Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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%.
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.
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.
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
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.