Picture Usage Rights

I photographed a recital for my brother's dance studio (he is a dancer not studio owner) and received alot of praise from parents and the studio owners.

i decided to post some pictures up on my blog www.matterandmovement.​com and got a ton of hits, some people asked for prints others asked for digitals but I rather than selling these decided to allow their usage for personal usage ie. not for commercial use.

the studio has since released a promo video with 2 of my images without so much as asking me if it is ok to use.

here is a link:
http://www.facebook.co​m …deo.php?v=18768​6814632946

i was ok with parents keeping shots of their children but i don't feel it was right of the studio to use my photos for promotional use without my consent.

do i even have a leg to stand on in asking them not to use my photos, or if they want to use them to buy them at my commercial rates?

edit: update

i have since explained why these photos are not to be used for promo to the owner's and have asked to be fully credited for them either in the video description with a link or in the video displayed prominently. I am not even asking them for money but I have learned my lesson unfortunately trying to be nice to the parents is not worth being taken advantage of so no more freebies for anyone.

What you have here is what makes lawyers drool...

1) Illegal commercial usage of your images, yes you have a major legal leg to stand on! They can't use your images without written permission, editorially or commercially, why you just asked for credit is a mystery as they're trying to make money off your work and should be compensated, a trade off, something. Believe the minimum in a court case is $75,000 however most settle in the 15K range I was told for illegal editorial usage, not sure about illegal commercial usage.

2) They used an image of a girl in a commercial advertisement and my guess is they don't have a model release, so you could sue for the illegal usage of the image and the family could sue using the image of their daughter in an advertisement. Of course there may be some standard agreement the families have to sign at the studio so who knows on that, but so far in seeing this my guess is the person doing the video has not one single clue of what they're doing. If they don't have a release and you've now given them permission to use the image guess what, the family can now go after the studio AND you. That's how lawsuits go nowadays, name everyone!

3) I'm going to guess they never licensed that song and are opening themselves up to an even bigger lawsuit. You can't use music for your advertisements without licensing it! Unless it's a rights free one, can't say as not my style and no clue who it is or where it's from.

Whoever put this video together is opening themselves to a very big lawsuit, not saying it will happen, but they have no clue what they're doing in terms of legalities and what they can and can't do with copyright protected material.

reason i didn't ask for money is that i am trying to build rapport with the owner's for future projects, retrospectively i probably was a bit too lenient with these images however i don't feel it is right for them to make an ad from work i didnt get paid for or was even recognized for.

i have certainly learned my lesson but they have not responded to my email so i will be writing them a more serious email for complete removal as now they have ignored me and that is really ticking me off.

Could take a couple days to get a response, not everyone checks their email every day - even in todays world. Personally either way I'd ask their removal because of not having a model release for the people in the picture, and record/save any emails. I highly doubt anything would come of it but better safe than sorry. If no response then call and tell them the same thing.

And the reason they didn't think you had any rights in the photographs worth considering is because you didn't ask for money. That's the way business is.