If You Ask Your Friend to Take Your Photo Using Your Camera, Who Owns the Copyright? Vivek Shah attended several Hollywood parties. While there, he preset the settings on his phone camera (including shutter speed, white balance, ISO, metering type, and exposure value) and asked friends or bystanders to use his phone to take photos of him with celebrities.He posted the photos to Facebook and his IMDB page, which were published later on media. Subsequently, he filed for copyright and sued.
According to legal principles reviewed in the article: if you ask someone to take a photo on your phone, and you want to own those photos so you can sue over any unwanted uses of the photos, you need the button-pusher to sign a written agreement transferring their rights to you.