Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/12/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 08:09 PM 12/21/2007, you wrote: >On Dec 21, 2007, at 6:49 PM, Steve Barbour wrote: >>it is not your images that need to be improved....... > >We'd probably all agree on that. > >Yet, another pressing issue came up under this banner. >How does a working photographer with thousands of wonderful images >actually turn that work into measured value in the form of $$$? >Hopefully without resorting to tricks, decorations, bells and whistles? >George Lottermoser >george@imagist.com George- These days it's more difficult than you could possibly imagine, with everybody and his brother who has a digital camera giving their photos away for free to see their name in print. All of the Citizen Journalists and all of the newspapers and TV news shows asking for free photos are totally ruining the market for anybody trying to be a professional photographer, since conglomerate publishers will go for the cheapest photo that is "good enough". The only avenue is to have something different, something that most part-time photographers are not able or willing to do. I do have plenty of those photos in very difficult, remote places but the problem is that they fit the editorial market. Editorial photography has always made much, much less than commercial photography. Photojournalism is not an option anymore since newspapers don't have to pay for cell phone photos that are "good enough" for newspaper and web publication. They are inundated with people offering their photos for nothing. I am totally not interested in setting up a studio with lights and backdrops and hiring models to do posed "lifestyle" commercial photography. What's left? Documentary photography - for which there is no market. Magazines like Life are gone. Websites want to use the photos for free and offer to give you "valuable exposure" instead of payment. Exposure for what? Nobody is buying anything. I'm still selling a lot of photos to textbooks and some magazines but the prices have dropped drastically and the usage has expanded greatly. Just for example: for 25 years I've sold photos for textbooks routinely for $500 for half a page with one year's use. Every year the same publishers would come back to me to use the same photos again in their newest edition, paying another $500. These days the publishers pay $125, if you are lucky, for half a page, ten years use, with web use included. That's the result of royalty free versus rights managed leasing, not to even mention micro-stock which pays the photographer in pennies instead of dollars. If you are in photography for the love of it, as I am, but you make your living at something else, which I don't, you are very lucky these days!! I would not advise anybody to enter photography as a career these days. I've spent the last five years trying to talk my daughter out of it!!!! Sorry to be so glum, but it's been very discouraging. I'm involved in a dispute with National Geographic who offered one of my photos on their website as wall paper for free downloads. Alamy says it's a legitimate Rights Managed use and I disagree. They didn't even report the sale to Alamy for months after they put the photo up for anybody and everybody to download for free. You really have to watch out and search the web for cheaters, but I never suspected the National Geographic!! :-( Bah, humbug! Tina Tina Manley ASMP, NPPA, EP, PI http://www.tinamanley.com