I do a lot of sports on spec surfing , hockey mainly and I always watermark my albums . Sometimes the participants will use my watermarked images on social media , which fine , and sometimes they ' ll pay . I have a smugmug setup that automatically places my watermark smack in the middle of the photos so it ' s glaringly obvious to encourage them to pay . I figure if a buyer is willing to put a badly watermarked photo up on social media , they weren ' t paying me at any price . All that said , if it ' s a teamleaguemedia entity is going to use my images for commercial or journalistic purpose , they ' re going to have to pay more than the couple bucks I charge participants for personal use . I do pretty low level stuff so I haven ' t had many inquiries about it . But after getting pushed around by the NWHL , I ' ve decided if there ' s no money involved , they ' re not getting any photos barring some kind of useful relationship or barter . For example , the hockey team I mainly shoot I give them 45 shots to use however they want and that allows me to sell the rest of the shots however I please . It also helps that they are over the top accommodating and appreciative .