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This photograph is free

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Re: This photograph is free

#81

Post by yangez »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #56
yangez wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not entirely accurate. The original "this photograph is not free" article wasn't an attempt to prevent his own images from being copied. It was an attempt to influence OTHER photographers not to give away their photos for free. I've worked for a long time in the photography industry. In my experience there are two things that justifiably piss photographers off in a very major way: 1. Getting their photo rippe…

I would like help understanding this since it runs very counter to my understanding. As I understand the economics of the photography market, there are several factors at work. 1) Equipment - this affects the source quality of a picture and thus how it will look when reproduced. Early on a limiting factor was very 'slow' film requiring long exposures, and also limits of grain size which required larger surface area t…

I appreciate your in-depth analysis, looks pretty accurate to me. I think the tone of my original post falsely suggested that I thought no one should give their photos away for free. This isn't true - I firmly believe that if people stopped complaining about factors outside their control (like other photographers giving away photos) and instead spent the time honing their craft, maybe there wouldn't be so much to complain about. However, I do understand where photographers are coming from.

> On a per transaction basis the market value of a photograph may be lower, but those lower prices cause more people to buy photographs, thus increasing the total economic value.

The problem here is that the market for these photos is fairly inelastic. The people who are taking photos aren't the ones buying them. At the lowest end of the spectrum, free photos don't generate any increase in demand. For instance, the fact that a magazine can get a photo for free doesn't mean that they're going to want to buy more stock photos. It's just going to make them want more photos for free.

Consider how a web developer would feel if there was suddenly a huge influx of high-quality web developers who would develop entire projects for free. Obviously this is economically infeasible in this industry, but that's basically why photographers are mad when it happens to them.

Re: This photograph is free

#82

Post by _delirium »

tikhonj wrote: post #74
synth wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we put on our blinders and ignore the larger issue, asking an artist for free stuff is rather condescending. As Mueller says, why should magazines, advertisers, websites or corporations expect or ask for free work? (Let's not pretend it's anything other than this) If the artist didn't already put it on a Creative Commens license or similar (or has indicated that he is willing to give non-commercial licenses to peo…

It might just be a difference in cultures, but in my experience if you, for example, ask a sys-admin for Linux help, they are more than happy to spend time on it. There is no stigma about asking for this sort of help even though you're basically asking a professional to work for free (at least in the Linux communities I'm familiar with). I've seen people spend hours helping others debug some issues. Also, most progra…

On the latter point, sometimes people are downright ecstatic to do so; if someone wrote up a little piece of software and stuck it online, and then never heard from anyone, they're often really pleased if you write in with a question, because it means someone actually is using the software for something.

Re: This photograph is free

#83

Post by dools »

tptacek wrote: post #57

Or, "How not to make money selling software: a succinct illustration of cost-based and market-based (specifically, value-based) pricing in just two comment threads." Why can Github charge FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR for a local install of Github and succeed, impressively so, despite a small army of nerds pointing out how inexpensive it is to run one's own Git server and Gitorious? Why does 37signals have an office…

††† (Actually this isn't all what comparative advantage is; comparative advantage says, if there's a market for widgets and a market for photos and you're better at widgets than photos and I'm better at photos than widgets, then I should do widgets and you should do photos, which is a subtly different idea, but the point stands either way.)

Surely this is supposed to be the other way around. If I'm better at photos than widgets, and you're better at widgets than photos, then I should do the photos and you should do the widgets ... right? Crazy pills?

Re: This photograph is free

#84

Post by tptacek »

dools wrote: post #83
tptacek wrote: post #57

Or, "How not to make money selling software: a succinct illustration of cost-based and market-based (specifically, value-based) pricing in just two comment threads." Why can Github charge FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR for a local install of Github and succeed, impressively so, despite a small army of nerds pointing out how inexpensive it is to run one's own Git server and Gitorious? Why does 37signals have an office…

††† (Actually this isn't all what comparative advantage is; comparative advantage says, if there's a market for widgets and a market for photos and you're better at widgets than photos and I'm better at photos than widgets, then I should do widgets and you should do photos, which is a subtly different idea, but the point stands either way.) Surely this is supposed to be the other way around. If I'm better at photos t…

Yep, thanks for catching that.

Re: This photograph is free

#86

Post by davidw »

"Mozilla Europe: Founder and president"

So ultimately, his money comes from Google advertisements, which are not free. He can afford to do photography as a hobby because he has income from another source, that can be traced back to a scarce good.

If all information goods were free, the power would shift to those who actually have something scarce to sell, which would likely mean fewer information goods of some kinds because some people at the margin could no longer afford to produce them if they were no longer able to generate an income by doing so.

Re: This photograph is free

#87

Post by Samuel_Michon »

From the blogpost:

"I took the picture because I like taking pictures. I've invested into a lot of money into camera gear over the past 27 years or so and never made a dime from it. On the other hand, it has given me a lot of joy and pride. The joy to take beautiful pictures."

The author is an amateur photographer, he shares his work and people enjoy it. That's great.

There are also quite a few developers who contribute to open source projects. That doesn't mean that they or others can't ever charge for programming work or software products.

Some photographers license all of their work to the public domain, most professional photographers don't. I don't feel there's shame in that. People need to respect and adhere to the license a work is published in. The fact that you had to download a picture in your browser to view it doesn't mean you have the right to republish it.

Re: This photograph is free

#88

Post by jenius »

potatolicious wrote: post #43
jenius wrote: post #8

I could not be happier about this article, and the fact that the two are presented next to each other. While I totally agree with @aspir in that both points of view are valid and deserve to be respected, I think this is the right attitude, and the one that will really get you ahead. If photography is your full time job and you are not getting paid for it, sure you have a reason to complain. You are doing good work, a…

> "Because when you don't, it will spread, people will enjoy it, your reputation will go up, and you will end up making money from it either way." This is actually precisely the point the original blog post was arguing against. Do you know how many times professional creatives hear that argument? "You should do this for free, because it'll offer exposure and reputation." Except, 99% of the time, the people saying thi…

I'd also like to mention, since I apparently got downvoted because of this response, that it completely misinterpreted my original comment, quite clearly. When people ask me to do work for them for free, there's no way I'd agree. Of course that's stupid, and I've heard that plenty of times, and turned it down every time.

What I was saying, and what I thought I made clear but apparently didn't enough, was that you should be doing work because you love it. And if you do work in your free time because you love it, you shouldn't be throwing a hissy fit when you aren't making immense profits from it.

You should not do custom work for other people for free, I never advocated this. There is no indication in the original article that someone hired him to take that photo, and I would say it's fair to assume that he definitely was not hired to take it. He took it himself, because he wanted to, in his free time. And now he's complaining that he put it online and people want to use it. That's where I call bullshit.

Re: This photograph is free

#90

Post by alanfalcon »

sethg wrote: post #46
potatolicious wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "All of the professional fotogs I know are paid not for photos the have taken, but for photos people would like them to take" You don't know any stock photogs?

Is it possible to make a living as a stock photographer these days? I’m curious how people manage that.

This guy makes more than a living (from the look of things):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYkNKP96b84

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