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Getty's Flickr Sales, Money Spinner Or Ripoff?
Barence writes "Photo-sharing site Flickr is offering photographers a new way to cash in on their work. The 'Request to License' scheme allows renowned photo agency Getty to sell photos on behalf of Flickr members. Once part of the scheme, all of the user's photos will carry a Request to License link (users can't select certain photos to license in this way). People wishing to buy the photos are directed to Getty's staff, who 'will help handle details like permissions, releases, and pricing,' according to Flickr. However, the last time Getty sold images on behalf of Flickr members, it led to complaints that photographers were being exploited, with commission on photos as low as $1. So who's doing best out of the deal, photographers or Getty?"
It's like Lenin says: you look for the person who will benefit and, uhh.... I'd like to think that those photographers who don't have any representation at the moment and have HIGH QUALITY work to offer will benefit, those with medium and low quality work will suffer. The problem is that those with high quality work would be more likely to have representation outside of the internet, thus leaving the majority of people left to fend for themselves on flickr getting the short end of the stick from Getty. You can't pay them more just because they have low quality work and there are more of them, this is not social welfare. Those that opt in need to understand that there are better ways at getting financial representation for their work. But for those that need a little bit of cash from works they aren't making any cash from, this works fairly well.
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The only value that Getty Images could add would be offering legal services to those who photos are used in violation of whatever the licensing terms are. Any photographer can monetize their photos under a particular license. Unless they are willing to spend time and money to collect royalities that they are due, the license is worthless. Now if Getty Images offers some sort of revenue tracking services, that's a different story. If I were a photographer and Getty Images want to take 10-20% to list my photos in their catalogue and also manage the collection of royalities for me, that would be a good deal.
When I used to consult I worked at an accounting firm that tracked royalities for music artists. That was a labor intensive business.
Why don't they just introduce a new tag, 'gettylicense', with everything after the colon being the minimum amount owed.
e.g. 'gettylicense:$5.00'
And maybe another colon for specifiers: 'gettylicense:$5.00:noads' for something that can be licensed for $5.00, isn't available to be used in ads.
Put a set of standard tags together like this, link to them on an FAQ page about the whole scheme, and let people decide on a per photo basis whether or not they want to allow commercial reuse like this.
Doing this with tags instead of something new and separate would expose the ability to upload these permissions along with the photos using whatever tools integrate with Flickr.
Indeed!
Not good news for professional photographers. Yes, many beautiful images are shot by people with access to cool photo equipment, but there is a lot that goes into framing context and theme for a photo that relates to a story, or even an event. This is a money grab by Getty's new owner (In February 2008 it was announced that Getty Images would be acquired by Hellman & Friedman in a transaction valued at an estimated US$2.4 billion). Pro photographers are going to have to start looking for ways to add value to their traditional services. This is a purely disruptive technology and service offering that is going to hurt the professional ranks. Flickr is also making out on this deal. Digital has democratized access to, and creation of, the photographic image. Add Photoshop and it's a whole new world. I know a few professional photographers who have been put out of business by these new technologies. I see this profession going the way of professional writers, who are still trying to figure out how to surf this powerful, disruptive wave of change. I would love to see some ideas posted on this thread about how professional photographers can adapt to these changes, and continue to put their well-honed skills into play to make a living.
Here is the PDF of the agreement:
https://contribute.gettyimages.com/olc/agreement/sample_agreement
The royalties (that they pay to you) are 20%, 25%, or 30%.
However, that's the price for the ease of use. Basically if you want to sell your photos, nobody is stopping you. You can have your own site, where you sell prints for whatever price yo like, under the terms you like. This lets you do more or less "One click sales." That's a nice feature, but it means you are at the mercy of the person who sets the terms. You have do decide if it's worth it to you.
Professional photography -- particularly, photojournalism -- is a dying art. Yes, there are a few people taking some really good photos, ones that tell stories, represent facts, or are just nice to look at, but is also a tidal wave of "high quality" images that are nothing but amateur snapshots taken with high-end equipment. A few bucks flowing through Getty will make these people feel like they have a chance at the big time...and probably cause even more of them to set up websites promoting their wares, but the "art" aspect of photography doesn't come with a $3,000 camera and a little bokeh. It just moves the $5 stock photo market from the trained professionals to the part-timers and makes it all the more difficult to scratch out a living without shooting weddings.
Oh, there is plenty of excellent photography around. The problem is that there is even more cheap junk and most editors don't need good photography they need cheap and fast images. Look around on the Internet. Occasionally you see real product photography - custom stuff showing off a specific piece of merchandise. Mostly it's a 200 x 200 cutout of the object that could be taken with an instamatic, developed at Wall Mart and scanned on a $100 scanner. Most of the 'news' photography is canned pictures of backgrounds that more or less have something to do with the article. Most website photography is just random smiling people doing something that looks vaguely interesting. You just don't need skills or equipment to do this.
Magazines set up a somewhat higher bar but recently the quality of images is scarily reminiscent of something seen on Photoshop Disasters. Getting a decent image out of newsprint is a skill that has long since be deprecated by the vast majority of photographers, editors and press men.
But if you take the time to troll around the various photography sites on the web, you will see quite a number of really good photographers creating excellent images. But since there are so many venues for this, so many photographers and so little time it's easy to get lost in the backwash.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
About a year ago I was invited and signed up with Getty through the initial program with Flickr. I had many discussions with friends who are professional photographers about whether or not I should sign up, and most echo what is being said here: the royalty rates are too low. This is a fair assessment; Getty pays between 20% to 30% commission for photos(depending on the license type), far below what most stock and micro-stock agencies will pay. For me however, the other advantages far outweighed the lower royalty rates. Having Getty handle everything is for me worth the fat cut they take. They are a large agency, and do attract a huge amount of customers, most being corporate-use type who are use to paying high amounts for photos. They will go after cases of infringement of photos licensed through them. Finally, I get bragging rights to be able to say I contract with Getty (this makes my pro photographer friends very mad. Now we have an understanding not to mention the "G" word). Basically, once I sat down, counted the cost and the other options, I decided it was worth signing up for. I've made enough money to keep me happy and be able to support my expensive photography habit.
Getty itself is in a interesting position here. For the longest time, stock photography was the domain of professional photographers. With the advent of digital photography, there's a new wave of pro-amateurs that have flourished in sites like Flickr. At the same time, traditional photographers worked themselves into a conformable niche shooting increasingly cliche photos. Creative professionals eventually started noticing they could find more creative photos on sites like Flickr and negotiate dirt-cheap rates directly with the photographer cutting out agencies like Getty out altogether. The deal between Getty and Flickr was smart play from Getty to keep themselves relevant in the changing market. There's still a need for a photo agency to do the middle-man work of contracts, licensing, releases, research, etc., at least for now.
So, in summary, this move is good for Getty, good for non-professional photographers, and not good for existing professional photographers.
btw, if anyone is interested, here's my small catalog on Getty and a shameless plug for my site on Flickr
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
He was also the webmaster of censorware.org (cofounded with Seth Finkelstein, Jaime McCarthy, Bennett Haselton, and others). He generally acted like an asshat deleted the site contents (twice) and hijacked the domain.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
This is a good thing. The whole market for commercial photography is enlarged when a huge number of images ranging from good to excellent becomes available at affordable prices. A few photographers may make less money now, but a far vaster number will make a little money they never would have had. Nobody will mourn most of yesterday's canned, overpriced "stock" images.
Digital cameras aren't the first time something once available to professional photographers became available to everyone.
A century ago, the Brownie camera brought photography to the masses. The coming decades would see at-home developing and printing systems and by the mid-century instant film cameras were becoming available to the masses.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The ideas you speak of - good composition, good artistic sense, and the like - are in the mind of the photographer not the tools he holds in his hands.
At least, they are until we get a good AI inside camera. Then watch out.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Actual recent example: someone's writing an academic book and needs a bunch of 2-by-2-inch stock photos
Taking photographs for my upcoming book so I don't have to pay a stock agency ... I thought that's what underpaid grad students were for. *cue rimshot*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Most photographers in my field who've been open enough to discuss it with me are on a 50/50 deal with their agency. So this is a pretty poor offer.
It's a particularly odd turn of events in concert photography. Whereas those of us who do it with a pass are tied to 3 (or less sometimes) songs, no flash, from a particular shooting position and potentially restrictive contracts, the kid who sneaks an SLR in, or happens to get good shots can apparently now license their images in a way that wasn't authorised and as pros we wouldn't be allowed to.
Maybe they'll crack down on cameras at concerts. Who knows?