Every photograph on Celestial Seeds Studio is the original work of Melvin Green, who retains full copyright at all times. When you “buy” an image, you are not buying the photograph itself — you are buying a license to use it within a specific scope.
Five license tiers exist. The first four are standard and apply automatically when you complete a checkout in the studio shop. The third, Custom, is negotiated directly.
For non-commercial personal use by a single individual. The license is granted perpetual and worldwide within the scope below.
Aria Voss retains the copyright to every image, in every tier. Licensing transfers usage rights, not ownership.
No license — including Extended — grants any right to use the work as training data, fine-tuning data, embedding source, or evaluation set for any artificial-intelligence, machine-learning, generative, computer-vision, or large-model system. This restriction is express and non-negotiable.
You may not use any image in a way that defames, harasses, or misrepresents the subjects, locations, or circumstances depicted. Pornographic, hateful, deceptive, or politically inflammatory contexts are prohibited under all licenses.
A license attaches to the use, not to a person. If you license an image for one project and want to use it on a second, you need a second license for that project (or an Extended license that covers both).
The studio reserves the right to remove any image from the archive at any time, including images you have already licensed. Your existing license continues to be valid for previously-shipped uses, but new downloads of the same image will not be available after takedown.
The studio also sells signed archival prints directly. Buying a print is not the same as licensing the image — you receive a physical object, not the right to reproduce the photograph.
Prints are limited editions of 25 per image, hand-signed and numbered, printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 g/m². Once a print edition sells out, no further prints will be made.
Print buyers may photograph their own print for personal social posts, but may not reproduce, scan, or distribute the image digitally — a separate license is required for that.
Each downloaded file carries an invisible per-license watermark tied to the buyer and order ID. The studio uses image-similarity monitoring to detect unlicensed use of the archive across the open web.
Discovered unlicensed use will be invoiced at the then-current Extended rate plus a $250 administrative fee. Persistent or commercial-scale infringement is escalated to legal counsel in Las Vegas, with damages, statutory damages, and attorneys’ fees calculated under the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §§ 504–505).
If you’ve used an image without a license and want to make it right, the studio will quietly issue a retroactive license at the standard rate, no fee, please write before we find it.
