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This Photograph Is Not Free

petapixel.com

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Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#121

Post by parfe »

Well the comments here terribly disappoint me. Clearly the photographer wants to be paid as a professional, just like anyone else here.

The author should not have included any monetary figure in the article as doing so brings down the wrath of a thousand pedants with pocket calculators proving he overcharges and overvalues his work. So many people here seem to think they somehow "got him" on some straw-man price-point that clearly does not exist.

Meanwhile, the figure he calculated clearly exists to make the point that creating such an image costs more to him than clicking Save As... did to you and he wants to be appropriately compensated in dollars.

The fact the comments here seem to lack the professional empathy to jump from "How do you make money? Charge for your webapp!" To "How do you make money? Charge for your photos!" really shows how myopic the community can be. Not everyone builds a career around trying to make social network v35.0

tl;dr Pay photographers for their work, like you pay any other professional.

edit: And for a real cherry on top, the blog post itself appears to be taken in whole from http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmueller/6643032477/in/photo... I suppose John Mueller could have agreed to have his content republished but nothing indicates that to be the case and a skimming of the petapixel blog doesn't seem to include many guest contributors.

The author's real blog is at http://johnbmuellerphotography.blogspot.com/

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#122

Post by mrcharles »

nphase wrote: post #102
bad_user wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because people doing weddings are NOT selling photographs. They are selling their time and expertise, which will always be in short supply.

Kind of. Let's not forget that most wedding photographers explicitly own the rights to the photos they take of your wedding, and have print and digital packages they explicitly push both to you and to your friends and family as part of their offering. Some wedding photographers don't even offer the digital pictures as part of their base packages.

If you push the issue, you can get your full res digital photos. If nothing else, find a photographer who is trying to break in to the business, and who is still small time. That's what we did for our wedding, and we got really great photos (both posed and candid, as the photographers were actually a husband-wife combo, one doing each), as well as a full dvd with every single photo they took, and the rights to do whatever we wanted with them.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#123

Post by 286c8cb04bda »

nphase wrote: post #102
bad_user wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because people doing weddings are NOT selling photographs. They are selling their time and expertise, which will always be in short supply.

Kind of. Let's not forget that most wedding photographers explicitly own the rights to the photos they take of your wedding, and have print and digital packages they explicitly push both to you and to your friends and family as part of their offering. Some wedding photographers don't even offer the digital pictures as part of their base packages.

most wedding photographers explicitly own the rights to the photos they take of your wedding

Like most things, that's negotiable. When I went looking for a photographer for our wedding, one of the first questions I asked was "How much extra do you want for a copyright assignment?"

The additional charge varied from $0-500. The ladies we chose -- though primarily for other reasons -- were in $0 group.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#124

Post by mibbitor »

SquareWheel wrote: post #60
yummybear wrote: post #3

I guess he only uses his camera, lens and PC once and then throws them away.

And once one person uses the photo, all other copies of it need to be deleted.

A friend told me a bizarre story... His local library also allows you to borrow eBooks. Apparently they work by "expiring" after some time limit.

He went in to borrow an eBook, but the librarian said "Oh I'm sorry, that copy is currently on loan at the moment".

Kinda defeats the whole point of things being digital...

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#125

Post by its_so_on »

its_so_on wrote: post #101

wrong. This photograph WAS not free. For you. As for me, I've just seen it, read some of your text underneath, and moved on. Until you can actually stop USERS from benefiting from someone ELSE doing the same thing with your work, your work very much IS free.

Well, excuse me for explaining how the Internet works. I agree with the sentiment, but you also have to look at reality, which is that the cost of reproduction does not even involve going down to a copy shop. It's a tough market, and that's the reality. Why not add a watermark?

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#126

Post by smackfu »

parfe wrote: post #121

Well the comments here terribly disappoint me. Clearly the photographer wants to be paid as a professional, just like anyone else here. The author should not have included any monetary figure in the article as doing so brings down the wrath of a thousand pedants with pocket calculators proving he overcharges and overvalues his work. So many people here seem to think they somehow "got him" on some straw-man price-poin…

I think the comments are fine, because the entire premise of the blog post is wrong. He should be paid because his skill as a photographer is worth money, not because he paid for a lot of expensive equipment.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#127

Post by cdr »

parfe wrote: post #121

Well the comments here terribly disappoint me. Clearly the photographer wants to be paid as a professional, just like anyone else here. The author should not have included any monetary figure in the article as doing so brings down the wrath of a thousand pedants with pocket calculators proving he overcharges and overvalues his work. So many people here seem to think they somehow "got him" on some straw-man price-poin…

I think you meant "a thousand pedants".

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#128

Post by brlewis »

csomar wrote: post #14
sirrocco wrote: post #6

If you really go ahead and try to recreate that photo ... you must first invent the universe. And that's going to cost a lot !

This is extremely interesting. What prove that it is yours if you are taking photos of state-owned lands? Do you have the right to sell photos for money for things (lands/nature/sky) that you don't own?

If yours is the only creative work that contributed to the photograph, then copyright on it is exclusively yours. If the creative work of a landscaper or architect is involved, consult a lawyer.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#129

Post by antrover »

Some people take photographs because they just like taking photographs, like myself. If someone happened to use one of my photos, then so be it. I'm not in it to make money. I'm in it because I like the process of taking a photo, as well as editing it. After that, I'm done with it. Steal it! Remix it! Open source it!

All my photos on flickr have a Creative Commons license of "Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike". My photos have ended up on some great web sites: Rolling Stone, Yes Magazine, NY Magazine, city newspaper sites, random blogs, etc... I didn't receive one dime from them, but I did receive a link back to my flickr page in the photo credit. Even when they offered compensation, I turned them down.

Some people think that if they have fancy gear, they'll take better photos. This is not always the case. Photography is more art than having great gear. Does having a sweet ass laptop make you a better programmer? I don't have super fancy gear: A Canon T1i, and some pretty decent 2.8 lenses (Tamron 2.8 17-50, Sigma 2.8 70-200, Lens Baby, Canon 50mm 1.8). Any camera can take an award winning photo (I work for the largest stock photography company and have seen this to be true more times than not).

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#130

Post by mibbitor »

parfe wrote: post #121

Well the comments here terribly disappoint me. Clearly the photographer wants to be paid as a professional, just like anyone else here. The author should not have included any monetary figure in the article as doing so brings down the wrath of a thousand pedants with pocket calculators proving he overcharges and overvalues his work. So many people here seem to think they somehow "got him" on some straw-man price-poin…

A webapp is run as a service. You're charging people for a service you provide. That makes it very hard to copy.

A photo isn't a service. It's a collection of bytes that is trivial to copy.

If you want to make money as a photographer, you need to structure it in a way that means it's hard to copy. But these days, anyone can take pro quality photos with minimal talent. If he's an exceptional photographer, he should be able to charge for his time when taking photos. But that's about it.

With the music industry, artists can move from selling CDs to doing more live tours. Not sure that's something photographers can really do.

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