The question almost always arrives a few days after the gallery does. Sometimes from the owner, sometimes from the shop that built the car, occasionally from a page that already reposted the frame and is asking permission after the fact. It is usually some version of the same three things — can I use this, do I have to tag anyone, and what happens when somebody else wants to run it.
Nobody asks about usage before a shoot. Everybody asks about it after. So this one is the boring conversation written down in advance, because when you hire a car photographer Philippines-side, this part tends to stay vague until it turns into a problem.
What lands in your gallery, and what you can do with it
The delivery is a set of finished, full-resolution edited images. Not a contact sheet, not a folder of everything I pressed the shutter on — the frames that made the cut, colour-graded and cleaned up.
Those are yours to post. Your feed, your stories, your build page, your profile photo, your club's group. Print them if you want. Put them in the listing when the car eventually changes hands, because a car that has been properly photographed sells faster and I would rather my work do that job than sit in a folder. Send them to a friend. Set one as your lock screen. None of that needs to run past me.
The only thing I ask on personal posting is that the frame goes out as delivered. More on that below.
Why the raw files stay with me
This one gets asked a lot and the answer is always the same. The raws are not photographs yet. They are the material a photograph gets made from, and a raw frame off the X-S20 looks flat, dull, and slightly wrong compared to the file you actually receive. Handing them over means handing over something unfinished with my name loosely attached to it.
There is also a practical side. Half of what makes a delivered frame work happens in Lightroom — the colour, the local work on paint, the cleanup of a distracting sign in the background. A raw file has none of that and is not a version of the shoot anybody would want.
If there is a frame you remember from the day that did not make the gallery, ask me. I will go back into the catalog, edit it properly, and send it. That is a far better outcome than a folder of negatives sitting on your desktop.
Credit is a courtesy on personal posts and a conversation on business ones
If you are an owner posting your own car on your own account, a tag is appreciated and never demanded. I am not going to chase anybody over it. Most people tag anyway, which is genuinely how a lot of work finds me, but it is not a condition of anything.
Where it changes is when the photos start doing work for a business. A dealership running them across inventory listings, a shop putting them in paid ads, a parts brand using one on a product page — that is commercial use, and it is a different arrangement from an owner feature.
It is usually a short conversation and the answer is usually yes. The reason it needs to happen at all is that a shoot booked as a personal owner feature is priced as a personal owner feature. If the images are going to sell products, the scope was different from the start. Easiest version of this: tell me before the shoot, and we scope it as the right package from the pricing page instead of renegotiating after the fact.
When the builder or the sponsor asks for the frames
Common one in the custom build corner. The shop that did the work sees the post, likes what they see, and asks for the files. Sometimes the owner says yes on my behalf before I hear about it, which is understandable — it feels like a favour between friends.
The clean way to handle it is to loop me in and let me send the shop their own set. It takes me ten minutes. It also means the shop gets properly sized files instead of screenshots off somebody's story, and everybody ends up with something usable. I am not precious about it. I just want to know it is happening.
What I do with your photos
Selected frames go into the portfolio on the gallery and onto my own social. That is the standard arrangement and it is how the work gets seen.
If any part of that does not suit you, say so and it stops there. Cars in the middle of a sale, builds that are not ready to be shown yet, plates you do not want floating around, a client who simply does not want their car on the internet — all completely reasonable, all easier handled before the shutter than after. I have held frames back for months at an owner's request and it has never once been an issue.
Plates, faces, and the things people forget to mention
Plates come up constantly. Some owners want them cloned out before anything goes public, some do not care at all, and a few actively want the plate visible because it is a personalised one they paid for. I ask every time rather than guessing.
Location matters the same way. If we shoot at your house, the house is in some of the frames. Tell me if that is a problem and I shoot angles that keep it out, which is a decision made on the day and impossible to fully undo later.
Events are their own thing. A Metro Manila car meet is a semi-public space and people end up in the background of coverage frames — that is unavoidable and normal. If someone asks me to pull a shot they appear in, I pull it. Same applies to big bike photography Philippines work at ride days, where half the value of the coverage is the riders, not just the machines.
Please do not run a filter over it
The one real request I make. A delivered frame has already been graded, and stacking an app filter on top of that grade usually undoes the part that took the longest. Crops for a feed are fine. Cropping is not editing.
If the colour is not landing for you, tell me — I would rather adjust the grade and resend than watch a version go out that neither of us likes.
Say it before the shoot, not after
All of this fits in about two lines of a conversation. The shoot brief form you get once your deposit clears has room for exactly these notes: who is using the images, whether a business is involved, plates in or out, anything you want held back. Answer it there and none of this ever comes up again.
If something here is still unclear for your particular situation, most of it is covered on the FAQ page, and anything that is not, just ask me directly before you book.