Submit a photograph

Last updated: September 29, 2026

Thank you for contributing your photography to Explore Metro Vancouver. We value the photographers and community members who help us showcase Metro Vancouver and the surrounding region.

These Photo Contribution Terms apply to photographs and related content you submit to Explore Metro Vancouver.

You retain ownership of and copyright in the photographs you submit.

Submitting a photograph does not transfer ownership of your photograph to Explore Metro Vancouver.

You remain free to use, publish, license, sell, or otherwise make use of your photograph elsewhere.

By submitting a photograph, you grant Explore Metro Vancouver a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use, reproduce, publish, display, distribute, communicate, format, resize, crop, optimize, adapt, and otherwise use the submitted photograph in connection with Explore Metro Vancouver and its activities.

This licence includes use on:

• Explore Metro Vancouver websites and digital products;
• place, destination, city, category, event, editorial, and guide pages;
• photo galleries and community photography features;
• Plan Your Adventure and other Explore Metro Vancouver discovery tools;
• social media and email communications;
• promotional materials;
• advertising and marketing for Explore Metro Vancouver;
• sponsored or commercial areas of the platform; and
• other media used to promote Explore Metro Vancouver, its content, services, or platform.

This licence allows us to use submitted photographs for both editorial and commercial purposes.

Explore Metro Vancouver is a commercial platform supported in part by advertising, sponsorships, partnerships, affiliate relationships, and other commercial activities.

Your photograph may appear on pages or within areas of the platform that contain advertising or sponsored content. We may also use contributed photographs to advertise or promote Explore Metro Vancouver itself, including through our website, social media, digital advertising, email, and promotional campaigns.

We will not sell or separately license your photograph to another business or third party as a standalone photograph without obtaining additional authorization from you.

For example, submitting a photograph does not give us permission to sell that photograph to a hotel, tourism organization, advertiser, stock photography service, or other third party for their independent use.

We want to recognize the people who contribute photography to Explore Metro Vancouver.

When reasonably practical, we will make good-faith efforts to credit you using the contributor or photographer name you provide.

Credit may appear directly beside a photograph, within a photo gallery or viewer, through a photo-credit control, on a contributor page, or in another appropriate location.

However, we cannot guarantee that a photographer credit will accompany every display or use of a submitted photograph. Certain layouts, image sizes, promotional formats, technical implementations, social media formats, advertisements, or other uses may not reasonably accommodate an individual credit.

By submitting your photograph, you acknowledge and agree that the photograph may be used without a visible credit in such circumstances, subject to applicable law.

Where a credit is displayed, you authorize us to use the name, pseudonym, website, portfolio link, or social profile that you provide for attribution purposes.

To make photographs work across different devices and formats, Explore Metro Vancouver may make reasonable technical and editorial modifications to submitted photographs.

These may include:

• cropping;
• resizing;
• changing aspect ratio;
• compression and format conversion;
• responsive image generation;
• colour or exposure adjustments;
• creating thumbnails or previews; and
• other reasonable modifications necessary for presentation, accessibility, performance, or promotion.

We will not intentionally use or alter a photograph in a manner that falsely represents the photographer or materially misrepresents the subject of the photograph.

By submitting a photograph, you confirm that:

• you are the copyright owner of the photograph or have sufficient authority to grant us the rights described in these Terms;
• the photograph is your original work or you otherwise have the necessary rights to submit it;
• our permitted use of the photograph will not knowingly infringe another person's copyright or other intellectual property rights;
• you have obtained any permissions or releases that are legally required for the uses you authorize, including where identifiable people or private property require such permission; and
• the information you provide with your submission is accurate to the best of your knowledge.

Please do not submit photographs that you copied, downloaded, or obtained from another photographer, website, social media account, stock photography service, or other source unless you have the necessary rights to authorize our use.

Submitting a photograph does not guarantee that it will be published or featured.

Explore Metro Vancouver may review, approve, decline, remove, replace, or stop displaying submitted photographs at its discretion.

We may select photographs based on factors such as image quality, relevance, location, seasonality, editorial usefulness, composition, technical requirements, and the needs of the platform.

Unless we agree otherwise with you in writing, photo contributions are voluntary and unpaid.

The opportunity to receive contributor recognition or attribution does not create an employment, partnership, agency, or contractor relationship between you and Explore Metro Vancouver.

If we wish to purchase additional rights to a photograph or commission photography from you, those arrangements may be covered by a separate agreement.

If you have a question about how your photograph is being used, need your attribution information corrected, or would like to request that we stop using a contributed photograph in the future, please contact us.

We will consider removal requests in good faith. Removal may not always be immediate or possible for materials that have already been published, distributed, archived, incorporated into completed promotional materials, or otherwise used before the request.

Any rights and permissions applicable to uses already made before a removal request will not automatically be cancelled by that request.

We may update these Photo Contribution Terms from time to time.

The terms presented and accepted when you submit a photograph will govern that submission unless you and Explore Metro Vancouver subsequently agree otherwise.

Questions about photo contributions, attribution, permissions, or use of your photography can be directed to Explore Metro Vancouver through our Contact page.