Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/12/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Dec 21, 2007, at 8:04 PM, Tina Manley wrote: > These days it's more difficult than you could possibly imagine, O-h Tina - I can imagine it all too well. As a designer I receive all the stock promotions you can imagine. It's (almost) all crap. And we see that crap in the advertising. As a, once fairly successful, advertising photographer who sold "concepts" at a hefty $1,000 plus expenses; a then (80's and early '90's) competitive price; I've watched that market dissolve into AD's grabbing stock and building the concept around the stock; instead of developing an original concept from scratch. Now only the fortune 500 do original work. > 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. And the editors expect the pros to fill the pages with celebrities and sports figures. U-g-h! > 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? That, "but your art will get seen" line always tickled me - just before pissing me off. > 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. Yep. Pathetic. > 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!!!! Definitely a difficult period to earn a living in anything other than portraits, wedding/events, celebrity, or ???? > 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! A sorry state of affairs. Yet, Kyle (and others) have found niches for their thoughts and visions. We're experiencing such rapid change in so many different areas; it's quite difficult to keep up and make the changes in markets, technology and aesthetics; to name a few. I like to (have to) believe that original thought and vision will continue to find an audience. As stated previously; I admire your moxy to continue searching for new markets, new techniques, etc. Regards, George Lottermoser george@imagist.com http://www.imagist.com http://www.imagist.com/blog Picture A Week - www.imagist.com/paw_07