License Use
All images on this website are copyright © BioQuest Studios. This page summarizes the copyright status of our images. Please feel free to contact us with any questions.
- 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.
Does not include a cover image or a poster promoting a conference. Doesn't include large images.
- 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.
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.
Most images are available for Rights Managed (RM) license use and you are welcome to contact us to outline your project. License fees for commercial uses vary depending on the intended medium of each image. They are based on industrial standards. We do not offer "unlimited" use or Royalty Free (RF) type of pricing. To estimate the rate you need to provide us with the following information:
- 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.
Scientific images
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.
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.
Copyright Infringement Policies
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.