Do You Need a Model Release Before Sharing Photos?

Sort every request by where the image ends up. The practice column describes what careful studios commonly do. It is not a statement of what the law requires where you are.

The pattern is simple. The further an image travels from the person who paid for it, the more a written yes matters.

Photographers often assume that owning the copyright settles everything. It settles less than it seems.

In Canada, the Copyright Act says that the author of a work is the first owner of the copyright in it, subject to the rest of the Act. Its old subsection 13(2), which dealt with photographs and portraits ordered by someone else, was repealed in 2012.

The same Act also gives the client something. Section 32.2(1)(f) lets an individual use a photograph or portrait they commissioned for personal purposes and paid for, for private or non-commercial purposes, unless the two sides agreed otherwise.

None of that answers whether you may show a recognisable person to the public. That question sits in privacy and personality rights, which are separate from copyright and vary by jurisdiction.

In Québec, the provincial human rights commission describes the Charter of human rights and freedoms as protecting the right to respect for private life, and the right to respect for dignity, honour and reputation.

Federally, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act defines personal information as information about an identifiable individual. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner says the Act applies to private-sector organisations that collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of a commercial activity. It also says Alberta, British Columbia and Québec have their own private-sector privacy laws deemed substantially similar.

That summary page does not mention photographs, so this page does not claim how those laws apply to a portfolio image. The point is narrower. Copyright is one question. Permission to show a person is another. A release answers the second.

A release does not need to be long. It needs to be specific. The lines below are editorial suggestions, not a legal form.

Separate boxes work better than one blanket sentence. A client who is happy with a website gallery may not want an advert. Separate boxes let them say so, and let you prove what they agreed to.

Ask at booking, in the contract, before anyone is in front of the camera. A request made after delivery feels like a favour. A request made at booking is a term the client reads calmly.

For weddings, remember the guests. The couple can agree for themselves. They cannot sign away a guest's preferences, so choose portfolio frames where guests are small or not recognisable, or ask the guest.

For boudoir, newborn and family work, confirm again after the client has seen the gallery. A yes given before the session is a yes to an idea. A yes given after seeing the frames is a yes to a picture.

Keep the signed release with the booking record. If a question comes up in three years, you want the document, not a memory of a conversation.

The practical mistake is treating delivery and promotion as one step. On clientgallery.io they are two separate places, and nothing moves from one to the other by itself. Each point below was checked in the product code on 30 September 2026.

Two consequences follow. A client gallery never feeds your portfolio, so a client's photos only become public if you upload them there yourself. That upload is the moment to check the release.

Before you publish the portfolio, you can preview it while signed in. Nobody else sees the preview. Removing a photo from the portfolio deletes the portfolio's copy, and the client's gallery is not touched.

Be honest about the private side too. The request not to be indexed is a request to search engines, not a lock. A password stops people who do not have it. It does not stop a client who passes the link and password on, which is covered in the answer on sharing links.

A florist, a venue or a magazine asking for images is asking to show your client's face to its own audience. Get the client's yes before anything leaves, then send only the frames that were agreed.

Each section of a gallery has its own share link that opens a view-only page of that section alone: no ZIP, no picks, no full-resolution download, no face search and no link back to the full gallery. It uses the parent gallery's password and shows its welcome note, so a separate gallery for the third party is often cleaner.

The full routine for venues is in sharing wedding photos with the venue, and for credited vendors in styled shoot photo sharing.

A no to the portfolio is not a no to delivery. The client still gets their gallery. You simply leave their images out of anything public.

If a client withdraws a yes, act on what you control. Remove the images from your portfolio and your own accounts, note the date in the booking record, and tell the client what you removed.

Be plain about what you cannot pull back. A post that was re-shared or a printed brochure already in circulation is outside your reach. Saying so early is kinder than a promise you cannot keep.

What withdrawal means in your contract, and whether it has limits, is exactly the kind of point to settle with a lawyer where you work. The delivery side of the contract is covered in contract clauses for gallery delivery.

Official sources, each fetched on 30 September 2026:

• Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42), section 13, Justice Laws Website, Government of Canada. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-42/section-13.html (first ownership by the author; subsection 13(2) repealed in 2012). Fetched 30 September 2026.
• Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42), section 32.2, Justice Laws Website, Government of Canada. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-42/section-32.2.html (paragraph 32.2(1)(f), commissioned photographs and portraits). Fetched 30 September 2026.
• Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (S.C. 2000, c. 5), section 2, Justice Laws Website, Government of Canada. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-8.6/section-2.html (definition of personal information). Fetched 30 September 2026.
• PIPEDA requirements in brief, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, last modified 1 May 2024. https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/privacy-laws-in-canada/the-personal-information-protection-and-electronic-documents-act-pipeda/pipeda_brief/ (commercial activity; Alberta, British Columbia and Québec). Fetched 30 September 2026.
• Les libertés et droits fondamentaux, Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (Québec). https://www.cdpdj.qc.ca/fr/vos-droits/qu-est-ce-que/libertes-et-droits-fondamentaux (respect for private life, dignity, honour and reputation under the Québec Charter). Fetched 30 September 2026.

Every clientgallery.io product fact on this page was checked in the product code on 30 September 2026: client gallery pages asking search engines not to index them; the optional per-gallery password; the portfolio as a separate page on the studio's subdomain root that starts unpublished, shows a private notice until published, and allows indexing once published; portfolio photos uploaded to the portfolio separately from any gallery; the owner-only preview; removing a portfolio photo deleting the portfolio's copy; and the view-only section link with its exclusions, the parent gallery's password and its welcome note.

The release lines, the practice column and the timing advice are editorial suggestions. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and the rules differ by country and province.