This Photograph Is Not Free • Hacker News Board

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#191

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 5:36 PM UTC

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.

I have to agree with this. His reasoning falls apart on his second sale right? How long does he own that camera? How many pictures does he take? What is the marginal cost for the 'next' picture he takes? How many times does he sell the same picture?

There are two kinds of photography, 'on demand' and 'stock' which is to say you hire someone to come out and take pictures at your wedding that is 'on demand', you need a picture of a waterfall in Hawaii to put into a travel brochure you find one in a catalog, that is 'stock'.

The guy who takes wedding pictures has lots of great equipment. The guy that shot mine brought three cameras, one for shots around the event, one taking shots of the location , and a portrait setup for one on one pictures. Now he probably had 15 - 20K worth of gear there, but he does 10 - 15 weddings a year. So even amortizing with a lifetime of 3 years for each piece of gear his equipment 'cost' is worst case 30 shoots, so $666 per shoot.

I really do think the think the effect here is that it is so easy to put photographs on the web, and for many folks they just took the picture for themselves, they don't have any problem at all giving people rights to reproducing their picture anywhere. So people who acquire pictures ask for it free first, and then if you respond that no, you are only interested in selling it, you can come to a negotiation over price.

Unfortunately, from what I've read on photography blogs there are also some pretty large price / value discrepancies between photographers and buyers. This seems to lead to a number of blog postings like the one referenced with (often) one side of the story.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#192

Post by smackfu » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 5:37 PM UTC

swang wrote: post #187

joebadmo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is parallel to a recent HN thread on copyright: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3303796 I think photographers (like musicians) face two problems: the amateurization of photography, and the lack of marginal cost of distribution. Photographers need to figure out how to get paid. You can try to charge me the cost of production if you want, but I'm not going to pay it, esp. when there's a large and growing base…

He has figured out a way to get paid. He takes incredible pictures people want to use for their company and sells it to them. He has also mentioned that people who give stuff away for free or "credit" are just burned again later on because other companies don't want to pay, they want to "credit" As someone who considers himself an amateur photographer, there is no way I could just "reproduce" that for free to someone…

The problem is that nowadays, only the incredible photos get you paid. In the olden days, just having competent stock shots would get you paid too, but that has passed.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#193

Post by gcb » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

I have all this equipment for you use. And by your price breakdown i can pay your $0 hour.

when can you start working for me?

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#194

Post by Confusion » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

mibbitor wrote: post #164

Confusion wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it is pretty easy to kill someone. That doesn't mean it's morally acceptable, let alone legal. It doesn't matter how easy it is to copy the photograph. It's still not morally acceptable or legal. As to your second argument, that 'anyone can take pro quality photos with minimal talent': image quality isn't all that counts. In fact, it's substantially less important than composing a good photograph in the fir…

> Taking good photographs is as hard as it always was. Untrue. With digital, you can take 1,000 photos and chances are one will be fantastic. You can brute force brilliance. That wasn't true before digital. Photos are simply recording something that exists. It's not creating art as such (IMHO). So unlike painting / writing books / writing code, you could just sit a monkey there with a good camera, variety of lenses,…

  If you copy a photo of mine, I haven't lost anything. It's 
  a bad analogy.

If people consistently copy your photos with impunity, you've lost your job. The same goes for writer and movie makers.

  soon you'll have cameras that take a billion photos all at 
  the same time with every available setting, then allow you 
  to navigate through and select the best.

Good luck navigating through a billion photos...

  (And can also be automated by surveying people or doing 
  A/B testing etc)

... or autoselecting through a billion photographs. What's a good photograph is independent of how many people feel it's a good photograph. If you ask the general public to pick the best photos between some Cartier-Bresson's and some of your own black-and-white shots intended to appeal to the general public (assuming you have a moderate ability to make such photographs), I know what the outcome is. Entirely independent of what are actually the best photo's.

And even if you could auto-select the best shot, a billion photographs of people on some village square wouldn't include the shot this guy made. A billion photographs taken around noon would never have included this shot. A billion photographs with a different cliffline would never have included this shot. A bajillion monkeys will never write Shakespeare in the lifetime of the universe.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#195

Post by gph » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 6:00 PM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #183

gph wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but at the same time you shouldn't be hosting your pictures on the internet where anyone can copy it if you want to charge money for it. And you shouldn't let your customers either. If I was to place some proprietary code on a public git, or just display it on my public webpage, should I get angry if people take it and don't pay me for it? Same with music, if you place it on the internet expect it to be out the…

"""True, but at the same time you shouldn't be hosting your pictures on the internet where anyone can copy it if you want to charge money for it. """ This is "blame the victim". Posting something on the internet does not make it public domain. """If I was to place some proprietary code on a public git, or just display it on my public webpage, should I get angry if people take it and don't pay me for it?""" Yeah, you…

"Posting something on the internet does not make it public domain."

This is where I find your point to fall apart. The internet is NOT under the laws of any given nation and I doubt very much if some nations even have a sense of Public Domain or copyright. And even the ones that do can hardly agree on common terms.

So really your statement should be "Posting something on the internet does not make it public domain in certain jurisdictions if covered by applicable copyright laws"

And that is why it is stupid to expect something you post on the internet to not ever be copied without your permission.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#196

Post by Confusion » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 6:03 PM UTC

alex_c wrote: post #171

Confusion wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it is pretty easy to kill someone. That doesn't mean it's morally acceptable, let alone legal. It doesn't matter how easy it is to copy the photograph. It's still not morally acceptable or legal. As to your second argument, that 'anyone can take pro quality photos with minimal talent': image quality isn't all that counts. In fact, it's substantially less important than composing a good photograph in the fir…

You know, it is pretty easy to kill someone. That doesn't mean it's morally acceptable, let alone legal. It doesn't matter how easy it is to copy the photograph. It's still not morally acceptable or legal. And yet, people still kill each other on a daily basis. At some point it may become practical to take precautions not to get killed, or to move into a line of work or a place where you're less likely to get killed.

We've got a system in place to ensure very few people kill each other. It would be nice if that same system could ensure people wouldn't just copy photographs (for commercial purposes). And it actually does a reasonable job of that.

This guy wasn't arguing he has a hard time making a living, which is the argument that people seem to be replying to. He's arguing that people shouldn't copy photographs for commercial purposes. It's hard to see how anyone could disagree with that: I don't want my code copied either (well, specific parts of it). The question of what you should do when people in fact do copy your photographs is mostly separated from that.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#197

Post by ErikRogneby » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 6:11 PM UTC

He wasn't saying that this is what he would charge you for the photo, he was saying this is what he we sue you for if you use it without permission.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#198

Post by dspillett » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 6:20 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #134

dspillett wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The replacement value is actually much more than that. While I agree with his main point regarding letting someone use your output "for credit", judging the cost of a photo like this is more than somewhat bogus and makes his argument sound silly (so the people that need to listen to his correct point will just turn off long before they get to it). The replacement value for a photo has nothing to has very little to…

Most photos are worthless except to the person who took them. If someone uses your photo without permission you have not lost the photo so it does not need replacing. What he may have lost is the price he could have commanded for exclusive use of the image By that logic, if he allowed all his images to be used for free, he has not lost anything but the "exclusive use fee". You are missing two key points: 1) He is los…

I wasn't arguing against not using things for free (aside from agreeing with the parent post regarding small "sample" versions was a way to get the image noticed with lower risk of the full quality version being taken), I was questioning his way of calculating what he has lost through someone using the image without any sort of license.

Nothing is lost as such: the outfit using the image for nothing probably wasn't a potential sale anyway. This is copyright infringement, not theft. While setting his price any way he likes is his right, and he can sue that amount if someone uses the image without permission if he wants, this and "why you can't use the image for free or for credit" are separate issues which should not be conflated in this way. There is a big difference between someone asking for permission to use the image under different times (a lower, perhaps zero, price) and someone using the image without license - they are completely separate issues. One requires negotiation or just a straight no, and it then goes away. In the other case there may be need for legal redress.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#199

Post by Iv » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 6:23 PM UTC

This comment is not free. Using the same weird accounting method, it cost me around 1000$ to make. So what ?

If you don't want a file to be used, don't put it on internet. Understand what IT is, understand what it means to freely exchange information. You are right, you got free exposure, for free. That's why we get your image, for free. The information super-highways flow in both directions.

Re: This Photograph Is Not Free

#200

Post by asto » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 6:28 PM UTC

Honestly, that was a rubbish calculation! Price of the camera? Gas? Really?

The thing with any service that is heavily dependant on the person that does it, is that it cannot be priced by anyone other than the person doing it. How can you put a price on talent or skill or experience or luck or any of the non-material things that went into taking that picture? That picture is worth a million bucks if he says it is.