so this is kind of embarrassing to post but maybe it helps someone else. did a job for a small construction company a few weeks back, progress shots of a build site, seemed totally straightforward. we agreed on a price verbally which i know, i know. anyway after i delivered everything they came back and said they wanted unlimited usage rights including for a billboard campaign and some national trade magazine ad thing and basically acted like that was just included in what we agreed.

i had quoted them for standard commercial use, internal documentation type stuff, and now theyre kind of being weird about it like i should just hand it over. i dont have anything in writing so its basically just my word against theirs on what we discussed. lost maybe two weeks of back and forth stress over this and probably wont see the full payment either.

does anyone have a contract template they actually use or recommend? i found some generic ones online but they dont really address drone-specific stuff like weather delays or airspace issues causing a reschedule. feels like thats something i should have sorted out before doing any paid work honestly.

ugh that situation is the worst, sorry you're dealing with it. usage rights is one of those things clients just genuinely dont understand until you explain it really explicitly, and even then some of them act shocked that a billboard campaign costs more than a few hundred bucks for a drone shoot.

for contracts i actually paid a lawyer who does creative freelance stuff to look over a template i found and tweak it for my specific work. cost me like $300 and honestly worth every penny because it now has specific language around licensing tiers, reshoots due to weather, what happens if i cant get airspace authorization in time, all of it. the ASMP has some resources too if you search around, they're photo focused but a lot of it translates. going forward i also require 50% deposit before i show up anywhere and the remaining 50% before i hand over final files. that alone has saved me from a couple sketchy situations.

verbal agreements are basically worthless in commercial work, learned that the hard way myself with a real estate client who disputed the invoice after i delivered. these days i wont even start planning a shoot without a signed contract and i send everything through a simple crm thing that timestamps when they open and sign it so theres no "i never got that email" nonsense either. the billboard usage thing is a big deal by the way ? licensing for that kind of exposure is legitimately a different pricing tier, you wouldnt be wrong to push back on that even now.