Wedding Photographer Insurance: What the Standard Policy Leaves Out

General liability insurance, the policy venues ask you to prove, covers a guest who trips over your light stand and the chandelier your stand knocks down. Read the standard form and it does not cover four things wedding photographers worry about: lost or corrupted files, a couple's claim that you missed or botched the day, the rings you are holding for detail shots, and anything your drone does. Your own gear needs a separate policy, and ISO's standard homeowners form limits business property to $2,500 at home and $1,500 away from it. A second shooter paid on a 1099 is not an insured on your policy at all.

Everything below is read from the policy forms themselves: the standard commercial general liability form written by the Insurance Services Office (ISO), CG 00 01 in its 04 13 edition, and ISO's homeowners form HO 00 03 in its 05 11 edition, which the Maine Bureau of Insurance publishes. ISO's forms are copyrighted, so most of this is paraphrased with the section it comes from. Your insurer may use a later edition, change these by endorsement or write its own wording, so treat this as the list of questions to ask about your policy, not as the answer.

What general liability covers on a wedding day

The insuring agreement in Coverage A is short. The insurer pays what you become legally obligated to pay as damages because of "bodily injury" or "property damage" caused by an "occurrence", which the form defines as an accident, and it defends you against a suit seeking those damages. That is the guest, the chandelier and the venue's floor, and it is what a venue's certificate request is about, which is why the venue asks for this policy and not another.

Everything else in this post follows from those three defined words. If a claim is not bodily injury, not property damage or not an accident, Coverage A never starts, and then the exclusions take away several things that would otherwise qualify.

Lost files are not property damage

The form defines property damage as physical injury to tangible property, or loss of use of tangible property, and then adds one sentence: "For the purposes of this insurance, electronic data is not tangible property." Exclusion p goes further and removes damages arising out of the loss of electronic data, its corruption, or the inability to access or use it, with a definition of electronic data wide enough to cover anything on a card, a drive or a server. When a card fails and a couple claims for the photographs, the policy answers twice: the photographs were never property damage, and data loss is excluded anyway.

The card itself is tangible property, but it is yours, and a liability policy pays for harm to other people and their property, not your own. The warranty does not fill the gap either: a card warranty replaces the card and does not pay for recovery, as the memory card warranty post explains. The policy written for a lost-files claim is professional liability, also called errors and omissions, which answers claims that your professional work failed.

The couple's complaint is not an accident

The claims that worry photographers involve no injury at all. You missed the processional, the gallery is late, the reception is gone, the film is not what was promised. Each is a claim for money because a contract was not performed, nothing in it is bodily injury or property damage, and so general liability does not respond. The limitation of liability clause in your wedding photography contract is the first line of defense. Professional liability is the second.

Professional liability policies for photographers are not standardized the way the general liability form is, so read the one you are offered for five things:

• Whether its definition of professional services describes what you sell, photo and video both.
• Whether it covers lost or corrupted data or excludes it.
• Whether it is written on a claims-made basis, which covers claims first made while the policy is in force and makes its retroactive date matter.
• Whether defense costs are paid inside the limit, shrinking it, or on top of it.
• Whether it covers work done by your second shooters and editors.

Some photographers rely on something that is not insurance. Professional Photographers of America's Indemnification Trust is a member benefit that, by PPA's own description, helps when a client claims you were negligent, data losses and missed shots included: advice, data recovery through Ontrack (deductibles of $100, $200 and $400 for the first three claims), limited restaging, settlements the trust negotiates and judgments, all subject to the trust's limits and a deductible. PPA says plainly that it is not insurance. Its terms are in the Trust Declaration linked from that page, and they are worth reading before you count on it in place of a policy.

The rings in your hand

Exclusion j(4) removes property damage to personal property in the care, custody or control of the insured. At a wedding that is a precise list: the rings you take for detail shots, the heirloom watch, the invitation suite, the veil you carry to the window. Drop a ring through a deck board and the standard form does not pay for it, because at that moment it was in your care.

The liability form will not give that back, so ask your agent whether any other policy you hold covers property of others in your care, and get the answer in writing. The free fix is procedural. Shoot rings and heirlooms on a table, have the planner or the owner hand them to you and take them back, and keep them away from doorways, water and decking.

Your drone is an aircraft

Exclusion g removes bodily injury and property damage arising out of the ownership, maintenance, use or entrustment to others of any aircraft an insured owns, operates, rents or borrows. Federal law defines an unmanned aircraft as an aircraft operated without the possibility of direct human intervention from within or on it (49 U.S.C. 44801), so on the plain words a drone you fly is an aircraft you operate.

ISO removed any doubt in 2015 with optional endorsements, described in its advisory notice CG P 017 06 15. CG 21 09 excludes unmanned aircraft by name under both coverages, including drones that no insured owns or flies, and the privacy and other personal injury claims that Coverage B would otherwise answer. CG 24 50 does the opposite for drones and projects listed in its schedule, adding limited coverage back. Look for either number on your declarations page. Without CG 24 50 or a separate drone policy, assume your drone is uninsured for liability. The drone rules post covers the FAA side, and in a national park the answer is no drone at all.

Your gear and the homeowners policy

Your camera bag is your property, so no liability policy covers it; that is property insurance. On ISO's HO 00 03 (05 11 edition), personal property used primarily for business purposes is limited to $2,500 on the residence premises and $1,500 away from it, in total, for each loss. A wedding is away from it. The same form does not cover business data at all, beyond the cost of blank media.

The form also decides when you are a business, and the threshold is low. Its definition has two limbs. The first is any trade, profession or occupation, full-time, part-time or occasional. The second is any other activity done for money, with an exception for activities that earned no insured more than $2,000 in the 12 months before the policy period. On our reading, paid wedding photography falls under the first limb, so the $2,000 exception does not reach it. Once you are in business, the liability half of a homeowners policy steps back too: its business exclusion removes bodily injury and property damage arising out of a business engaged in by an insured.

What covers the gear is an equipment policy, often sold to photographers as inland marine coverage, or business property coverage that follows the gear off premises. Read it for theft from a vehicle, gear in checked luggage, coverage abroad if you shoot destinations, rented lenses, and whether it pays replacement cost or actual cash value.

Your second shooter is not your insured

Section II of the form lists who is insured. You are, and so are your "employees" and your "volunteer workers" while working for you. A second shooter paid on a 1099 is neither: not an employee, and not a volunteer, because the form defines a volunteer as someone who is not paid a fee, salary or other compensation. If a guest trips over your second shooter's bag, your policy answers the guest's claim against you, subject to its terms, and nothing in it defends the second shooter, who can be sued too.

That is why the second shooter contract template makes each side responsible for its own negligence and has an optional line for the shooter's own insurance, and why a venue that wants a certificate from every vendor means them as well. If your second shooters are employees, the answer changes, along with their tax treatment and much else.

What the venue is actually asking for

A venue's insurance clause usually asks for three things. A certificate of insurance showing your limits; the venue added as an additional insured, which takes an endorsement on your policy, because the form's own list of insureds does not include a venue and a name typed on a certificate does not change the policy; and an indemnity clause, in which you agree to cover the venue's losses from your work.

The indemnity clause is where the form helps more than people expect. The contractual liability exclusion does not apply to an "insured contract", and the form defines that to include the part of any contract for your business in which you assume another party's tort liability for bodily injury or property damage to a third person, provided the injury happens after you sign. So a clause in which you agree to cover the venue if your light stand injures a guest can be insured. A promise to pay the venue anything else, such as a cleaning fee or a damage deposit, is not tort liability and is not covered.

National parks ask the same way. Great Smoky Mountains' permit conditions, when the superintendent requires insurance, call for $1,000,000 per occurrence with the United States of America as an additional insured, and Rocky Mountain wants every vendor working for a planner who holds a commercial use authorization on the planner's certificate. Both are in the national park permits post.

Which policy answers which problem

• A guest is hurt, or the venue's property is damaged: general liability, Coverage A.
• Files are lost or corrupted, or a couple says you missed or botched the day: professional liability (errors and omissions), not general liability.
• Rings or another item you were holding are damaged: not general liability, because of the care, custody or control exclusion. Ask about coverage for property of others.
• Your camera, lenses or drives are stolen or broken: equipment (inland marine) or business property coverage. A standard homeowners policy pays at most $2,500 at home and $1,500 away.
• Your drone hits someone: drone or aviation liability, not general liability.
• Your second shooter is sued: their own policy, unless they are your employee.
• The venue wants protecting: an additional insured endorsement on your general liability, with the indemnity clause read against the insured contract definition.