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This Photograph Is Not Free

petapixel.com

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Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#141

Post by Tichy »

dextorious wrote: post #107
jdietrich wrote: post #48

The machinery needed to produce a ballpoint pen costs the best part of $10m. A ballpoint pen costs 20 cents. Cameras are expensive. Photographs are almost worthless. Supply utterly outstrips demand, especially for shots like landscapes that have great appeal for amateur photographers but little commercial utility. Ten years ago, you could name every paparazzo working in London. They were a small circle of time-served…

"""Cameras are expensive. Photographs are almost worthless. Supply utterly outstrips demand, especially for shots like landscapes that have great appeal for amateur photographers but little commercial utility.""" Really? Then the photographer could say: if that's so, go use ANOTHER picture, because I don't fu *n supply mine. You can't have it both ways, i.e the picture is worthless AND I still insist on using it.

Guess what will happen: people will just use other photographs. What is the gain for the photographer?

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#142

Post by ctdonath »

smackfu wrote: post #126
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.

Indeed; not a stretch to say he could have just happened across that opportunity while borrowing a cheap point-and-shoot, applying his skill at identifying & framing a shot and using whatever equipment at hand to its full potential.

Ultimately it's supply-and-demand: get paid $X because people are willing to pay that to acquire the image, regardless of his alleged talent and costs. As it is, he's handing out small copies of that image for free, while begging people to not violate abstract notions of intellectual property. Maybe someone will like the image enough to order a hard-to-make high-quality large-size limited-quantity signed-and-numbered copy and pay a dear price for it.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#143

Post by Tichy »

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if some food journalists or whatever get to dine for free in restaurants. Goods for exposure is a valid business proposition. It is valid to reject it, too, but I don't understand the fuss.

If 37signals would feature me on their homepage for a week I would probably also give them some "free" work in exchange. No offense taken.

I guess the "problem" is that he was approached by people he did not deem worthy. Reminds me of women who complain about being approached all the time, but I suspect they wouldn't complain about being approached by Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Just saying it is not the approaching that is actually the problem, it is the who is doing the approaching.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#144

Post by funkah »

Well, all I can do is wish you luck with all that. I'm an amateur photographer who could never take a photo that beautiful, but I get people hitting me up to use my photos for free sometimes. I just say no (my photos are CC licensed, but not for commercial use). I don't have any illusions about siccing my nonexistent lawyer on someone who steals my photos.

But, I agree that photographers should be paid for their work. People and firms just want to get things for as little cost as they can, that's why they do this and that's why they try to get freelancers to do spec work. It costs the firm nothing but a half-hearted promise that they'll be nice to the designer later.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#145

Post by brudgers »

dextorious wrote: post #111
aneth wrote: post #86

Many folks would be happy to allow their photos to be used just for "exposure" or even for fun. Likewise many writers would happily allow their writing to be published for free. This is the case for both aspiring professionals and amateurs who never intend to make significant money with their hobby. Unions often successfully pressure major players not to deal with these "scabs." There are some good arguements for mai…

"""Many folks would be happy to allow their photos to be used just for "exposure" or even for fun. Likewise many writers would happily allow their writing to be published for free. This is the case for both aspiring professionals and amateurs who never intend to make significant money with their hobby.""" More power to them. Many others DO NOT.

As this post illustrates, HN depends upon writers who allow their writing to be published for free.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#146

Post by powertower »

> As someone mentioned, THIS single photo didn’t cost me $6,612, but if you wanted to create it, from scratch, that is what is involved. So I consider it the replacement value if it’s stolen, or how much my lawyer will send you a bill for if it’s found being used without my permission.

I get it.

He is saying that he wants to charge the other person the amount it would cost FOR that other person to create this work from scratch (to buy all the equipment, etc).

But that's just one way to look at it, and it can roll down hill fast when you start including the cost of the amount of time and education that other person would need.

At the end of the day, when someone steals this photo, they don't also steal all the equipment and software that he used to create it. That remains as-is.

He would do better to claim copyright and ask for what he would charge x 3 (penalty) plus lawyer fees.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#147

Post by esonderegger »

mibbitor wrote: post #130
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…

Some content is inherently easy to copy. That doesn't mean it is without value. Copying a poem is easy, but copying a novel requires slightly more effort. Does that mean all poets should become novelists in order to make a living?

When the Beatles were making some of their best work (in my opinion), they weren't touring. Who are we to say that the recordings are without value, just because they are easily copied, and that they should have made their money by touring?

I'm frankly surprised to see this viewpoint stated so commonly on a site where I assume many people make their living writing code. Should your ability to make money be contingent on your ability to keep your source code hidden?

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#148

Post by dazbradbury »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #85
dazbradbury wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, I'm loving http://caption-of-the-day.com/ - but it appears to be broken. "Click to View" only activates the top post (in Firefox 9 at least). Will be adding you to my list of sites to visit regularly though... Secondly, whilst watermarking works for funny pictures, or people who solely sell artwork, it isn't something I would class as a solution. For people who mainly want to share their work, but simply don…

Thanks! I read his concerns about distribution a different way. If you give your photo away for “credit” then the best possible scenario for you is someone will see your photo, contact you, and ask if they could borrow one of your photos… for credit. Try this… next time you’re at dinner, tell your waiter you’ll tell all your friends how good the service was if he gives you dinner for free. It occurs to me that as muc…

"click to view" is supposed to slide out a section where I provide my own snarky comments

On your home page, go to the second post, and click...

You're javascript only slides things with the id sampleOuter. As you have multiple entries with the id sampleOuter on your homepage, most browsers will pick the first.

If you're intent is to slide open ALL of them, I'd use a class, rather than an ID.

If you're intent is to just slide open the one that's clicked on, you need each "sampleOuter" to have a unique identifier you can select it on. You can then pass that to your "toggleSampleView" method.

HTH.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#149

Post by happywolf »

lysol wrote: post #140
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…

People will come up with cash for things they thing are worth paying for. A picture of a sunset has little commercial value, but custom photography (weddings, etc) do. The customer doesn't care about his overhead, especially if he doesn't know how to calculate it. Why should they? If you want them to pony up, selling something worth buying. Musicians have figured it out, why shouldn't he?

The point is not on the worth of a sunset picture. He just wants anybody who uses this picture to compensate him.
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