Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 21, 2026.

This is a general-purpose template, not legal advice — have it reviewed by a lawyer, and make sure it accurately reflects your actual data handling before publishing it as your real policy.

1. What we collect

• Account information — email address, chosen username, and display name, for photographer accounts.
• Published content — portraits you upload, their captions and tags, and the camera/lens/exposure metadata (EXIF data) embedded in the original file. The exact date and time a portrait was taken is discarded during upload and never stored, on any portrait. See how to upload portraits with EXIF data for more on why EXIF data matters here and what we do with it.
• Location data — if a portrait's file contains GPS coordinates, we use them to show an approximate location (city/region and country) and a map marker on that portrait, plotting the point of interest it was taken at. The precise coordinates are never displayed as text; only the general place name is shown publicly.
• Basic usage data — such as how many times a published portrait has been viewed.
• Reports and requests — if you submit an abuse report or request account deletion, we keep the details of that request (including, for a deletion request, your account data for up to 6 months) so it can be reviewed and, where relevant, made available in response to a legal request before the underlying data is removed.

2. Third-party services we use

PortraitStage is built on a small number of external services, each of which processes some data on our behalf:

• Firebase (Google) — authentication and our database. Handles your email/password and all published content.
• ImageKit — hosts and serves uploaded portraits, and generates the resized/filtered/ watermarked versions shown on the site.
• OpenStreetMap / Nominatim — converts a portrait's GPS coordinates into a readable place name, and renders the interactive map on portrait pages.
• Cloudflare — runs a small piece of infrastructure that authorizes portrait uploads.
• Firebase Hosting — serves the website itself, and may log basic technical request data (such as IP address) as part of normal web hosting.

We don't sell your data, and we don't run advertising or ad-tracking on this site.

3. Why we collect it

Account information is used to operate photographer accounts (including the account review process — see our Terms of Use). Published content and its metadata are used to display your work as you intended, including the technical caption and map features that are part of what PortraitStage is for. Report and deletion-request data is used solely to review and act on that request, including retaining it briefly in case of a legal request for it (see section 4).

4. Your choices

• You can edit your display name, bio, profile photo, header image, and social links at any time from your profile page.
• You can delete any individual portrait you've published at any time.
• You can request full account deletion from your profile page. Once requested, your account and published content are kept, but no longer public, for up to 6 months — solely so the data remains available if a legal request for it is submitted in that window — after which an administrator permanently deletes it.
• If you believe content on the site violates these policies, you can submit a report via the Report Abuse form, without needing an account.

5. Children's privacy

PortraitStage is not intended for use by anyone under 18. We don't knowingly collect account information from anyone under that age.

6. Changes to this policy

This policy may be updated from time to time; the "last updated" date above will reflect the most recent change.

7. Contact

Questions about this policy, or requests regarding your data, can be sent to hello@portraitstage.com.