I’ve been posting photos online since 1993 and have been utilizing a variety of online photo forums since 1998. In that time a lot has changed… digital has over taken film and Web 1.0 has given way to Web 2.0. The result has been a boom in photographers taking part in these forums. The advent of social media mixing with photo forums has been very exciting and sites like Yahoo’s Flickr have taken off. Flickr as of today ranks 40th in Internet traffic according to Alexa.com and is a great avenue for photographers to gain exposure to their work, receive critiques and enjoy the work of other photographers covering a wide spectrum of skill level.
The amount of traffic generated by sites like Flickr means that photographers have an opportunity to share their work with a large audience. This is something I’ve particularly enjoyed as of late, but in the process I’ve experienced and taken note of an alarming trend of small and large companies looking to take advantage of photographers. Flickr seems to have become a stock photography alternative where companies entice business naive photographers into making their photos available for use for free. What blew my mind this week is the attempt made by Yahoo to do this with my photography. Yes! Yahoo. While flattered with the initial inquiry to use my photo I relayed my basic licensing terms only to be told “unfortunately, we do not have a system or mechanism in place to offer payment for photos.”
Did I read my email correctly? Yahoo not having a mechanism in place to offer payment for photos? Thats funny the same page that the image would have been linked to (news.yahoo.com) had images with attributes to AP and Reuters who certainly do not license their images for free. Even better is that Yahoo would have been running their advertisements on the page with my image and those of others for the piece being put together.
Over the past 5 years I’ve heard of some great stories with emerging photographers having photos seen on established photo forums, licensed (i.e. paid for) and used for commercial purposes. In this regard photo forums have provided a great avenue for emerging photographers to be discovered outside of the stock world. Social media photo sites provide a great venue for emerging photographers to network, gain a following, learn from others and find people interested in their work either for basic enjoyment or commercial opportunity.
In it’s ideal form this is great, but the reality is the growing trend of photo sharing sites becoming the rung below microstock agency sites where images are licensed for 20 cents to $10. Microstock agencies are themselves seen as being extremely poor undermining traditional stock sales that range in the hundreds of dollars. Sadly novice photographers jump at the chance of being highlighted with a link back to their portfolio and completely miss out on market equitable payment for the use of their work they’d otherwise receive via microstock or regular stock agencies.
I’ve read several blogs (Latoga’s Motion Blur, Dan Heller and Thomas Hawk to name a few) and follow several companies that have identified these vast pools of images and photographers as the next level of stock between micro and regular stock, but based on my experience the current model actually is a layer below microstock. Large companies like Yahoo should know better than to stoop so low with such practices. The same can be said of smaller and emerging companies. Equitable payment for the use of an image is not a link, it is market competitive cash payment.
“But it is just a photo” some might say.
What does it take for me to capture an image worthy of publication?
Canon 1D Mark II – $4500 at the time of purchase
Canon lens used – if owned $500-1500, if rented $200-400
Photoshop Software – $500 at the time of purchase
Computer Workstation – $4000 + $500 for extra RAM
Gas to get to shoot – $20-40
Note: We’ll ignore car expenses other than gas
Time to shoot and develop image – 10-16 hours on average
Not factoring in my time I have to recover $9,220-10,540 before I break even.
That’s the equivalent of approximately (50) fifty $200 licenses (a very low fee).
Professional level imagery requires professional level equipment and skill.
That being said I’m not greedy I often adjust my licensing fees based on type of use, date range of use, audience size and even company size. If its a start up I’m flattered to have my image assist in their marketing and almost always offer a substantial discount. Even free newspapers have been kind enough to offer me $25 upon recognizing the concern and principle behind not giving images away for free commercial use.
Do I want to bite the hand that feeds me so to speak. No. I’d love to have had my image used by Yahoo and other firms that have previously inquired. Unfortunately if I or others continue to give away their photos the remainder of the photography business will erode. I am deeply passionate about photography, but how can I continue that passion if I cannot afford to do it?
A company such as Yahoo, and all companies for that matter, should be ashamed of this practice. Not just because Yahoo owns/runs Flickr, but because it’s an extremely poor business practice. Photographers be warned. Educate yourself and if you truly love photography stand up for your rights and ability to pursue your passion.
Jim,
You bring up some great points (and reference a few great blogs! 😉 ). One other points that I find interesting is how enthusiast through professional photographers have started posting on social photo sharing websites and end up loosing control of their brand.
As a photographer, my images are part of my asset base. Wouldn’t it be great to have the great features of the social photo sharing websites but under the power of your own brand? I think so. I’m actually working on something in this area.
I don’t think I’m alone in my thinking, I’ve talked to many photographers and they all seem to feel the same way. Stay tuned…
Iatoga thanks for the comment. Having the features of a social photo sharing website under ones own brand would be a great thing. Keep me posted on what you’re working on.
Thank you for your insightful comments…much to chew on.
Please keep me posted, as well, on you progress on a social photo-sharing site under the power of individual brands…intriguing idea…
Thank you, again, for taking the time to pull your thoughts together in such a clear, succinct manner!
There is something that image customers (whether paying or not) should realize. If they want photos from Nanostock or Zerostock, they will not get the quality at full size that they will get if the photographer is paid in a way.
I used to upload 3MP P&S cam photos to Flickr with a batch-automatic contrast level equalizing / color boost / sharpening program. Those images were fine for web use. It took no time.
Now I spend on average 30 mins per photo in Photoshop to get a slightly better result, but at Nikon D200 10MP, crisp, and totally noise-free, even at full size and in the clouds. They do quite OK at SS,IS,DT,BSP and the like, but still most downloads are at web-resolution.
If the corporates want quality for free, they will suffocate the market in the end, and they will all wind up at Getty’s again.
Great article. I’ll be sure to share it with others.
FD,
Unfortunately for us, the vast majority of image usage do not require anything more than 3MP point and shoot quality.
It’s interesting to flip through a magazine nowadays. On some ads you will see horrible image quality: heavy pixelization, weird colors, severely out of focus, etc… It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine where they got the photos from. Those ads are a turn-off so any company using photos of that quality really is doing themself a disservice.
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I think about this from time to time, and keep telling myself that there is nothing I can do about what others do with their images. I know a lot of photographers put up a big protest against amateurs giving their work away for free just to be published or linked to. But there isn’t much you can do about it. Some images can be found anywhere, but many others cannot – and those should get what they are worth.
Mark I know where you are coming from, but I’m a firm believer that education can go a long way.
See my Photography Rights and Education post.
If amateurs learn their rights and how business ought to be run then there is an increased likelihood that an equilibrium will develop in the world of photography business. As it stands businesses are taking advantage of the massive interest in digital photography.
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Interesting reading, but one thing I don’t understand. What do you think Flickr should do to protect your rights?
Once the photo is put on a publicly accessible site you really have only little influence what happens with the photos.. (Who downloads them and what they do with them). And this is same whenewer the site is Flickr or its competitors or your blog…
Only thing by my opinion you can do, is post only small resolution photos (< 1MP). But often what makes a good image, are the details.. which are lost at such small images..
Robert it’s not up to Flickr to protect our rights, but to properly educate people to the risks of using their service and improving their service to make it more difficult for people to lift higher resolution photos. Warnings, links to educational sites and technological & security improvements to keep higher resolution images out of the hands of others. Currently Flickr provides minimal protection. Smug Smug is a site that has great image security. They spent a lot of time to make sure that you can’t lift images. I’d say Flickr has a thing or two to learn from their competition.
The responsibility is shared. People new to photography need to learn about the risks and Flickr needs to step up their image protection scheme. Ultimately if someone wants to capture an image they’ll always take a screen capture, but access to high resolution images puts the photographer at great risk.
Hello Jim.
1, I agree with you that, if you put an image in high resolution on a publicly acessible site you taking a risk that someone will download it and abuse. So if you don’t want other people use your image in a way you can’t control – don’t publish that image.
2, I don’t agree that Flickr has something to do with it
I looked at the SmugMug site, but there is no real difference how difficult is to download a image from Flick and SmugMug. Rule of thumb is: if your computer can display the image, you can save it to disc.
So if you want to protect your images from abuse, only thing you can do is, not put them on a publicly accessible web site. (Or publish the images in a really small resolution or make a watermarks over the image… or destroy the image using some other way 🙂 ).
Note: SmugMug photo viewer contains some “javascript” code, that may block uneducated people from saving an image to disc. If you click an image and select “Save as..” – you are promted to save a “spacer image”. But this is no real security. This is something what in computer security is called “clown” security. Just an ilusion of security. For someone who understand web browsers a little bit takes few seconds to figure out, how to save the image currently displayed to file.. If you are interested I send you the steps you can do to bypass the “spacer” protection ilusion. Its really very easy..
Robert take a closer look at the image path for SmugSmug beyond the spacer. It’s more elaborate than what you state. Look at the source code of an image and then point me to a path of a large image. It’s very well coded securing the image. It’s the best mechanism I’ve seen.
That being said when you put images online you have to accept the risks associated with that choice. That doesn’t mean that I relinquish a service provider from their responsibilities. The nature of creating a good product is protecting your user. Microsoft, Dell, Apple, etc. in their industries strive to make their customers secure so that they’ll return as a customer.
The same is required of image hosting companies. Flickr does have a responsibility to address this. If users continually have their images at risk of unauthorized use what incentive is there to use their product? It becomes more trouble than it is benefit.
Jim – my point is only, that it is as easy to download “Large” image size from SmugMug as it is in Flickr. There is no REAL difference in image security in both mentioned sites.
OK – take a look – step by step how to find out the URL of a photo in a SmugMug…
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Jim,
Some advise against it, but should I watermark every photograph I put on Flickr? I’ve already had several acquaintances “borrow” my images on Facebook without asking, and would feel angry if Yahoo! or any other company took my images without paying… I’d love to hear your thoughts on watermarking and public photo sites.
Thanks,
David
David I wrote a series on my evolution of using watermarks and why I advocate their use. Be sure to read the following articles:
My Journey with Photography Watermarks
Evolution of a Watermark
Marketing Through Infringed Photos with Watermarks
Watermarking with Lightroom & Mogrify
I hope the information proves to be helpful.
I know you wrote this awhile ago, but I will be alluding to your post at Internet Librarian, a conference taking place next week (late October 2012) in my presentation about the pros and cons of crowdsourcing — great post!