Terms & Conditions

Aurora Photography Sydney · ABN 21 868 086 834 · Sydney, New South Wales

Effective [11/09/2026] · Last reviewed [11/09/2026]

These are the terms on which we run our studio — how a booking is made, when payment is due, what happens if a date changes, when you receive your images, and who owns them.

We have tried to write them so that they can actually be read. If anything here is unclear, ask us before you book rather than after. We would much rather explain something now than have it matter later.

Which terms apply to you

We work under three brands, and they do not all carry the same terms. Find yours below.

Aurora Weddings

Weddings, elopements, pre-wedding events and multi-day celebrations. Governed by the Aurora Weddings Photography and Cinematography Agreement.

Aurora Media

Corporate events, conferences, headshots, branding and promotional shoots, live streaming and production. Governed by the Aurora Media Commercial, Corporate and Event Media Agreement.

Aurora Special Moments

Portraits, family, newborn, maternity, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, christenings, funerals and memorials, school events, sports and fitness, product, real estate and personal branding. Governed by the Aurora Special Moments Portrait, Milestone and Session Agreement.

Your signed agreement is the contract

When you book, we issue you a Client Agreement, a Booking Confirmation and an Invoice. Those three documents govern your booking. This page is the public summary of how we work, and it fills any gap they leave. Where this page and your signed agreement differ, your signed agreement wins.

Nothing on this page is an offer. Prices, packages and turnaround times shown anywhere on this website are indicative, and a booking exists only once we have issued a Booking Confirmation and received the booking fee.

Using this website

You are welcome to browse our work, read the blog, download a planning guide, make an enquiry and pay an invoice. You may save or print a page for your own reference.

Everything on this site — every photograph, film, blog article, page of copy, layout and logo — is owned by us or licensed to us, and is protected by the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Viewing our portfolio does not give you a right to reproduce it.

Please do not scrape the site, use bots or crawlers on it beyond what our robots.txt allows, or try to access a client gallery you were not given.

A specific request about AI

You must not use any photograph, film or other content from this site to train, fine-tune or develop an artificial intelligence or machine learning model, or to generate derivative or synthetic media. Our images are the product of a great deal of craft and they are not training data. This applies to our clients' delivered images too.

We link to and embed content from other services — Instagram, YouTube, Google Maps, our gallery platform, our payment provider, and the websites of venues and suppliers we have worked alongside. We do not control those services and we are not responsible for them. Where we name a venue or a supplier, it is a record of our work, not a recommendation, and we receive no commission.

If you post a review or comment to this site or to our social accounts, you allow us to use it to promote the studio, edited only for length and clarity. We do not edit reviews to change their meaning, we do not write our own, and we do not offer anything in exchange for one.

Blog articles about planning, timelines, locations and permits are general information. They are not advice for your particular circumstances.

Booking and payment

A date is not held until the booking fee is received. Until then we continue to market that date.

Aurora Weddings

Booking fee: 30% of the total fee.
Balance: no later than 14 days before the first day of coverage. For multi-day weddings, all days are payable before the first.
Quotes are held for 30 days.

Aurora Media

Booking fee: 30% of the total fee. The date is released if it is not received within 5 business days of the invoice.
Balance: within 14 days of the final invoice. Hire, casting, studio and location fees are invoiced in advance.
Purchase orders must be provided before the first day. Their absence does not relieve the obligation to pay.
Quotes are held for 30 days. We may re-quote if a project is confirmed more than 6 months later.

Aurora Special Moments

Booking fee: 30% of the total fee. Sessions of 2 hours or less are paid in full at booking.
Balance: no later than 7 days before the session, or on the day for short-notice bookings.

Applies to every booking

The booking fee is not refundable

It is not money held on account for your convenience — it secures your date, it is the reason we decline other enquiries for it, and it covers the planning and administration that starts the moment you book. It is applied against your total fee.

GST. All fees are exclusive of GST unless we expressly say otherwise. GST is payable in addition and our tax invoices show it separately.
Overtime is charged in 30-minute blocks at our then-current rate, subject to crew availability. If the schedule is running late and you ask us to stay, that is a request for overtime.
Travel within 50 kilometres of the Sydney CBD is included. Beyond that, travel time, fuel, tolls and parking are charged at cost and confirmed in advance. Overnight accommodation is payable by you where a return journey exceeds two and a half hours, where a call time is before 6.00am, or for interstate work. Location, council, national park and venue permit fees are yours.
Out of hours. Weddings on a NSW public holiday, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve or New Year's Day carry a surcharge. So does commercial work starting before 6.00am, finishing after 10.00pm, or falling on a weekend or public holiday, and any session starting before 6.00am or finishing after 9.00pm. The surcharge is shown in your Booking Confirmation.
Third-party costs on commercial productions — studio and equipment hire, casting, talent, permits, catering, couriers, stock media and music licensing — are charged at cost plus a 15% coordination fee.
Late payment. Amounts unpaid after 7 days may attract interest at 2% above the Reserve Bank of Australia cash rate, calculated daily. We will always contact you before we charge interest. Where an amount is still unpaid after 30 days we may suspend delivery and recover the debt, with reasonable recovery costs.
Delivery follows payment. Galleries, films and albums are released after the fee has been paid in full, and your licence to use them begins at that point.
Our fees are quoted as package totals. We do not quote or invoice against an internal hourly rate.

Cancellation and postponement

Cancellations and postponements must be in writing and take effect when we receive them. The booking fee is not refundable in any of the scenarios below.

If you cancel — Aurora Weddings

More than 120 days before: the booking fee only.
120 to 60 days before: 50% of the total fee.
Within 60 days, or non-attendance: 100% of the total fee.

If you cancel — Aurora Media

More than 30 days before: the booking fee only.
30 to 14 days before: 50% of the total fee.
Within 14 days, or postponement on the day: 100% of the total fee.
Third-party costs already committed on your behalf are payable in addition, in every case.

If you cancel — Aurora Special Moments

More than 14 days before: the booking fee only.
14 to 7 days before: 50% of the total fee.
Within 7 days, or non-attendance on the day: 100% of the total fee.

These amounts are a genuine pre-estimate of what we lose. We can only photograph one wedding per date, and once a date is held we decline every other enquiry for it. Commercial bookings reserve crew and equipment that cannot be re-booked at short notice.

If you postpone

Aurora Weddings: one free transfer if we are available, the new date is within 18 months, and it falls in the same pricing season. A second postponement is treated as a new booking with an administration fee. If we are not available we will offer an equally qualified associate at the same rate; if you would rather not proceed, it is treated as a cancellation.
Aurora Media: free transfer with more than 14 days notice, to a new date within 6 months, subject to availability. Inside 14 days it is treated as a cancellation, although we will always try to transfer it where our crew are free.
Aurora Special Moments: one free reschedule with at least 7 days notice, to a new date within 6 months. A second reschedule attracts an administration fee.

Where the new date falls in a higher-priced period, or our rates have risen for the new calendar year, the difference is payable.

Where we do not charge, or charge less

Illness in your household. Tell us. We would much rather move a booking than photograph a sick child or spread illness, and we will try to find a new date without penalty.
Newborn sessions are booked around a due date, not a fixed day. We hold the fortnight around it and confirm once your baby arrives. Early or late arrivals attract no fee.
Weather. We photograph beautifully in overcast conditions and light drizzle and we will not reschedule for cloud alone. Where the forecast shows heavy rain, damaging wind, heat above 38°C, hazardous air quality or unsafe surf, either of us may propose moving the date, and we aim to make that call by midday the day before. One weather reschedule is free.
Funerals and memorials. We do not apply cancellation fees to funeral bookings beyond recovering costs we have already incurred. Arrangements are often made at short notice by someone who is grieving. Tell us what has changed and we will work with you.
Death or serious illness of one of the parties to a marriage, or an immediate family member. We act compassionately, and we will discuss a credit toward a future booking.
Government direction or public health order. If one prevents the booking lawfully going ahead, you may transfer your full payments to a new date within 18 months, subject to our availability, or receive a refund of everything paid other than the booking fee and any cost we have already irrevocably incurred.

If we cannot attend

If illness, injury or another circumstance beyond our control stops your assigned photographer or cinematographer attending, we will offer you the earliest alternative date or a suitably qualified replacement of comparable experience, at no extra cost. For occasions that cannot be repeated — a wedding, a graduation, a funeral — we treat finding a replacement as the priority and we draw on a network of trusted associates.

If no replacement can be found and the booking cannot proceed, we refund everything you have paid, including the booking fee.

Delivery

Delivery times run from the last day of shooting, or from the day we receive your selections where selections are needed. They are good-faith estimates and we tell you promptly if a date is going to move.

Aurora Weddings

A preview of 5 to 15 edited images within 7 days.
The full edited gallery within 8 weeks, or 10 weeks for multi-day weddings.
Where cinematography is booked, a highlight film within 14 weeks and any documentary or full-length edit within 16 weeks.
A minimum of 60 edited images per hour of photographic coverage.

Aurora Media

Events and conferences: a preview of up to 15 edited images within 24 hours of the close of each day, and the full gallery within 5 business days of the final day.
Headshots: proofing galleries within 3 business days, and retouched finals within 5 business days of receiving your selections. One retouched final per person is included.
Video: a first cut within 15 business days, with 2 rounds of consolidated revisions included.
Rush delivery ahead of these timeframes is available subject to capacity, at 50% of the affected component.

Aurora Special Moments

A preview of 3 to 5 edited images within 5 business days.
The full edited gallery within 3 weeks, or 4 weeks for newborn, event and multi-location bookings.
A minimum of 25 edited images per hour for portrait and milestone sessions, and 40 per hour for event coverage such as birthdays, graduations and school events.
Funeral and memorial galleries are prioritised and usually delivered within 7 days.

Applies to every booking

No watermarks. Your delivered images never carry one.
Your gallery stays live for 12 months, with unlimited full-resolution downloads and a web-sized set for sharing. We keep a backup for a further 12 months, after which we are under no obligation to hold it.
Please download and back up your files. We are not a data archive. Keep copies in at least two places, one of them off-site or in the cloud. Retrieval after the archive period is not guaranteed and, where it is possible at all, is charged at our then-current rate.
Prints and albums. Products ordered through us are made by a professional laboratory and colour-managed to our calibrated profile. We are not responsible for the colour or quality of prints made elsewhere from our files, because consumer labs apply their own automatic corrections. Handmade albums and fine art products vary slightly in grain, texture and colour between batches — that is the material, not a fault. Once you approve a design in writing it goes to print and cannot be changed, so please check names, dates and spelling carefully.

Your images: copyright and how you may use them

This section changes the position that would otherwise apply under Australian law, so it is worth reading

Under section 35(5) of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), copyright in photographs commissioned for a private or domestic purpose — a wedding, a family portrait, a christening — would ordinarily belong to the person who commissioned them, unless the agreement says otherwise. Our agreements say otherwise, and here is exactly how.

Aurora Weddings and Aurora Special Moments

The Studio is the author of the work and owns the copyright in it, from the moment it is created. Payment of your fee does not transfer copyright. What it gives you is a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to use your images and films for personal, non-commercial purposes — printing, framing, displaying, sharing on your own social accounts, and giving copies to family and friends for their personal use.

For business sessions under Aurora Special Moments — personal branding, product, real estate, commercial fitness — the licence runs for 3 years from delivery, throughout Australia, on your own channels and in unpaid editorial and public relations use.

Aurora Media is different, and deliberately so

On commercial, corporate and event bookings, the Studio and the Client are joint owners of the copyright in equal undivided shares. Each of us may use, reproduce, publish, adapt, distribute and licence the work for our own purposes, anywhere, in perpetuity, without needing the other's consent and without owing the other any payment. Neither of us may grant an exclusive licence that would stop the other exercising those rights. If your organisation needs sole ownership, we can quote for a buy-out, and it takes effect only under a separate signed assignment.

What a personal licence does not allow

Selling or licensing the images, entering them in a competition as your own work, supplying them to a business for advertising, or letting a supplier, venue, publication or brand use them commercially without our written consent.

Suppliers and venues who ask you for images should be sent to us. We very rarely say no, and we normally licence them free of charge in return for a credit.

Please do not alter our work

Simple cropping to fit a social frame is fine. Re-grading, filtering, applying presets, adding text over the top, or removing embedded authorship metadata is not. And as above, the images must not be used to train or develop an AI model, or uploaded to a stock library or any platform that claims broad rights over what you upload.

Credit

We assert our moral rights as author. When you share publicly, crediting Aurora Photography Sydney or tagging us is the single most helpful thing you can do for a small studio, and it costs nothing. It is required for any press, magazine, blog or supplier publication.

Raw files are not released

Raw photographs, unedited footage, out-takes, duplicates, project files and edit timelines are a working stage, not our finished work, and releasing them misrepresents what we do. If you are unhappy with the colour or treatment of specific images, tell us within 14 days and we will re-edit them at no charge. That is our standard remedy and we offer it willingly. It is almost always what someone asking for raws actually wants.

Portfolio and marketing

We use our work to get more work, and we want you to know that before you book

By booking, you grant us a perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use your images and films to promote the studio — our website, portfolio, social accounts, printed samples, awards and competition entries, editorial features, paid advertising for our own services, client presentations and supplier submissions. For weddings, we also share images with your venue, planner, florist, stylist, celebrant and other suppliers so that they can use them with a credit to us and, where they know it, to you.

This licence is part of the commercial basis on which our services are priced. We do not offer an opt-out, and we do not offer a reduced-privacy or “no publication” version of our services. If that is a concern, raise it with us before you book and we will tell you honestly whether we can accommodate what you need.

We will always use your images tastefully and in a way that reflects well on everyone in them. We will never use them in a way that is misleading or that reveals private information such as your home address, and we do not sell them or licence them to stock libraries.

The limits we place on ourselves

These are absolute. They apply regardless of anything above.

Funerals and memorials. Images from a funeral or memorial service are never used in our portfolio, on our website, on social media, in awards or competition entries, or in any marketing, at any time. This is permanent.
Schools and organised groups of children. Images of children from a school, preschool, club or community engagement are never used in our own marketing or portfolio, and are licensed only for the purposes recorded in the booking.
Children generally. We will not publish an identifiable image of a child without a parent's or guardian's consent, and that consent can be withdrawn from our own channels at any time.
Anyone you name. Tell us in writing that a particular person must not appear in anything shared publicly, and we honour it permanently.
Guests. If someone asks us on the day, or in writing afterwards, not to be photographed or not to have their image published, we respect it.
Commercially sensitive work. Where an engagement is under embargo or held in confidence, tell us in the booking and we publish nothing until you release it.

You are responsible for telling your guests and attendees that photography and filming are taking place. For school, club and community bookings, the organisation must hold consent for every child and give us a workable exclusion list before we start — with a wristband, a badge or a staff member to point them out, because we cannot identify a child from a name alone in a crowd.

Privacy

We collect your personal information so that we can quote for, arrange, deliver and invoice your booking, and handle it in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. We do not sell personal information.

We share it with our crew and with the service providers who help us run the studio — cloud storage, gallery delivery, booking, accounting and printing. Some of them store data outside Australia. We keep booking records for at least seven years for tax, insurance and legal purposes.

You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or make a privacy complaint by emailing support@auroraphotographysydney.com. We respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Our full Privacy Policy sets all of this out in detail.

Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law

Nothing on this page or in our agreements excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), including the Australian Consumer Law, or any other law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded. You are entitled to a remedy for a major failure and to compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. You are also entitled to have services supplied again, or to a refund, if they are not supplied with due care and skill or are not fit for a purpose you told us about.

Every limit on our liability is read subject to this.

If something goes wrong

We would much rather fix a problem than argue about one

Tell us in writing within 21 days of delivery, at support@auroraphotographysydney.com, describing what is wrong and identifying the specific images or films where that is relevant. We will acknowledge it within 5 business days and work with you in good faith — which may mean re-editing, redelivering, arranging a partial reshoot, or adjusting a fee.

If we have not resolved it within 28 days, we both agree to try mediation before starting court proceedings, through a mediator we agree on or one nominated by the Law Society of New South Wales, sharing the mediator's fee.

We will never ask you to withdraw an honest review as a condition of a remedy, and we do not use non-disparagement clauses. Nothing here stops you contacting NSW Fair Trading, the ACCC, or a court or tribunal.

The rest

Our liability for any booking is limited to the total fee you have paid us for it, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss. We are not liable for things outside our control — the conduct of guests or other suppliers, venue restrictions, weather, lighting a venue imposes, or delays in a schedule we did not cause. If material is lost or destroyed before delivery through nobody's fault, we refund the proportion of the fee relating to it, or reshoot where that is reasonably possible. Any claim must be brought within 12 months of you first becoming aware of it. We strongly recommend wedding and event insurance — it covers a great deal that no supplier's contract can.
Insurance. We hold public liability insurance and can provide a certificate of currency to your venue, school or building manager on request, with 5 business days notice. Many venues require this before letting suppliers on site, so tell us early who it should go to.
Equipment. We carry backup bodies, lenses, batteries and cards to every booking and shoot to dual memory cards where our equipment supports it, so a single failure does not cost you your coverage.
Working with children. Where a booking involves children, our attending crew hold a current NSW Working With Children Check, and we provide the numbers before the engagement.
Safety. We will not work in conditions we reasonably consider unsafe or unlawful, and we may pause or leave if our crew are subjected to abuse, threats or harassment. We will always try to resolve it with you first, and we will always offer an alternative approach where one exists.
Drones are flown only by a licensed remote pilot under Civil Aviation Safety Authority rules, and are subject to airspace, weather and permission. Drone coverage is never guaranteed. If it cannot lawfully or safely be flown on the day, we refund that component.
Subcontracting. We may engage associate photographers, cinematographers and editors. They work to our standards and are bound by the same obligations of care, confidentiality and privacy.
Changes to these terms. We may update this page. The version published when you booked governs your booking, and the date at the top tells you when it was last reviewed.
Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia.

Aurora Photography Sydney

Alamgir Alam trading as Aurora Photography Sydney · ABN 21 868 086 834 · Sydney, New South Wales

support@auroraphotographysydney.com · 0403 555 656

Aurora Weddings · Aurora Media · Aurora Special Moments · Aurora Films

Your signed Client Agreement, Booking Confirmation and Invoice govern your booking. This page is the public summary of how we work.