Formula for calculating compensation to models.

Day Books: October 31, 1993 (Freeman Lake)

When I was a photographer, doing business as Luminscript, Ltd. in 1974, I shot two kinds of sessions with live models: those for which the subject paid me to take their picture, and those for which they did not.

People who paid me to photograph them also signed a release that allowed me to exhibit their photograph to solicit new business, or as part of a collection of my work for commercial sale, without further compensation.

There were two kinds of pictures for which I was not paid: those for which I paid the model, and those for which I did not. There were two kinds of pictures of unpaid models: those who did it for free or for prints, and those who did it in anticipation of royalties if their pictures were published or sold at galleries.

My standard contract for "modeling on speculation" was twentyfive percent (25%) of the profits, not the gross sales. This was understood at the time of signing an agreement that was witnessed.

Taking Joni Wiffen's signed model release as an example, she is entitled to 25% of the portion of the work in which she appears. If the product is a collection of twelve note cards with envelopes, or postcards, and no one else's pictures appear in that collection, then she gets 25% of my profits from the sale of that collection.

The portion of my electronic journal for the year 1974 contains photographs of maybe fifteen different people - some appear only once, some in several pictures. Let us assume that this makes up a single CD title that retails for $25.00, and that I make a profit of $10.00 for each sale.

Assuming that there are fifty (50) different pictures, and Joni appears in twenty (20) of them, then her portion is forty percent (40%), then she is entitled to 25% of 40% (which makes 10%) of $10.00 for each sale, or one dollar for each $25.00 sale.

As another example, assume that I only use one picture of a model in the collection of fifty. 25% of 2% is 0.5%, or five cents for each $25.00 sale.

The escrow account will be the recipient of $2.50 of every $10.00 of profit that I make. Joni's dollar and the other model's nickel (should they ever ask for money as agreed twenty years ago) will be paid from this escrow account. Upon my death, any surviving models may split the remaining balance among themselves using their own formula.

-=DAH=-