Work for hire as it applies to copyright ownership is a vastly misunderstood concept. People are fooled by the intuitive sounding title of “work for hire” and think it applies to any work you hire someone to do. It doesn’t. It generally only applies to actual employees, such as those who get a W-2, and not to contractors or vendors. There is nothing about the circumstances with the selfie that resembles an actual employee relationship, nor does the vastly speculative claim of “would have assumed” rise to the level of a valid legal argument, in my not actually a lawyer opinion. For contractors and other vendors, you need a contract, otherwise the copyright generally belongs to the contractor or vendor.
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