Wellll, if you were being argumentative and I was foolish enough to rise to it, I'd point out that he is pretty successfully commercially http://philip.greenspun.com/personal/resume-photo-list Plus outside of Photography he has created a lot of very successful software and given it away for free, written books and given them away for free, and indeed create a university degree and gave that away for free too, so whilst you can say that a lot of his photos are nothing special and not get much disagreement from me, if you're saying his outlook is based on putting relatively little at stake I'd dispute that.
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Opinions on these images please
- Thread starter swisser
- Start date
The trouble is there are so many variables. For example I only work via ad agencies and design companies, I very very rarely accept commissions via direct contact. That probably sounds strange but direct clients simply dont understand why i charge what i do. They think I earn the fee i charge every day of every week and so are forever asking for reduced fees. Ad Agencies and the account managers understand the reality so I simply quote on jobs and if i miss out because I am too expensive so be it. Also ad agencies tend to pay me on time but direct clinets were always slow. So the point of this is that not all photographers get their future work via people seeing photos online. I visit ad agencies with my portfolio, I prefer it that way, my website is merely a presence and doesnt really show much of what i do.
So here is an example of what I battle. Every now and then an ad agency will come to me asking if we can get a reduced fee as their client doesnt have the budget for the shots they want. In these cases i can license the shots for a specific time period and usage which in turn leaves me to sell the images elsewhere if I want once the license has expired. Now this has happened to me, another company scanned the glossy publication with the image and then used it online to sell their products. The ad agency came back wanting to know what was going on and it came back to me to police this usage. This has happened more than once in the last 10 years.
The big problem is that there is a very wide range of types of photographer, a wide range of types of usage and a wide range of circumstances which make it impossible for a one rule fits all. My only gripe is that so many people dont value their work, their ability, their intellectual property. The end result is that commissioned magazine photography fees have remained pretty much the same for 20 years now. I used to shoot for UK Car magazine, their editorial commissions are the same amount as they were in 1998. So much is given away freely or taken without permission that it is harder to earn a fair and reasonable living than it used to be. The people who argue that its ok are those who dont do this full time and are trying to make a living.
Ultimately when we just accept that this is how it is we just end up hurting ourselves. We are quite a different problem to what the music industry is grappling with.
So here is an example of what I battle. Every now and then an ad agency will come to me asking if we can get a reduced fee as their client doesnt have the budget for the shots they want. In these cases i can license the shots for a specific time period and usage which in turn leaves me to sell the images elsewhere if I want once the license has expired. Now this has happened to me, another company scanned the glossy publication with the image and then used it online to sell their products. The ad agency came back wanting to know what was going on and it came back to me to police this usage. This has happened more than once in the last 10 years.
The big problem is that there is a very wide range of types of photographer, a wide range of types of usage and a wide range of circumstances which make it impossible for a one rule fits all. My only gripe is that so many people dont value their work, their ability, their intellectual property. The end result is that commissioned magazine photography fees have remained pretty much the same for 20 years now. I used to shoot for UK Car magazine, their editorial commissions are the same amount as they were in 1998. So much is given away freely or taken without permission that it is harder to earn a fair and reasonable living than it used to be. The people who argue that its ok are those who dont do this full time and are trying to make a living.
Ultimately when we just accept that this is how it is we just end up hurting ourselves. We are quite a different problem to what the music industry is grappling with.