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It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

seattletimes.com

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Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#2
> Getty has been criticized for selling the rights to photos that are freely available in the public domain.

Searching for images on the web can sometimes mitigate this issue. Search by Image (maintainer here) can help you to quickly find alternative sources for images. It also supports several stock photo sites, so price comparison becomes easier. Visit the extension's options to enable the search engines you need.

https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#3
It's a-typical. Make prices lower for customers, resulting in same or more revenue for the middle man (Getty, et al.) while screwing the producers.

Eventually, good photographers will leave.

Getty should be compensating lower prices by taking lesser share from the producers.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#4
I appreciate the work of photographers, but plunking down $500 for a high-res photo and knowing they're going to resell that same photo to others god knows how many more times has always rubbed me the wrong way.

I get there's hardware/time involved in setting up a single photo, but hell, not that much.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#5
post #4

I appreciate the work of photographers, but plunking down $500 for a high-res photo and knowing they're going to resell that same photo to others god knows how many more times has always rubbed me the wrong way. I get there's hardware/time involved in setting up a single photo, but hell, not that much.

These people aren't fabulously wealthy, that's the pricing they need to be able to sustain themselves.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#6
The article says that Getty is still deriving most of their revenue from generic stock photos? That was quite surprising to me, since Wikimedia Commons among other sites provides plenty of such images under "free content" licenses (including images in the public domain). Perhaps the typical downstream reuser is unwilling to resort to these for some reason?

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#8
Getty is the epitome of the evil corporation. They threatened a number of my customers (who all won against Getty via lawyers) for putting photos on their sites with dubious ownership rights.

I have experience with copyright law (unpleasantly) and there is a process required by the law to actually win a settlement on copyright infringement, and Getty uses thug tactics and threats to get small parties to pay up.

Their empire deserves to crumble.

https://www.extortionletterinfo.com/

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#9
post #4

I appreciate the work of photographers, but plunking down $500 for a high-res photo and knowing they're going to resell that same photo to others god knows how many more times has always rubbed me the wrong way. I get there's hardware/time involved in setting up a single photo, but hell, not that much.

You are subsidizing the thousand other photos that didn't sell with that one purchase. Of course photographers would love to only take pictures that sell, but it's impossible to tell ahead of time which one of the thousand will be the hit.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#10
post #4

I appreciate the work of photographers, but plunking down $500 for a high-res photo and knowing they're going to resell that same photo to others god knows how many more times has always rubbed me the wrong way. I get there's hardware/time involved in setting up a single photo, but hell, not that much.

It’s not just the time it took to take that single photo. It’a also the many, many photos taken that didn’t make the cut.
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