If a photographer takes your picture, can they post it?

Anele and the Club on 947 · Oct 1, 2026 · 13m · transcript

Photographer Max Global Media sparked the conversation with a post saying: “When a client won’t let you post their photos” and it raises an interesting question about who actually gets to decide what happens to a photograph once it’s been taken.

If you’ve paid a photographer to take pictures of you, is it automatically understood that they can use those images for their own Instagram, website or portfolio simply because they took the photo?

Or should the client have the final say over whether their image is posted publicly? And does it make a difference if you…