Telling us where you use the image

When you hold an Unpinched licence, you're expected to tell the Registry where the image gets published. Doing this is how the chain of provenance stays whole — it's how the photographer sees their image move through the world, and it's how a future viewer of the public Registry can trace a use back to a real licence.

It takes a minute. Do it once for each use.

When to register a use

A magazine has gone to print
A web article has published
A social post has gone up
A campaign has launched
A slide deck has been delivered to a real audience
A piece of merchandise has shipped

Don't pre-register intended uses — register actuals.

If a use later changes substantively (the article moves to a new URL, the campaign moves to a new client), update the existing use rather than registering a new one.

How to register

The easiest path is from your inbox.

Open the Congratulations — you hold licence message for the image
Click Declare a Use in the buttons row at the top
The Registry opens with your licence pre-selected
Fill in the form:
- Type of use — publication, paid placement, broadcast, mass-printing, social, exhibition, internal
- URL (if applicable) — the canonical link to the published use
- Short description — one sentence so a stranger reading the Registry can understand what they're looking at
Submit

You can come back later to add the URL if the piece hasn't published yet but you want to claim the use now.

What gets recorded

Each declared use is associated with the licence's serial number (e.g. AB212499-E22A/001). The public Registry shows:

The serial number
The type of use
The URL or description you provided
The date you registered the use
The standard attribution line ({UIIID/NNN} © Photographer Name)

What's not shown publicly: your name, your email, your billing details. Only the use itself is public; the holder behind it is not.

Why this matters

Two reasons.

For the photographer. A photographer who licenses an image often never sees where it ends up. Most stock platforms strip that connection by design. Unpinched leans the other way: the licensee tells us where the work went, and the photographer's Registry view shows that path. It's how they understand the life of the work after sale.

For the Registry's authority. When somebody finds an Unpinched image in the wild — in a magazine they bought, on a billboard they walked past, on a website they're researching — they can drop the visible serial number into the Registry and see who licensed it for what. That linkage is the whole point of the per-edition serial system. It only works if the holders keep their declarations current.

What if you forget?

There's no penalty for late declaration. Register the use as soon as you remember. Backdating the live date is fine, and helpful — it puts the use in the right slot on the Registry's timeline.

If you've held a licence for some months and never declared a use, that's noticed. Long-term holders with no declared uses are a normal pattern (sometimes images are bought for archives, for personal use, or for projects that don't ship). It's a soft signal, not a hard rule.

Removing a declared use

If a use has been pulled — the article was deleted, the campaign ended, the magazine issue is no longer available — you can mark the declaration as ended. The Registry keeps the historical record but flags the use as no longer live.

To do this, find the declared use in the Registry and click End this use. Add a one-line note if there's a reason worth recording.