License Use

Non-commercial use of small images (still images)

Our photos can be copied and used for several types of non-commercial purposes. The images have to be attributed to BioQuest Studios and a link to this website or to http://bioqueststudios.com.au has to be provided.

Examples of free use:

- Personal website, social network page, or blog that does not promote anything that you sell and no money is involved anywhere aside from hosting and domain fees. For commercial websites (such as news) or websites representing your company please contact us to get written permission for image use.

- Educational or scientific presentation.

This category does not include the cases where you promote a research tool. Commercial educational products require licensing.

- Some forms of use by Non-Profit organizations.

Please contact us for specifics. Our definition of non-commercial use implies that the editorial team does not get paid directly or indirectly for the production.

- Research paper or poster in some isolated cases - small images only, requires permission.
Does not include a cover image or a poster promoting a conference. Doesn't include large images.

Some journals have copyright policies that we don't accept , namely image distribution with Creative Commons tag. Professional photography is incompatible with CC licenses.

- Personal non-commercial online video/slideshow. For example, a music clip with still pictures. However, it can't be an official song video. Also, this doesn't apply to our videos, only to stills. Check out the separate page for video use.

- Social Media. Personal pages with link to our website. In most cases we allow commercial social media pages to use our images, unless they are promoting a product.
Example of non-free use of social media: a company sells microscopes/lenses/cameras and claims that our images were taken with their products. Example of free use by commercial social media pages: "Check out photography/videos of this team" without any references to their own services or products.

Be very cautions about sharing our images for educational purposes - some website apply Creative Commons license to uploaded content (e.q. Wikipedia). We do not distribute my images under CC license and changing license status of our work is not allowed. Leaking our images into CC category is a copyright infringement, as well all uses that follow the wrong re-upload.

Quality issues

We only trust resizing and minor adjustment (such as resizing and sharpening) if the editing person is a photographer with extensive experience. Despite seeming easy, that's the main way of reducing photo quality online. We take quality issues seriously, therefore following modifications are not allowed:

- cropping
- resizing to larger format
- watermark modification
- saving images in highly compressed format (such as jpg with compression value of less than 11)

Derivatives (including making illustrations) are not allowed without license or written permission.

- Which images you would like to have. Please give us a link to the image or state its number in the gallery. A number can be found under each image.

- How and where you intend to use them. Be as specific as possible.

- Size of reproduction, circulation, or number of publications, as well as countries/states for which the license is applicable.

- How long do you need the license for? Take into account that a typical use is a year or two, but not unlimited in time. Online news excepted.

No free content for clearly commercial uses

Over years we've seen all types of reasoning behind requests for free content. We assure you, we've heard them all.

While trying to educate beginning photographers and filmmakers and protect the photo and video licensing market, we made a page summarizing all types of freebie requests and how to think about replying to them. Those seeking free content know all that information and why the content has to be paid for. They are trying because many uneducated people let their content for free and destroy the media licensing market.

Preview the original images before buying

If you have any concerns regarding the image size or quality, you can ask us to make original files available for preview. The images will be in jpg and watermarked, but it is sufficient to estimate the quality.

3D/stereo image licensing

Some of our photos can be converted into 3D formats as we record three-dimensional data. These images can be viewed on 3D-enabled screens, as stereo pairs, and in other formats. Stereo photos are available for commercial use. Be advised that it takes time for us to finalize a full-resolution 3D photo and we need to be approached in advance.

Stereo images are especially spectacular and informative with coral macro photos.

Remember that content users also benefit from copyright laws. The more they are respected, the better and the more diverse content you have in the future.

Digital media is protected by copyright laws and while it might seem easy to illegally use digital images, copyright regulations and policies are constantly improving. Most online services have an option of lodging copyright infringement complaint, which often leads to termination of channels, social media pages, and even websites etc. Other scenarios involve legal actions.

Unauthorized commercial uses of our copyrighted images will be handled by ImageRights lawyers.