Hello everyone, this is my first post on the forum. About 2,5 years ago I have started uploading photos to the stocksites and up till now I have learned a lot from reading all the post on this forum, but felt not experienced enough to already add posts myself. Let this be my first :-)

Earlier this year I shot a photo on a Dutch car event which shows 3 rare and special customised cars. This photo is distributed by shutterstock, istock, dreamstime and 123rf as editorial.
This week one of the car owners contacted me saying that a friend had received a greeting card with this photo on it and the Dutch text for 'have a good trip!'. It turned out that a very large and well known Dutch media company offers - among others - a subscription magazine and they added freebie greeting cards with the January issue and one contains my editorial photo. The print run has been 50.000.

Both the car owner and I are not happy with this; the car is a rare really famous one and I feel bad that my explicit editorial photo is used in this way. The car owner is ok with my work, but doesn't want his car to be used commercially.

Can they do this? Shouldn't an editorial license prohibit this?

I don't like lawyers, but for now I at least want to contact them asking where and how they have bought this image to know what is going on.
What I am afraid of: can this 'backfire' at me? It is a huge company and maybe a premium stock buyer. What happens if they call the agency; won't the stock agency think "oh, this is a complaining contributor, let's remove his account". I really like making stockphoto's and already a good part of my income comes from stock.

Thank you!

Contact the agency where it�s sold from. They also lost money as editorials is a lot cheeper than the correct license for a postcard. Also they violated the rights that comes with a release, or non-release in this case.

Also, I forgot to mention: there were no credits on the card, the back side only showed the magazine's name and website.

Thanks for the replies. I will write them a letter/email tomorrow with the question where they have purchased the photo and what the exact number of prints has been.
I think it's a good idea Langstrup to contact the agency once I know where it is purchased.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on September 10, 2015, 06:14

That would be a promotional use, not an editorial use.

Can you explain why you are saying that? If the OP shot the event as "news", would that not be editorial? I am just asking for my own knowledge...I don't offer editorial OR promotional images, so not sure of the difference.

Right.  It's not the content, but the restrictions of usage that define editorial and promotional.