http://www.infocado.co.uk/ and my images
- Thread starter Steve M
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Indeed, everyone winging is either not taking high enough quality photos, is not differentiating themselves from amateurs or has a terrible business model. Instead of blaming others who are merely trying to increase their own personal rewards they should blame themselves and realize they failed to catch up with the 21st century where everyone can have a DSLR that can take stunning photos and put them online almost instantly. Funny how these so called professionals are all for illegal price fixing and against free-market economy.
Lets be realistic here. Type in your county name, followed by photographer into google.
There are some truly awful photographers (imho) that seem to be making good money. Why?... business sense. Quite clearly there is still room in the market for somebody with good tog skills and good business sense. The squeeze is on those with only one or neither.
Personally, I picked up a dslr a little over 20 months ago and use it as a relaxing hobby mostly, yet next month i have 3 out of the 4 weekends booked and a few days in between, including a shoot for one of the most famous sporting teams in the uk. There is no way the market is saturated if an 'newbie' can go out and get gigs without advertising. Trumpet blown, but it illustrates the point.
2 penneth given...
There are some truly awful photographers (imho) that seem to be making good money. Why?... business sense. Quite clearly there is still room in the market for somebody with good tog skills and good business sense. The squeeze is on those with only one or neither.
Personally, I picked up a dslr a little over 20 months ago and use it as a relaxing hobby mostly, yet next month i have 3 out of the 4 weekends booked and a few days in between, including a shoot for one of the most famous sporting teams in the uk. There is no way the market is saturated if an 'newbie' can go out and get gigs without advertising. Trumpet blown, but it illustrates the point.
2 penneth given...
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So they value the work of the OP enough to print a calendar but not enough to pay him??
Are they not going to pay you for ALL the printing runs or just the initial test ones. You need to ask them what the size of the first run is and if it is sucessful would it mean you get paid for subsequent runs.
Exactly this. This one of the replies i received from them when asking about a fee:
"This is the problem there is no budget available this time as it's a test run, we do run a main regional range which we pay for images as they are printed on such a large scale we have a budget to pay the photographers.
What we are hoping is that all of these test regionals will sell in 2012 which will warrant doing a large print run in 2013."
Of course, I only agreed to the use of them for this calender only.
Well yes, obviously. I thought we had already established that this company sources free images?
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Thank you.
tell that to the national mag that just printed some of our work (for money)
which incidentally they tried to get us to give them free images 8 or so months ago and we turned them down.
so rather than giving your own opinion on the subject you'd rather use someone elses, whether you believed it to be realistic or not?
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While that viewpoint has some truth to it there won't be an industry as it is if it keeps going this way. No matter how good you are, to make a living from it you need to be charging a fair whack to cover overheads and equipment and being able to eat, if people have to choose between OK photos for free and really good photos for £1000 a day or licensing fees in the hundreds of pounds per use then the industry will shrink to nothing because that choice is obvious for 80% of companies.
Seriously, it's inevitable we end up there right now and every news site is prospecting for free photos from idiots who're happy to give them away too - 'send us your photos...so we don't have to pay photojournalists'
My personal view is it's selfish from those who know better, you'd **** on people's income just to see your name on something? Not terribly nice in my view.
Then there's the aspect that you're turning down money because they're opening offer was 'we can't afford to pay', really, they're saying your images are good enough to sell a calendar but not good enough to pay for? Can't afford it? There are always royalties - 10% of sales revenue wouldn't have been unreasonable.
It's your choice at the end of the day and you've made clear what you think. I understand the superficial attraction but I think it's selling yourself short and screwing others for your ego in equal measures.
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That's true and fair but somewhat misses the point, commercial and contract work isn't what's at risk right now. When companies are getting somebody to come and take specific photos they're going to be paying, small companies are beginning to do the 'my mate down the pub has a D3100 and can take those shots for a few pints' thing but that's at the very low end where, to be honest, there's sod all money anyway.
I shoot fairly niche commercial work and get very decent money for it and I've never advertised at all. It's word of mouth and people seeing my work and asking 'who did you get to do that'. That's great and I enjoy it and I've done some really interesting stuff along the way (seeing next years custom titanium mountain bikes and playing with them for a weekend and getting paid for it isn't a bad gig). That work isn't going to go away anytime soon.
What's at risk is photo journalists, wildlife photographers and people shooting stock and landscapes more than anything. The first two because there's always somebody on the scene with a camera whenever anything interesting happens and they're stupid enough to give away the photos for free so they can go 'my photo was on the bbc'. It's the old Lions on a successful hunt thing - who is more likely to be there to record it? Wildlife photographer or tourist on safari? Today all those tourists have cameras.
The later because there's a far larger pool of photos out there, many taken by people for fun who aren't concerned about the money. Now yes, it's economics at work at the end of the day but it's still stupid because a) they could be making money from their work and b) they're knowingly or unknowingly screwing the people who take the really good shots in the process.
I have no problem with amateurs (by which I mean people with no prexisting ambitions to make money from it) taking the shots, them being used or whatever. If you want to be a professional you need to produce better work, that's a fair argument. But I have a problem with them giving them away for free, and caving to the 'if you charge we aren't interested argument', if nobody gives photos away for free they'll pay, if people do it's a race to the bottom.
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But there will always be people willing to give their work away for free.
True, if everyone charged, then these companies would have to pay, but that's simply not going to happen. Reminds me of listening to someone banging on about global warming along the lines of 'if we all did out bit ect' but again, that's not going to happen either.
The point you are making is completely vaild, but unrealistic in the real world.
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Yes, at the end of the day yes. Though the parallel you draw maybe illustrates my viewpoint - I know that no matter how much I do to be green, it's massively underminded not just by the indifferent in this country but around the world - but it doesn't stop me doing it. Futile? Likely, yes but it's still the right thing to do in my view.
I still disagree, but you've defended your position pretty well. Fair play.
As i've already said, i understand why the professionals would be upset by this and it's perfectly reasonable for them to want to defend their industry but at the same time they cannot expect amatuers like myself to feel the same way about an industry i'm not in surely?
Take PiKe for example, who on the first page of this thread asked if he could bill me for loss of earnings. Am i to believe that if his car broke down and he had a mate that could fix it for free that he would decline this offer because he didn't want to take away trade from the garage business?
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so rather than giving your own opinion on the subject you'd rather use someone elses, whether you believed it to be realistic or not?
I have clearly given my opinion there, as for the first instance when I used my boss's opinion, I felt/feel that he is in a much more authoritative position to comment on the industry rather than me who is merely (and will always be) a Part 1 architecture student.
I'm not saying and have not said that you should fully reverse your opinions, all I have said is that when you reacted to their equally confrontational reaction to the OP, it became one side against the other, when I feel on both parts some compromise should be shown.
Not to repeat myself, but I find myself in the middle ground of this, being a student and not a professional I would kill for some good exposure and wider coverage of my work, but I would also want to slowly introduce myself to teh business side of the industry.
I've tried to make it clear that I'm not taking sides in this argument, as I feel it is a debate that has room both ways. I even said that its not you (Steve M) that was to blame as you can expect an "amateur" (as you have been described) to want his/her images to be viewed, it is the company behind the calenders!
Lets all be friends again...
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I think it's reasonable to think you might show some consideration towards their predicament when you're aware of it because if you did then you wouldn't loose anything in the process. The only thing you stand to gain is, with no offence meant, some ego stroking.
Shorter and simplified version - you stand to gain very little, they stand to loose lots. Knowing that, it's something to take into consideration no?
I would also say your analogy is inaccurate (as all analogies are I guess) because you're reversing the positions. If your car breaks down and your friend fixes it then you've gained, in that you've saved substantial money. The more accurate analogy is that of your friend, who has gained nothing. That's fine when it's your friend, you owe him one, that's his gain as such, but what if it's just a random person you asked with no prior contact?
No it isn't reasonable at all, it's totaly unreasonable to expect soemone to worry about some person he doesn't know and has never met.
It is an open market, there is no need to worry about Mr A, B or C. he's not really worrying about you is, unless of course he thinks you are getting one over on him then it's rattle out of the pram time.
There are 70 million people in the uk, 40 million of them working, you cannot go through life trying to please all or even some of them regarding income, jobs and what is fair. you'd go mad if you tried.
You need to do what you think is right for you, this may upset people unfortuantely that is life, just remember those people that are upset are no different to you and will no doubt done exactly the same thing in one way or another.
But as usual on web forums the other people posting are whiter than white and they have never used someone, abused something or someone or taken advantage of a situation, in reality the only difference is they haven't posted it on a forum for people they don't know to **** off, call an idiot and criticise like you did and that's what has happened.
Lesson to be learned, don't bother many people just aren't worth it.
It is an open market, there is no need to worry about Mr A, B or C. he's not really worrying about you is, unless of course he thinks you are getting one over on him then it's rattle out of the pram time.
There are 70 million people in the uk, 40 million of them working, you cannot go through life trying to please all or even some of them regarding income, jobs and what is fair. you'd go mad if you tried.
You need to do what you think is right for you, this may upset people unfortuantely that is life, just remember those people that are upset are no different to you and will no doubt done exactly the same thing in one way or another.
But as usual on web forums the other people posting are whiter than white and they have never used someone, abused something or someone or taken advantage of a situation, in reality the only difference is they haven't posted it on a forum for people they don't know to **** off, call an idiot and criticise like you did and that's what has happened.
Lesson to be learned, don't bother many people just aren't worth it.
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Well each to their own I guess, personally I try to avoid screwing people over for no gain. If there's something to gain, all bets are off and each case on it's merits but when there's nothing to be gained...well that's a little sociopathic to me.
although he's not getting paid for the use of his images (no gain) can you not see there is some scope of potential paid work if another company sees these images and contacts the OP because of that (potential gain)?
I myself have given photos to my local paper for no fee but from that I have now got paid work from other papers covering their footy teams when they play the team i support as well as now being in the position of Club Photographer with the potential to sell images to players and their families meaning i can make a few quid out of this photography malarky.
As with the OP I dont see myself quitting my full time job to do this instead but its nice to see my name in the paper or on the club website and think.....I did that. Its something i enjoy doing and getting paid for certain aspects of it is a bonus.