Terms & Conditions

Last updated 8 September 2026 · Effective 8 September 2026

1. Who these terms are between

These terms govern photography, video, aerial, floor plan, virtual staging, and marketing services provided by Twin Cities Top Down Photography ("we", "us") to you ("you", "the Client"). Booking a shoot, whether through the agent portal, by email, or by phone, means you accept them.

If you are booking on behalf of a brokerage, a builder, a seller, or another agent, you confirm you are authorised to accept these terms for them.

2. Booking and scheduling

• A booking is confirmed when we confirm it, not when you submit it. The portal will show a request as awaiting confirmation until then.
• You are responsible for making sure we can get in. That means access arrangements, lockbox codes, gate codes, pets secured, and someone available if the property requires it.
• Please have the property shoot-ready before we arrive. We are photographers, not stagers. We will move a small object out of a frame, but we do not clean, declutter, or stage unless staging was booked.
• If the property is not ready and we have to wait, we may charge for the waiting time or reschedule as a late cancellation.

3. Rescheduling, cancellation, and weather

• More than 24 hours' notice: reschedule or cancel at no charge.
• Less than 24 hours' notice: we may charge a fee of up to 50% of the booking to cover the reserved slot and travel.
• No access on arrival: if we cannot get in, or the property is unusable for the booked service, it is treated as a late cancellation.
• Weather: we will not shoot exteriors, twilight, or aerial in conditions that would produce work we are not willing to put our name on. Weather cancellations and reschedules are never charged, from either side.
• Our cancellation: if we cancel for any reason, you owe nothing for the cancelled work and we will offer the earliest slot we have.

4. Drone and aerial work

Aerial work is flown under FAA Part 107 by a certificated remote pilot, and under Minnesota's own requirements for commercial aircraft operations: a MnDOT commercial operations licence, current UAS registration, and the aircraft insurance required by Minn. Stat. § 360.59. We hold all of these and keep them current. Certificates, registration, and proof of insurance are available on request. Ask, and we will send them. Brokerages and commercial clients often need them on file before a shoot, and that is a reasonable thing to ask for.

We fly only where it is legal and safe to do so. Controlled airspace near MSP and the metro's smaller airports requires authorisation, which is not always granted and is not always granted quickly. Restricted airspace, temporary flight restrictions, unsafe wind, precipitation, visibility, and unsafe conditions on the ground will all stop a flight.

If we cannot fly, you are not charged for the aerial portion. We will tell you why and offer to return. We will not fly illegally because a listing goes live tomorrow.

5. Pricing, payment, and tax

• Prices are those shown in the portal or on the quote at the time of booking. Travel outside our standard service area may add a fee, shown before you confirm.
• Invoices are due on receipt unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.
• Invoices are settled directly with us. We do not collect or store card numbers.
• Delivery of the licence depends on payment. See section 6.
• Late invoices may pause work on other bookings for the same account.

Sales tax. Under Minnesota Department of Revenue guidance, photography delivered electronically, which is how we deliver almost everything, is not subject to Minnesota sales tax. Photographs delivered on physical media such as a USB drive or a printed product are taxable, as are bundles that combine the two for a single price. Where tax applies it will be shown as a separate line on your invoice. If your brokerage holds an exemption, send us a completed Form ST3 before invoicing.

6. Copyright and what you may do with the images

Under U.S. copyright law the photographer owns the copyright in the images from the moment they are created. That ownership stays with us. What you receive is a licence: a broad one, and a permanent one.

Your licence

On payment in full, you receive a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to:

• Market the photographed property: MLS, IDX, syndication portals, your brokerage's site, print, social media, email, and advertising.
• Promote yourself and your business, including in your own portfolio and marketing, after the listing closes.
• Let your brokerage and the property's seller use the images for that same listing.

What the licence does not cover

• Resale or sublicensing. You may not sell, licence, or transfer the images to a third party as a product.
• Other businesses that were not part of the booking. Builders, developers, stagers, contractors, architects, vacation-rental platforms, furniture brands, and other agents frequently want listing photos. They need their own licence. It is usually inexpensive, and we would rather sell them one than find our work in their advertising. Point them at us.
• A different property. The licence is tied to the listing that was shot.
• Altered work. Crop and resize freely. Do not composite, re-edit, apply heavy filters, or use AI tools to change the content of the image and then present it as the property. This protects you as much as us. See section 8.
• Removing our identity. Do not strip embedded metadata or crop out a visible credit.

Before payment

Files delivered before an invoice is paid are provided for review. The licence above begins on payment in full. We are not going to play games with this on a normal account. It exists so there is a clear answer if an invoice is never paid.

Our use of the images

We would like to show the work. We ask first: portfolio and marketing consent is recorded per listing and defaults to not granted. If we have not asked you and you have not agreed, we have not used your listing in our marketing. You may withdraw consent at any time and we will remove the images from anything we control going forward.

7. Delivery, revisions, and archival

• Standard turnaround is quoted at booking. Rush delivery may be available for a fee.
• Delivered files are finished, colour-corrected work. Editing style is ours. That is what you are hiring.
• We will fix genuine errors at no charge: a missed room, a crooked horizon, a blown exposure, an object we said we would remove. Tell us within 14 days of delivery.
• Re-edits to taste, additional retouching, and reshoots after the fact are additional work at our normal rates.
• Archival: we keep delivered files available for at least 12 months. After that we may remove them. Download and keep your own copies. We are a photography business, not a backup service, and we do not guarantee recovery of files you did not save.

8. AI, virtual staging, and digitally altered images

Our position

Transparency and truth alongside marketing are a powerful tool, not a deceptive one. A buyer who is told a room was virtually staged still sees what the room could become, and trusts the rest of the listing more, not less. A buyer who works it out later stops believing anything in the set, and that costs you more than the staging ever gained.

So we do not hide it, and we would rather lose a job than deliver an altered image dressed up as a photograph.

What we disclose, and when

Every AI-generated or AI-altered element is identified to you before delivery. Not buried in a file name, and not on request. Stated up front, as part of handing the work over. That covers virtual staging, virtual twilight, sky replacement, item and object removal, generative fill or expansion, AI upscaling, and anything else where a tool has changed the content of the frame rather than the exposure or the colour of it.

Ordinary editing (exposure, white balance, contrast, lens correction, straightening, cropping, blending brackets) is photography, not alteration, and is not separately flagged.

We will supply disclosure wording you can paste into a listing, and we will label the files so the altered ones are obvious to anyone who opens the folder.

Your responsibility

Once delivered, AI-generated and AI-altered images and content are used at your own risk. You decide whether an image goes into a listing, into an advertisement, or onto social media, and you control the disclosure that accompanies it. We cannot make that disclosure for you, because we do not control your listing.

You are strongly encouraged to follow the rules of your own MLS and local board on AI-generated and altered imagery. Those rules differ between boards, they are being rewritten frequently as boards catch up with the technology, and they are binding on you rather than on us. The National Association of REALTORS® and most MLS boards now require altered images to be identified; some restrict particular techniques outright; some require specific wording. Check yours before publishing, and check again next season, because the answer changes.

Where a board's rule is stricter than what we delivered, tell us and we will re-cut the set to comply at no charge. We would rather do that than have your listing pulled.

9. The property, people, and permission

• You confirm you have the right to have the property photographed, and the owner's permission where you are not the owner.
• Please have people out of frame. If someone recognisable appears and you intend to publish that image, obtaining their permission is your responsibility.
• Tell us in advance about artwork, collections, security equipment, or anything else that should not be photographed.
• Secure valuables, medications, and personal documents before we arrive. We photograph what is in front of us.
• We are not responsible for the condition of the property or for items moved by anyone other than us.

10. What we do not promise

Good media helps a listing. It does not sell a house. We make no promise about showings, offers, days on market, or sale price, and nothing on this site or in our marketing should be read as one.

11. Limitation of liability

We carry insurance and we take care. Even so, and to the fullest extent Minnesota law allows:

• Our total liability for any claim arising from a booking is limited to the amount you paid for that booking.
• We are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential losses, including lost commission, a lost listing, or a delayed closing.
• If equipment failure, data loss, illness, accident, or another event beyond our control prevents delivery, our responsibility is to reshoot where practical or refund what you paid for the affected work.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

12. Indemnity

You agree to cover us against claims arising from your use of the images beyond the licence in section 6, from a failure to disclose altered images under section 8, or from a lack of permission to have the property photographed under section 9.

13. Agent portal accounts

• Keep your sign-in details to yourself; you are responsible for activity on your account.
• Do not attempt to access another agent's listings, orders, or invoices.
• We may suspend an account for non-payment or misuse. Your delivered files remain available to you for the archival period in section 7.
• Publishing a property website makes that page reachable by anyone holding the link. That is what makes it forwardable. Publishing is your choice.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Minnesota, without regard to conflict of law rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts serving Hennepin County, Minnesota, and both of us consent to that venue.

Before filing anything, email us. Nearly everything is a misunderstanding that a phone call fixes faster and more cheaply than a lawyer.

15. Changes

We may update these terms. The version in force for your booking is the one published when the booking was confirmed. Material changes will be emailed to account holders rather than left for you to discover.

16. Contact

Twin Cities Top Down Photography
Minneapolis–St. Paul metro, Minnesota
photos@twincitiestopdown.com

See also our Privacy Policy.

These terms are written in plain language to describe how we actually work. They are not legal advice and have not been reviewed by an attorney. Before relying on the liability, indemnity, and licensing sections in a dispute, have a Minnesota attorney read them.