My Model Release NIGHTMARE and the Perfect SOLUTION I Found

I've screwed myself I've I've caused a problem for myself that I didn't anticipate I think I knew about it but I never really thought it would like catch up to me and now it's got up to me so here's the thing I'm going to be doing my first gallery show this year as an artist if you've seen some of my videos before you'll know I don't consider myself an artist but that's something that I'm trying to change my mindset about and uh Pursuit moving forward so I'm doing my first gallery show so I'm in the process of like selecting images and like prepping for that and putting proposals together but one of the things that I now need to worry about is model releases and I haven't done model releases for quite a while I have a release section built into my contract for with my clients um but when I'm doing personal projects and things like that or when I was shooting editorial I didn't get releases because you didn't really need them for editorial and I didn't really see myself using the images uh in the future but now that I'm going to be doing a gallery show I'm I have to backtrack and get model releases from these people that I've shot whose images that I want to include in my show which will be good because then I'll also be able to use those images for things I want to do later like maybe publish a book or sell prints or you know things like that uh I used to use model releases and when I had an iPhone and an iPad and and there was a great app for iOS that was made by a photographer I think out of the US and it was a fantastic app but then she stopped developing it and took it out of the App Store and it was never available for Android I don't use Apple products anymore I refuse to there's no good app for Android I don't think there's a very good app for iOS either right now and the interfaces are clunky and horrible they're not very conducive to like people filling out and using app that like I think they're built by people who needed a model release app but don't have any user interface or user experience design design experience and so you you end up with these apps that are like you know you know maybe half decent but like the interfaces are horrible so I wanted something simple to the point where I've always thought well maybe I'll develop my own app and you know with chat GPT I actually started like Hey how do you develop apps for Android um and because I know it can write code and I thought maybe I'll get this app to you know chat GPT to write a code a mono release code but I started looking into it and I started so I have I have uh release forums so I have these release forms that sometimes I carry around with me and keep them in my camera bag in in the back so that people can just fill them out and sign them and then I keep a hard copy and then I can take a photo of this with um either the Google Drive app or the Adobe scan app and convert it into a PDF so that I can get rid of this paper copy and store the digital copy the digital copy is good you know with multiple backups uh that's going to last a while but it's still not simple it's simple enough but there's still like this and then you need pens and the pens need to be working and there's still factors that can go wrong so I started searching and looking again I thought okay well I have because I have this form in a PDF what I'll do is maybe I'll look into like Adobe sign design the PDF in such a way that I could email it out to people and then it could come back to me and then but the problem then is like I can't guarantee that these are automatically going to come back to me like I may send them to people they may fill it out and then save the wrong file or they might save it and then send me back the blank file or they they might fill it out and and forget to save it and think it's saved automatically and then send me back a blank so there's there's complications in the process so I started I got on Google I started digging into this and I found a website uh that does forums called jotform and you probably maybe know about it I knew about it but I've never used it because I've never really needed it but it is the perfect solution I was able to upload a PDF copy of this form and then it like found the spots in created Fields who's brilliant I needed to do some tweaking and stuff but now I have a jot form a URL for this and when people fill out the the the fields in the form on that page which just look like a very easy to fill out form you would fill out a contact form on a website it's going to fill in the blanks on the PDF and send me a copy of the PDF um fully filled out and signed not only that it integrates with airtable which I use like crazy so when they sign it and it's just going to automatically be saved directly into my airtable database this is just so great for me I it and this isn't this isn't a uh this is a sponsored video I'm just really excited about what this is going to do for me now and moving forward it's just been a a hurdle that I haven't been able to resolve and I think this is actually a fantastic solution and job Forum like it seems to integrate with so many things it'll save a copy of the PDF in my Google Drive um it will uh add it to my air table but there are literally uh dozens of Integrations that you could do like with jotform I now also on my phone have a link directly to that form saved so if someone wants to fill it out boom it's saved right there what I've also done is I've uh grabbed the QR code put that in my Google Drive and then put like a Google Drive widget on my phone so it opens up it opens up the QR code right away I just push that boom QR code right there and then so I can show that QR code to someone they can hit it with their phone it takes them right to the form I can also take that QR code and print it out and and put it on the wall in my studio or just like have it handy in my studio where someone can just like scan the QR code then they have the release I can send the link to people in an email and say please fill this out you know I'm doing a gallery show or and I would like to use your images in my gallery or in a book or however I might use them in the future one of the other things that I also did with my forum is I just used a short URL so I have my website slash release and then that will take them directly to the form to fill out so when I have to send up an email it doesn't look like it's going to a weird website it looks like it's going to mine then it just redirects to the model release form what I've also done I've made a generic version of this form because this one has my info on it and I've included a link below to where you can get to that template and copy the template for yourself and I set it up so that it will if you fill out your info information it will automatically populate your information every time in the Forum and then your clients just have to fill out their information and the date signed is automatic and they they have to sign it but they don't have to write in what data was signed like it will do that for you then you can choose where to integrate it how to integrate it with your business I'm really excited about how this is going to work for me and moving forward and I hope it's something that you can find useful as well