Hiring a Photographer in Spain: How the Process Works for an International Company
A company headquartered outside Spain that needs photography of a facility, a building or an opening event in Spain is buying two things at once: a shoot, and a new supplier that has to pass through its own procurement. The photography is the part everyone pictures. The part that decides whether the project runs to plan is the work around it: what the quote names, who signs it, which documents the site wants before anyone walks in, and what the licence allows once the images exist.
This guide sets out how that process runs when the client is abroad and the work is in Spain. It follows the order the work happens in, from the first enquiry to the invoice that closes the file, and it describes our own process at TKM Photo rather than a generic one.
What an international client is buying
Three things, priced separately because they are separate decisions:
- Production. The shoot itself: days on site, the equipment the brief needs, travel to the location, and the editing that turns captures into finished files.
- Access. Everything that has to be in place before a camera is allowed on the site: safety credentials, an insurance certificate in your safety officer's hands, site induction, and any permission the location or the airspace above it requires.
- The licence. Who may publish the images, where, for how long, and whether anyone else on the project may use them. That is a written grant, not an automatic consequence of paying the invoice.
A quote that prices the first and stays quiet on the other two is not cheaper. It has left two decisions for later, when they cost more to make.
The enquiry, and what to send with it
Most enquiries that arrive from abroad are one paragraph and a date. That is enough to open a conversation and not enough to price. Six items turn an enquiry into a quote that answers the real project:
- What is being photographed, and where. The site address, or the addresses if there is more than one.
- What the images are for: website and social, an internal report, a trade fair, press, paid advertising. This is what sets the licence.
- The dates that matter, and which of them cannot move.
- Who owns the site and who controls access to it, when that is not your own company.
- Whether aerial work, 3D scanning or video are wanted alongside stills.
- Your procurement requirements: supplier forms, a purchase order process, an invoicing portal, insurance thresholds.
The last item is the one most often left out and the one that most often delays a project. Onboarding a new foreign supplier takes as long as your systems take, and it costs nothing to run it in parallel with production planning. If it starts after the shoot, it holds up the invoice while everything else waits with it.
What a quote should name, line by line
A quotation you can compare with another quotation is one that sets out the variables instead of hiding them inside a single figure. Ours is built as a line by line breakdown, and these are the lines that matter:
- The sites, and the days on each, with half days where they fit.
- What is delivered: how many finished images, in which formats and at which resolutions.
- Aerial work, 3D scanning and video as lines of their own, because each carries its own planning and, for aerial work, its own permissions.
- Travel and accommodation when the work is outside Madrid, quoted openly rather than folded into a day rate.
- The licence, in a line of its own.
- A delivery date for the project, agreed rather than assumed.
- When payment falls due, and against which document.
We do not publish a fixed turnaround figure in a guide, because the real one is project specific: it follows from the size of the shoot, the number of sites and the date the images have to meet. That date goes in the quotation, where it can be agreed before the work starts rather than discovered afterwards.
The licence is decided in the quote, not after it
Buying photography is buying permission to publish it. In Spain that permission is read narrowly when a contract is silent, which means an unwritten licence is a smaller licence than the buyer may assume. Naming the media, the territory, the duration, whether it is exclusive and whether it can be passed to a parent company or a partner takes one paragraph at the quoting stage and settles the question before the work starts.
This matters more, not less, when the client is abroad, because the images usually travel: a Spanish site photographed for a group headquartered elsewhere is rarely published only in Spain. Our separate guide to image licensing for commissioned photography works through the five parameters and what to put in the brief.
Purchase orders, supplier onboarding and the contract
In our experience large companies rarely sign the contract a photographer proposes. They run their own paperwork, and it usually arrives as a purchase order with terms attached. That works, provided the licence and the delivery terms in the quotation are carried into the order rather than replaced by it.
The quotation is an offer. It becomes an order when you approve it or raise a purchase order against it. Production follows, delivery follows production, and the invoice for the work follows delivery. The quotation also names the point at which the date is reserved, so the payment points are known before anything is committed. Four documents usually travel alongside that sequence:
- A supplier form. Bank and company registration details for your vendor system. Our registration details are published on the legal notice.
- A certificate of insurance. Civil liability cover, with the certificate sent to your project manager or safety officer on request.
- A purchase order. Raised against the quotation reference, so the invoice can carry the same reference back to you.
- Portal registration. If your company receives invoices through a portal, we ask for the registration to be done before the shoot rather than after it.
Briefs, quotations, contracts and invoices are issued in English.
Site access, and what the site asks for before the shoot
Access is the part that often surprises companies commissioning in Spain for the first time, because the terms are set by the site rather than by the client. An operating plant, a construction project under way or an airport terminal each has its own entry regime, and a photographer who arrives without the documents is unlikely to get in, whoever booked the day.
For industrial and construction work that normally means PRL safety training, the photographer's own personal protective equipment, the insurance certificate sent ahead of arrival, and a site induction on the day. We hold those documents and send them in advance to whoever runs safety on the site. Our note on industrial credentials and site safety explains what each document is and why sites ask for it.
Aerial work adds airspace to the question. Flights are made as an operator registered with AESA and planned around the airspace over the specific site, and it is that airspace, rather than the shoot itself, which decides how much notice is needed. Where the location sits inside controlled airspace the planning starts earlier, and the drone permits in Madrid guide sets out how the process works, while our article on planning a drone shoot in Madrid airspace explains what decides the timeline.
Working language, and who you deal with
The project is run in English with you and coordinated in Spanish on the ground, which is the arrangement most international clients need: briefing, scoping and reporting in the language your team works in, while site liaison, access requests and local coordination happen in Spanish. There is no sales layer in between. The photographer who quotes the project is the one who walks the site.
File naming, image metadata and delivery documentation can be produced in English, in Spanish or in both, which matters when the images are used at the same time by a local site team and by a head office.
Delivery, and how a project closes
Finished files arrive by secure download link, organised by location or by phase, in the formats the end use needs. The delivered files stay in our archive afterwards, so a later request from another team, or from a company that joined the project after the shoot, can be answered under a licence of its own without booking a return visit.
The project closes with a Spanish invoice, a factura carrying a Spanish tax number, issued after delivery. Our FAQ describes how we issue invoices to companies outside Spain, and how it is then handled on your side is for your own gestor or tax adviser to confirm.
We photograph industrial facilities, buildings, retail spaces and corporate events in Madrid and across Spain, most often for companies based somewhere else. The industrial photography and architectural photography pages describe how those productions run, and a brief with a date attached is enough to get a quote back.
This article describes our own commissioning process and is general information. It is not legal, contractual or tax advice, and your own advisers have the final word.