Well, for a starter does the image belong to you or to RIT? If you
did it on school property or time, or otherwise have an employment
contract with RIT about your work done there, the image may not be
yours to licence.
Second, if it is yours, I'd suggest registering it immediately, and
all its brethren and similars, in case someone filches it off the web
or from somewhere else. In fact, if your photographic work at RIT
does belong to you and not to them, you should be registering it
quarterly with the copyright office, especially since it also gets
published in places where you go to lecture, like PhotoExpo. Images
can be registered as a group, as long as they are unpublished, and
the copyright office does not care whether they're related in any
particular way. They can be from many years, many projects, whatever
way you wish to group them. It's $30 each time you send in a package.
I suggest you check out the Editorial Photographer's web site for
procedure. There's a whole section of the site devoted to ways to
register your copyright.
Now if it's yours and being used for advertising, and you've got it
registered, $200 is some sort of joke for one-time use. In
perpetuity it's beyond ridiculous. (A book cover with a print run of
10K is $900 and that's editorial.) I suggest you need to discover
some data about the firm, it's expected media buy with this image in
place, the annual income of the company, whether it's a startup or
well established, is this going to become a logo?, going to appear on
the web site etc. etc. The Advertising Photographers of America can
give you a bunch of advice about how to price this license. You must
know some of those folks professionally. If none immediately spring
to mind I'll be glad to help you find some. Seth Resnick, Jeff
Sedlick, Jack Reznicki, Stanley Rowin, Steve Sint. All of them can
tell you better than I how to go about pricing this licence.
Then comes the negotiating with the company about the actuall price
and usage. And the writing of the contract.
Determine the market value of the license, register your copyright
and negotiate - the three steps to good business practice.
