A photograph of your painting is a copy under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and if it was done without your permission, it would be an infringement of your rights. But because the photographer is deemed to have exercised skill and creativity in taking the photograph, in most cases he will own the copyright in the photographic image. There are certain conditions, where for industrial purposes such as making lithographic plates for printing, no copyright exists in the intermediate materials which maybe created.
So in the situation that you mention, you would need to make sure that in commissioning the photographer you stipulate that you require the copyright in the photograph to be assigned to you (in writing), or at the very least, the photographer needs to provide you with an exclusive licence which prevents him or anyone else from using that image in any commercial manner, as clearly that would have implicatiions for your ability to exploit your rights in the original painting.
However, if you feel able to do the photography yourself or can give the task to someone who is employed by you and this work forms part of his job description, this would remove that problem.
No, that is just commissioning them.
For someone to be an employee (for the purposes of Section 11 (2)) they need to be on the payroll, with you paying NI contriutions etc.
"[Section 11] (2) Where a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or a film, is made by an employee in the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work subject to any agreement to the contrary."
Section 178: " “employed”, “employee”, “employer”, and “employment” refer to employment under a contract of service or of apprenticeship;"
It doesn't need to be a formal contract (although you can download one from here: http://www.own-it.org/contracts/10 if you wish) but it should mention that is an agreement between you and the photographer to assign copyright in exchange for valuable consideration, to you in perpetuity. Both parties should sign the document.
Most professional photographers guard their copyright so this request may lead to an increased fee, but then on the other hand, it is an entirely reasonable thing to request since I would suggest these images would have very little commercial value if the photographer wanted to further exploit them. You also have the option of taking your business elsewhere if the photographer is unreasinable in his demands.
As I mentioned before, it is not essential that the copyright be assigned to you. A licence which gives you full use of the images for as long as you need would suffice, and this should come as part of the commission, so I would not expect an additional charge. A skeleton licence form can be downlaoded for free from the Association of Photographers website: http://home.the-aop.org/Downloads/p13_s ... 3_fileid/5
