we will do the rest.
We file annual claims for these royalties as one of the services we offer. Last year we filed over 1400 successful claims for our members, so it is worth doing.
Any uses licensed through Bridgeman Images will automatically be added to your claim. If you have any other uses you would like to add to your claim, we will be happy to do so.
If your images have been used in a TV programme, please let us know the title of the programme, channel, number of images and air date.
For each book or magazine use all we need is the title of publication, number of images, publication date and an ISBN for any book use if you have it.
It is impossible to predict the revenue likely to be due because it depends on the amount of recent primary licensing as well as any changes to the payout process and algorithm for which Bridgeman has no control over. Revenue per license is definitely small, but the total amount received can accumulate. And always remember, this is revenue being left on the table if you do not claim or have Bridgeman claim on your behalf.
No, only a few countries recognise this right.
Bridgeman Images can claim on your behalf for images used in the UK, France, Belgium, Ireland and Australia.
Claims within France, Belgium, Ireland and Australia must be based on images licensed in the past year.
Claims in the United Kingdom have no time frame for claiming SLR, so we can offer this service for images reproduced before one year ago.
Bridgeman Images continually monitors changing laws within key territories to ensure that we are ready to apply when SLR becomes available to claim.
This will depend on when the deadlines are to submit claims and when the collective licensing scheme we apply to subsequently issues payment to Bridgeman Images. These deadlines can change year on year. Bridgeman Images strives to pay out as soon as it receives payment on all its claims on behalf of our Content Partners and has been able to ensure that every Content Partner has been allocated its correct revenue.
Bridgeman Images does not charge you any upfront fee for the time and paperwork involved in claiming for secondary licensing revenue on your behalf. Any revenue we claim successfully on your behalf is shared equally between you and Bridgeman.
Copyright is a type of intellectual property right that is automatically granted to creators, such as artists and photographers, for the duration of their lifetime and beyond.
The specifics of this protection, including its type and duration, may differ from country to country. However, in general, this right provides creators with economic control over their work, including the right to control copying, adaptation, distribution, performance, and broadcasting. Additionally, creators may be granted moral rights, such as the right to be identified as the author of their work, the right to object to any derogatory treatment of their work, the right to privacy, and the right to prevent false attribution of their work.
Read the full article here.
Bridgeman Images will ensure that the underlying copyright in your work is fully cleared through a copyright fee charged to our client. Copyright to your works is always retained by you, Bridgeman Images will never assign copyright in the works of our artists to anyone. We will also ensure that any image is fully credited to the artist and that any substantial changes made to the image are pre-approved by our Content Partnership Team, acting on behalf of the artist before the change is carried out.
If your application to become a Content Partner is successful, the Content Partnership Team will be pleased to discuss contract options with you in person. We offer flexible agreements tailored to your requirements.
To begin your application, click on “Apply as a Partner” and submit all required information including a selection of images or videos which will be reviewed by the Bridgeman Content Partnership Team along with an assessment of your existing online presence. This may take up to two working days and we will contact you once this is completed.
Yes! The Bridgeman Content Partnership Team evaluates everyone’s artwork equally from a commercial licensing perspective. The aim of Bridgeman Images is to curate the best creative content for image licensing.
If invited to join as a Bridgeman Artist, you will be asked to complete your registration, following which your images will join our community of successful artists.
We don't operate like an agency, rather we work more broadly without a house style, offering a wide range of artistic styles and curated content to specific client sectors.
Our clients range from all sectors of the industry, from educational and trade publishers, to newspapers and magazines; from documentaries and film sets to products and marketing campaigns. With agencies who work on our behalf in China, Japan, South Korea, South America, Australia and beyond, we ensure that your work is presented to a global audience.
Bridgeman Images offers comprehensive copyright clearance and reproduction rights management services. Our platform provides a global reach, showcasing your work to our extensive international client base, and you will benefit from dedicated PR and marketing campaigns across all channels.
We also provide guidance on Artist Resale Right (ARR) through our sister company ACS. Additionally, we offer collective rights management services, commonly known as secondary rights or payback, to ensure your work is protected and properly compensated.
Visit our Services page for more information.
Content Partners are encouraged to utilise all services offered by Bridgeman Images to generate income.
When you join Bridgeman Images as a Partner, you can choose to opt into a number of services, including Print on Demand and Sublicensing.
Visit our Services page for more information.
Our Content team will review and catalogue your images before publishing them on the Bridgeman Images website. This allows our team to optimise any content submission, ensuring that your images are easily discoverable by our clients.
Please note that our specialist team may make some adjustments to your initial metadata. We ask for your trust in our process, as our ultimate objective is to make your content readily licensable to all our clients.
Clients can search for your work on the main Bridgeman Images website. You will also have a dedicated Partner page on our main website where clients can browse through your entire collection.
Keep the clip or image file names simple.
Umlauts, accents and special keywords are rejected by our image uploader so avoid the following symbols in the file name; & $ £ / # ’” % @ ~
If you are an artist, we recommend having a professional photograph your work to provide the highest possible image quality.
Avoid any light reflections in your images, remain aware of surface dust where possible and use studio lighting when possible.
When the photograph represents an artwork, ensure images are cropped to the edge of the artwork and displayed to the correct orientation with no edges or frames showing.
Unregistered users of the Bridgeman Images website can only see low-resolution images that have been watermarked with our company logo. Registered users have access to unwatermarked low-resolution images. Unwatermarked high-resolution images are only available to trusted clients or to clients who have agreed usage and payment terms with us, and we are able to track all downloads and image deliveries.
Bridgeman Images strives to move away from the offerings of a traditional stock footage company. We are looking for both contemporary and archival footage collections which have digitised clips specialising in covering the topics of art, culture and history from around the world, spanning the last century and with an edge on resolution quality. Many of our current partners feature clips showcasing social, political & natural history, artist profiles and biographies, amateur/home movies, vintage animation, world travel, culture and more. We are also interested in collections of motion art as well as cutting-edge aerial footage. All in all, if you have unique footage, we may be interested.
We work with clients across multiple industries worldwide, including archival researchers, producers, documentarians, educational platforms and more.
Clients who directly approach our Sales Team have the opportunity to collaborate with our Research Team. Our team of experienced researchers curate bespoke lightboxes tailored to meet the specific requirements outlined by the client's brief.
Footage will be featured on our homepage, news section or blog, utilised within curated lightboxes and be included in both internal and external facing newsletters.
Your footage will appear on the Bridgeman Images website after our Content team reviews and completes cataloguing with the supplied metadata. This allows our team to optimise any content submission, ensuring that your clips are easily discoverable by our clients.
Please note that our specialist team may make some adjustments to your initial metadata to enhance findability. Clients can search for your work on the main website by partner, keyword or other video-specific filters. All footage viewable in the Bridgeman archive is watermarked with our company logo.
We accept footage content (in order of preference) as:
a) short-form clip sequences, from between 30 seconds to 5 minutes.
b) longer clips with detailed metadata of all-encompassing topics within the clip.
c) full-duration films with full logs/transcripts.
The formats accepted by Bridgeman Images are (in order of preference):
- 1920x1080, Progressive, QuickTime ProRes (HQ), YUV, with uncompressed sound.
-IMX 50 (*wrapped as QuickTime only), Progressive, QuickTime ProRes 4444, LT, YUV, with uncompressed sound.
-For HD or UHD film scans we would consider dpx image sequences but also require a mezzanine Pro Res proxy version for playback.
(If these formats are not suitable, we can offer transcoding services, but this may impact our royalty terms).
-For screeners, h.264 and h.265 files will also be accepted.
When submitting footage, you will need to include metadata, for instance: title, original format, time period and keywords.
Keywording clips is extremely important and a key factor in achieving successful licensing. The Content Team can advise you on keywording techniques and provide you with a metadata template.
Keep the file names simple. These should not contain Umlauts, accents and special characters (& $ £ / ‘’’ @ ~ #). If possible, please also replicate some element of the description or title field in the filename (i.e. crowd_on_london_bus_1957.mov).
Bridgeman Images employs a rigorous quality control process to curate our footage collection, ensuring that we offer the highest quality and most distinctive clips to our clients. Please note that we reserve the right to remove any footage that is considered unsuitable for our audience.
Images that fail to align with our Content Strategy or submission guidelines will be withdrawn from our platform, but will remain visible on your Partner account.
Our system will automatically reject images that do not fit our quality and size requirements. Our Content Teams will also review all images to make sure they fit our content strategy.
In your application, you can supply low or high-resolution files. However, once you become a Content Partner, please supply us with the largest file sizes you have.
We prefer that the files are in excess of 50 megabytes, which equates to 4000x5000 Pixel dimension, this avoids your images being rejected by the client due to size.
If you are a photographer do not send us raw files.
Keep the asset files simple, Umlauts, accents and special keywords are rejected by our image uploader such as & $ £ / ‘’’ @ ~ #.
Images must be:
- Supplied as jpeg (.jpg) or tiff files
- Between 50-90MB in size
- At least 3000 pixels on one side
- Scanned to 300dpi
- Scanned with colour profile sRGB/Adobe RGB, colour space RGB and colour ratio 24 bit (8 per channel)
Images may be rejected for the following reasons:
- Dust, hairs, marks and oil stains
- Histogram clipping or excessive contrast
- Newton rings
- Excessive noise and sharpening (visible halos appearing)
- Oversharpened or with cloning marks, pixilation or other computer generated errors
- Posterization (steps of colour appearing in graduations)
- Noticeable retouching
- Compression, resizing / interpolation, extra layers or channels
- Camera shake, excessive contrast, light spots, reflections, colour casts, lack of focus
For more information, you can consult our Content submission guidelines
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a type of digital token that are unique and cannot be replicated. They are stored on the blockchain and represent ownership of a digital asset. Non-fungible means each NFT is unique and cannot be replaced with something else. They are bought and sold with cryptocurrency, the majority of which are part of the Ethereum blockchain.
An NFT can be assigned to any digital file from an image to a piece of music or film, and represents ownership of the ‘original’ work. Much of the excitement around NFTs have been around the use of the technology to sell digital art.
NFTs offer artists a way to sell work that may otherwise have been difficult to bring to market and can introduce their work to a growing audience of enthusiasts and collectors.
ARR is a royalty generated on the sale price of original works of art that are sold on the secondary market and it applies to all artists who are UK or EEA citizens.
You need to be registered with a collecting agency such as our sister company ACS to receive this additional royalty.
Visit the Artists' Collecting Society website for more information.
No, it is not legal to make an NFT of someone else's artwork without their permission or clearing copyright. Just like any other form of digital or physical reproduction, creating an NFT of someone else's artwork without proper authorisation would constitute an infringement of their intellectual property rights, and could lead to legal action.
For artists who are interested in exploring creating on the blockchain, you will need to mint an NFT.
In order to do so, you will need to be set up to spend and receive cryptocurrency, which you store in a crypto wallet. The vast majority of NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum, or ETH, is also the name of the cryptocurrency for that blockchain. You will then need to sign up with a marketplace for crypto-goods. The largest and most established of these is OpenSea.
Once you are set up with a crypto wallet and have linked this to your account on your chosen marketplace, you can then create your NFT by uploading a supported file from your computer and recording its title and any other details you may wish to add.
Most NFT marketplaces won’t charge fees to convert your images into an NFT, but there are upfront costs in getting set up to create and sell your own NFTs. These will be dependent on a few factors such as which marketplace you are using and how your NFTs are available for sale.
For example, if you are selling your NFT for a fixed price, the buyer pays the transaction fees. However, if you list your NFTs for sale by auction, then the seller takes on this cost. You will also have to remember that the marketplace will charge a commission fee per sale. This will vary according to the marketplace you are using and can range from 2.5% - 15% and higher.
When you first come to sell an NFT, you will need to initialise your crypto wallet, which will incur a fee. This is a one-off charge for first time sellers and is calculated by the marketplace you are using.
Apply to be a Content Partner
Join Bridgeman Images in generating revenue and promoting your images and footage to a global audience.
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