Terms and conditions

The agreement between Axis Photography and the people who book us. Last reviewed October 2026.

These terms apply when you book a shoot with us. They sit alongside your privacy notice and whatever we agreed in writing about the work itself — the date, the hours, the fee. Where a written quotation says something different from this page, the quotation wins.

To confirm: your registered business name, trading address and company number if you are incorporated, and your VAT number if registered. A solicitor should read this page before you rely on it — the sections on fees, cancellation and liability are the ones where the wording has consequences, and every one of them is marked below.

1. Who we are

Axis Photography, Tamworth, Staffordshire (“we”, “us”). You can reach us at hello at axisphotography dot co dot uk or 0333 335 5336.

“You” means the person who books the shoot and is responsible for paying for it. If you are booking on someone else's behalf — a parent, a company, a committee — you are still the one we contract with.

2. When the booking becomes a booking

A quotation is not a booking. The date is not held for you until both of these have happened:

• you have told us in writing — email is fine — that you want to go ahead, and
• the booking fee has reached our account.

Until then the date stays open and somebody else may take it. We will not hold a date indefinitely on a verbal yes, and we will tell you if someone else asks about your date before you have confirmed.

3. Fees and payment

The fee is the one on your quotation. It covers the work described there and nothing else; extra hours, extra locations, additional edited images or a second photographer are quoted separately and agreed in writing before they happen.

To confirm: the booking fee — a percentage or a fixed sum — when the balance falls due (commonly fourteen days before the shoot, or on delivery for commercial work), what you accept (bank transfer, card), and whether you charge interest on late payment. If you want to charge statutory interest on commercial invoices under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, say so here.

The booking fee is part of the total, not an addition to it.

Travel within Tamworth, Staffordshire and the surrounding area is included. Beyond that we will quote for mileage before you book, never after.

4. If you need to cancel or move the date

Moving it

We will move your booking to another available date where we can. If we cannot — because we are already booked, or the new date is in a different pricing period — we will say so, and what you have paid is treated under the cancellation terms below.

Cancelling

Tell us in writing as early as you can. A cancelled date is rarely re-booked at short notice, which is the whole reason a booking fee exists.

To confirm: your cancellation scale — what you keep if the client cancels, at what notice. A clause that simply says "all payments are non-refundable" is likely to be unenforceable against a consumer: what you retain has to be a genuine estimate of what the cancellation actually costs you, not a penalty. A tiered scale (for example: booking fee retained at any time; 50% within eight weeks; 100% within two weeks) is both fairer and far more likely to hold up. Take advice on the numbers.

Your statutory cancellation right, and when it does not apply

If you booked without meeting us in person — by email, over the phone, through this website — you normally have fourteen days to change your mind under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.

There is an exception that matters here. Those Regulations do not give a cancellation right for services tied to a specific date, which is what a wedding, a christening or an event booking is. So for a dated booking the fourteen-day right generally does not apply, and our cancellation terms above are what govern. For undated work — a studio portrait with no date fixed, say — the fourteen-day right does apply, and if you ask us to begin within that period you may be asked to pay for what has already been done.

If we cancel

If we cancel for any reason other than those in section 5, you get everything you have paid back in full. We will also do what we reasonably can to find you another photographer of a similar standard, though we cannot promise to.

5. Illness, accidents and things nobody can help

If we cannot attend through serious illness, injury, bereavement, vehicle failure on the day, or anything else genuinely outside our control, we will try first to send a photographer of a similar standard in our place, with your agreement. If that is not possible, you get a full refund of everything you have paid.

That refund is the limit of what we owe you in those circumstances. We will not be responsible for other costs you have committed to — the venue, the catering, the dress — because those are not ours to insure and no photography fee could cover them. If that exposure worries you, wedding insurance covers exactly this and is inexpensive.

6. On the day

We will arrive when we agreed and photograph what we agreed. A few things we need from you:

• Access and permission. Some venues, churches and public buildings restrict photography, require their own permission, or charge a fee. Securing that is yours to arrange; tell us early if there are rules, and we will work within them.
• Someone who knows who is who. For group photographs, one person who can round people up is worth half an hour of our time.
• Reasonable conditions. We are not responsible for what we cannot photograph — a ceremony conducted in the dark with flash forbidden, a guest standing in front of us at the critical moment, weather that moves everything indoors. We will get the best of what is there.

We ask that nobody obstructs us, and that you let your guests know. We cannot be responsible for photographs missed because another camera, a phone or a tablet was in the way.

If we are treated abusively or put at risk, we may stop and leave. We would charge the full fee in that case, and we have never had to.

7. Who owns the photographs

We do. Copyright in every photograph stays with us under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. That is the ordinary position for commissioned photography and it is not unusual.

What you get is a licence: you may print the photographs, copy them, put them on social media and send them to anybody you like, for as long as you like, anywhere in the world, for personal and family use. You do not need to ask us and you do not owe us anything further.

Two limits on that licence:

• Please do not edit them. Cropping for a profile picture is fine. Filters, heavy re-colouring or removing our mark are not — the photographs carry our name whether or not it is written on them.
• Commercial use is separate. If photographs of you are going to advertise a business, appear in a paid publication or be sold, that needs a separate licence from us. Ask; it is usually straightforward.

Suppliers at your wedding — the venue, the florist, the band — frequently ask for images. They need our permission, not yours, and we normally give it in exchange for a credit. Send them to us.

8. Using your photographs in our own work

We would like to show some of your photographs on this website, in our portfolio and on social media. It is how people find us.

You can say no, at any time, and we will not ask you to justify it. Tell us before the shoot, or after it, or in two years when something changes. We will take them down from anything we control.

This is not simply good manners. Where photographs are commissioned for private and domestic purposes, section 85 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 gives you a right to prevent them being issued, exhibited or shown to the public — even though we own the copyright. So for a wedding or a family portrait, publication is genuinely your decision, and we treat it that way.

Two things we will never do without asking you specifically: use your photographs in paid advertising, or licence them to anyone else — a magazine, a venue's marketing, a stock library.

To confirm: whether you want a tick-box on the booking form recording this choice, and what the default is when somebody does not answer. Our recommendation is that the default is no, and that the answer is recorded in writing — it is the question clients most often misremember having been asked. Note also that for school and event work, where you are photographing people who are not your client, you need a written agreement with the school or organiser covering who holds consent for the people in front of the camera. That is a separate document and this page does not substitute for it.

9. Delivery, your gallery, and how long we keep things

Finished photographs are delivered through a private online gallery. You get a login; the gallery is not public, not indexed by search engines, and nobody without the link and the password can reach it.

To confirm: your delivery timescales — how long until the gallery is ready, for each kind of work. Give yourself more room than you think; it is the single most common cause of complaint in this trade.

In the gallery you can mark favourites, download the files where downloads are enabled, and create share links for family. A share link shows a reduced-size copy carrying our mark, not the original file, and you can switch any link off whenever you like.

Galleries stay open for a set period and then close. We will warn you before that happens. Please download and back up your photographs. We keep our own copies and do our best by them, but we are a photography studio and not an archive, and a gallery is not a backup.

To confirm: how long galleries stay open, and how long you keep the files afterwards. Both should also match what the privacy notice says, or the two documents will contradict each other.

10. If something goes wrong

We will carry out the work with reasonable care and skill, as the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires. If you are not happy, tell us promptly and we will try to put it right.

Photography is a matter of taste as well as craft. We will always fix a technical fault. We cannot re-shoot a day that has happened because the style was not what you pictured, which is why we show complete galleries rather than highlights before you book — so that what you see is what you are buying.

If we are at fault, what we owe you is limited to the fee you paid us. We are not responsible for indirect or consequential losses.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. If any part of this page turns out to be unenforceable, the rest of it still applies.

11. Equipment, data and the things that can fail

We shoot to two cards where the camera allows it and back up to two separate places the same day. Despite that, cameras and storage occasionally fail. If images are lost through an equipment or media failure, our liability is limited to a proportionate refund of the fee — all of it if the whole shoot is lost, part of it if part is.

12. Complaints

Write to us at hello at axisphotography dot co dot uk and we will reply within five working days. We would much rather hear it from you than read it somewhere else.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update this page. The version that applies to your booking is the one in force on the day you booked, and we will send it to you if you ask.

14. Law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may bring proceedings in your own courts; nothing here takes away a right you have as a consumer where you live.

This page is written to be read, not to be impenetrable. If any of it is unclear, ask us and we will explain it — and if the explanation is better than the wording, we will change the wording.