Today Flickr announced a limited partnership with Getty to create a Flickr Stock Collection. In short you need to be discovered by Getty photo editors and additional details are forthcoming.
The great folks at Getty Images and Flickr are joining forces to create a collection of royalty free, rights ready and rights managed photographs. This announcement is just the first step and there’s a lot to do before we launch. We’ve created a FAQ to address what we think will be the initial questions.
The FAQ is quite barebones at the moment. You make the call if this is a good thing or bad thing for Flickr photographers. For now I withhold judgment as to how this can be interpreted for the state of affairs at Getty.
[tags]Flickr, Stock Photography, Getty[/tags]
I license photos which people find on flickr, after they email and request a quote. (well, the ones who decide they should do this, not just rip ’em off… lol)
So this is interesting. I wonder how they’ll address the fact that many (esp hobbyist) photographers may have not thought about a model release. I had been holding off on licensing a golf photo of mine for some applications because of no release.
Likewise I’m waiting to hear / read more about this to see how it will work. Funny that many photographers would toil over creating a great collection of work so they could approach a stock agency. Now the agencies are knocking at your door, Will they tag my photos with keywords too? (ah, probably not)
AcmePhoto in Phx.
There are a lot of questions that come to mine with this announcement.
1. Will Flickr photographers get a fair shake in their contract? Most are green as we know when it comes to business.
2. Many Flickr photographers use cameras that are low resolution. Will photographers of interest then be nixed if they can’t meet the 50MB file requirement because they use a P&S or low level dSLR?
3. How will Flickr change their licensing options/page layout to support Getty/Photographer agreements?
4. How will Flickr photographers be educated to the ways of model releases and which images can be submitted?
5. What if any additional interface will be provided to Getty via Flickr.
6. Is Getty diluting their brand by pulling in Flickr photographers?
7. Will all Flickr photographers be given the flexibility to choose which licenses to pursue (Royalty Free, Rights Managed, Rights Ready, etc.) or will they be stiff armed to a particular license type?
8. Will you be able to search the Flickr Getty Collection on Getty, Flickr or both?
The questions go on….
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Yes I agree an announcement like this does get the questions flowing. But from a ‘green’ photographers (which I am) point of view it will be an interesting partnership to watch unfold, and to learn from I am sure…
This is a great news. and Jim you are very true about that, some people just use P&S camera on flickr. I don’t know how they going to deal with this. As gettyimages normally accept high quality images only.