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?"

Comments

Why not add a tag for this?

[Oddscurity]

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.

Looks like Flickr and Getty making out

[ebusinessmedia1]

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.

Re:Looks like Flickr and Getty making out

[rm999]

It's not a bad thing that pros are held to a high standard. I realize the bar has been set much higher by the flood of cheap DSLRs, but as you said it takes skill to add value to a photograph. Pros will still be in demand; they will just have to do something more special than they used to, like crawling through the mud to get photos of wildlife or traveling to dangerous parts of the World. Mundane photos that anyone can take are now worth what they always should have been: very little.

This is the same thing that happened to all sorts of other professions, including artisan crafts, manufacturing, and IT. The world moves quickly, and it is each profession's job to stay relevant.

Re:Looks like Flickr and Getty making out

[mindbrane]

I agree with your post but as an old school photographer I'm no longer sure what staying relevant entails. I came to define photography as the interplay of light and form, but when colour and content are factored in, composition gets overlayed with endless details and syntax. When I shot wildlife and wilderness scenery with a Pentax MX I used a landscape viewfinder and imagined crossed diagonals as a way to frame and compose shots, but when shooting wildlife using a 300 mm manual lens and pulling focus on an animal's eye to eyeball depth of field composition pretty much goes out the window. Now the classical ideas of composition probably aren't studied and the approach is basically a Rambo automatic fire mode which means many neophytes are likely to capture good shots that can be touched up by software. Good on them and I'm glad they have a means to pick up some pocket change in addition to having had the good luck to be in the right place at the right time.

I think pros still have to learn the basics and even go back to the ideas that came out of the Paris exposition that introduced Japanese ideas contained in the works of Hokusai and Hiroshige to artists like Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh and can be seen in works like the Samurai Trilogy and Lady Snowblood. But like I pointed out above, I'm not sure how those classical ideas and works can be integrated with the DSLs and software available today. I'm glad to have started out with a K1000 shooting black and white asa 100 and having to learn the hard way.

just my loose change

Re:Looks like Flickr and Getty making out

[Trepidity]

I think the main problem is that the market for truly artisan-quality, top-end photography has never really been that large: much smaller than the number of professional photographers. They've been able to make up the gap until now, because they also owned the market for more run-of-the-mill photography, which did not really need top-end photography, but did need something better than low-quality 35mm point-and-shoots. Now that amateurs can do that medium-quality work, the people selling themselves as professionals really only have the top-end professional market left, which isn't big enough (i.e. there are too many professional photographers).

Actual recent example: someone's writing an academic book and needs a bunch of 2-by-2-inch stock photos, of things like Parthenon, or an Atari, or clouds. They used to have to license these from a professional photographer, even though the quality they need is not really particularly high. Now they get it free from Wikipedia, or a few bucks from some amateur. Is there any real reason they need a highly paid professional to take these small stock photos? If the photos were the point of the book, say a coffee-table book about architecture, sure. But that's often not the case.

They take 70% or more.

[Anonymous Coward]

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%.

Re:Well...

[CrashandDie]

Indeed. For most people, this simply means "I could make a buck or two", from something which most probably won't ever have any chance to be monetised.

For real photogs (and I mean, those who are already established professionally), there's a good chance their professional material never made it to Flickr anyhow. I allow myself to paraphrase Ken Rockwell by saying "If you want to take awesome pictures, around the world, and be allowed to take creative pictures in whichever you want, wherever and whenever you wish? Then remain an amateur, and never go professional!".

If this stuff pays for your yearly Flickr Pro subscription, you should be very grateful. I doubt anything else will ever come of it.

I've no doubt they take a huge cut

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:Well...

[thoughtfulbloke]

Speaking as someone who:
a) has no intention of ever being a pro photographer
b) has most of my photos among the other 142 million Creative Commons photos on Flickr
Most of my requests for my photos are of the form of "I'd like to put your photo on my wall", where they didn't really need to ask permission. I'd hate for people like that to be put off by thinking they need a commercial agreement.
The flip side is those occasions when a company has used on of my photos for commercial purposes, it has been a real pain for me to chase up by myself. by the time you account for my time, the only satisfaction has been moral. So I would be happy with a service that managed commercial rights and only returned a pittance, as it is more than I would make otherwise.
However, in balancing it out, the Getty model doesn't work for me, as I want to share more than I want to become a stock photo supplier.

Firsthand Experience with Getty

[vmxeo]

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

Re:Value

[jlp2097]

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.

Not true - they have something much more valuable: direct access to customers willing to pay for images (newspapers, press agency, online news sites, etc.). That is their main business model after all. That is also why they will pay such a small sum to flickr photographers - because they know that they are in the stronger position. Photographers / flickr users are easily replaceable, but Getty Images is not replaceable.

Re:Well...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd be more inclined to suspect that those who presently occupy the "high quality" niche would have the most to lose with a scheme like this.

There is, certainly, a pantheon of "iconic" images that are functionally irreplaceable. For certain purposes, Nothing Else Will Do. However, there are a huge number of situations where some sort of photo of something is called for; but "almost as good and a lot cheaper" will be good enough. The vast hordes of flickr happy-snappers, while they do produce a lot of dross, also produce some perfectly adequate, even good, work. And, unless the occasion has been arranged well in advance, or has been occuring predictably, the odds are way better that Joe User will be there with his point-and-shoot when it happens than that Mr. Serious Professional will just happen to be on hand with the big bag o' lenses.

My prediction would be that, if it becomes easy to grab stuff off flickr for cheap(but with the "cleared by Getty" sticker, so legal doesn't freak out), the losers will probably be the serious professional photographers. They won't be wiped out entirely, of course; but they could be priced out of the market for any sort of relatively generic pictures quite swiftly.

Re:Well...

[Dr Herbert West]

Mod parent up. I have a feeling that all this will do is drive prices down-- not for professional photographers that do model/product/event shoots, but for stock photo professionals..
"Why should I pay X dollars for your professional photography when I can get something that 'looks as good' for a dollar on FLICKR?"

Look at what the glut of cheap and easy WYSIWYG web design tools in the hands of amateurs has done to dev rates-- it's hard to explain to a client the benefit of having a professional build a web app/site when "my nephew can do that in a weekend".
Smart clients know the difference-- but not all my clients are smart.