SpiderPic -How Stupid Can Photographers Be?

Let's get the upside out of the way here - SpiderPic is a great solution for the photo buyer, in the short term. SpiderPic is an aggregator that brings together search results across microstock sites, showing you your results, and in examples like at right, where there are identical images - which place has the best price. Paul Melcher, in his piece - A Microstock Price War? - has a good analysis of this service, and was where I first learned about it.

I have not delved deep into the ownership of SpiderPic, but what I have learned is that their revenue is from referrals to each of the microstock sites, where they take a piece of each transaction. Melcher is right - this will create a price war. Further, guess what - the loser will be - that's right - the photographer.

But how stupid can these photographers really be?

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If you are one of the many photographers who are selling the exact same image in different portals, at difference rates, for the same exact usage, then you need to re-think your common sense - not to mention your business sense.

Do I blame SpiderPic for facilitating this? Yes, and no. First, they are just making it easier to do what someone previously had to do manually, and so, for that service, they get a piece. However, as creative budgets get slashed by these low prices, budgets will make it all but impossible to create fresh content for assignments, and that's bad long term.

Now all the microstock photographers can pile on here in the comments, with sentiments like "I just want to see my photo in print, who cares about the money..." and "...for some of us it's not about the money it's about the fame..." and other equally idiotic sentiments. go ahead and subsidize multi-national corporations and mega-corporation quarterly reports with your EOS Rebel or D90 photos. Some day, you'll tire of all the work and the market will be so flooded you'll lose interest. Go ahead - I'll wait.....that's right, patience is a virtue, and while I have more than I need of it, clearly one "virtue" of these microstockers is that they couldn't care less about the profession of photography as a sustainable endeavor. SpiderPic's results demonstrates just one more manifestation of that.

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Monkey Business & Photography

Q: Why is a monkey smarter than 98% of all microstock photographers?

A: Because the monkey can feed herself by taking photos.

Sadly, this isn't a joke, it's the truth. Paul Melcher, over on his "Thoughts of a Bohemian" blog (here), shares the news that a 33 year old Orangutan earns a raisin for every photo taken.

Let's see - why don't we do the math: reports from some photographers suggest a ratio low ratio of images "snapped" to images "accepted", and it's not unreasonable to believe that 100 or more images are taken at a shoot. So, you shoot, say, a gross of 500 images and get, say, 10 accepted. Your monkey competitor has earned 500 raisins. That's about equivalent to 9 15 oz boxes of Sun-Maid raisins. A 15 oz box of Sun-Maid raisins sells for $2.50 at Safeway.com. So, after 500 photos, the monkey has earned $37.50 in raisins. In order for a microstocker to have $37.50 to spend on food (i.e. a personal item), they have to have earned $75 in taxable income because between federal, state, and self-employment/social-security taxes on their microstock income, they are paying 50% taxes on their profits, and we all know that microstockers argue that it doesn't cost them a thing to make photos, so whatever they earn is profit, right?

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How long does it take for those 10 accepted photos to make $75? Quite awhile, when the average per-sale figure is about $2, according to Jim Pickerell, in this article.

The numbers could be even worse. According to the iStock Contributors site here, the TOP contributor, Yuri Arcurs, in 4 years only has 5,006 files uploaded, which equates to 104 images a month, on average, that are accepted. the site lists Arcurs as having 136 new files in the last 30 days. In his profile here, it is suggested he shoots "hundreds of 39mp files per day...", so assuming he shoots 5 days a week, and let's say 200 images a day, that's 1,000 a week, 4,000 a month, and he's only getting 136 accepted - and he's the TOP guy? That's a 3.5% shoot-to-acceptance ratio.

So yes, this generalization of math and microstock income provides the rough estimation that even a monkey is smarter than almost all microstock photographers.

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Don't Pay Lip-Service to Liability

Every day, people calculate what reasonable risk is, from crossing the street, to signing a contract where you agree to pay for the lawsuits that arise when you have indemnified your multi-million dollar corporate clients for their mis-uses of your photos beyond your control. A few weeks into a second year law student's licensing class, this academic (Indemnification, 9/22/09) somehow deigns that they can offer advice in the form of opinion about how you shouldn't have a "hissy fit" over indemnification issues. This is like getting a photographer in their sophomore year in college to shoot your ad job with millions of dollars in an ad buy and tens of thousands of dollars in pre and post-production on the line. Maybe it will work, but should you take the risk?

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More often than desirable, photographers get KILLED on indemnification, especially where there are people in the photographs and the client's usage of the image, including the text in the ads (which is outside of the control of the photographer, but which nevertheless results in a high level of liability to the photographer if the photographer is dumb enough to follow pay lip-service to issues of liability) results in a lawsuit by the models, even though the photographer obtained signed model releases. Lawyers all too often rip to shreds even signed model releases. Lawsuits will be for millions in lost modeling fees, emotional distress, etc.. Far exceeding the photographer's insurance against such things. Yes, millions.

It is one thing for photographers to indemnify their client against the photographers' actions, or those under the direction of the photographer (like an assistant). However, in the interests of parity, your contract should indemnify you against their mis-use of the images outside of the scope of the license and/or model release, it's only fair.

The bigger problem is that photographers are all to often told that the terms of a contract are non-negotiable. On the point that these are negotiable, we can agree. Everything is negotiable. Heck, the old joke applies - the man who offers a million dollars to sleep with a beautiful woman who agrees, is then asked "well would you take $50k?" She responds "who do you think I am?" To which the man replies "we've already established you are a prostitute, now we're just haggling over the price."

That "hissy-fit" you might have been having will look like you didn't even put up a fight when a judgement that exceeds your business insurance means you have to sell your home to cover the judgement against you. (By the way, this isn't theoretical, it has happened.) Have a real lawyer, one who has graduated, passed the bar, and has some experience under their belt, give you advice that you pay for, and have one skilled AND EXPERIENCED in contracts look at yours to make sure they are lawful for your jurisdiction. Have your lawyer look at indemnification clauses, or compare the ones in your contract against the ones you are being presented with, and negotiate for the terms that are in yours. Really. Not doing this could well mean that the proverbial wheels, doors, and chrome trim will fall off the vehicle that is your business, and there won't be enough auto parts in the world to put humpty dumpty back together again.

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Marketing is NOTHING like Dating

Contrary to what some people might mislead you to believe (Dating No 1), marketing is nothing like dating. In marketing, you are trying to establish a business relationship whereby you provide a service, for a fee, and the client gets to benefit from your creativity. In the dating world, this would thus be a "car date", and in dating, you are trying each other out for the possibility of a long-term deeply personal relationship, not a financial one. Women, In those instances, are referred to as gold diggers, or worse.

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In irresponsible dating, you spot someone you find attractive, and then fumble through the process of seeing if you are compatible. If you were to exercise this approach in your marketing efforts, your level of failure would be very very high. In fact, photographers every day practice "dating" marketing. Looking at the publications like Vanity Fair or National Geographic as printed parallels to an available Jennifer Anniston or Brad Pitt, photographers drool at the notion of working for these magazines much like fans drool over attractive celebrities, and barrel head on trying to "get with them". The problem is, there is no 400 lb body guard protecting those photo editors from the dolts and floozies that are throwing themselves upon the VF/NGS/etc alters in an irresponsible way. These photographers don't bother to see if they are a good fit, like the photographer Jeffrey Thayer did when he made his recent "pilgrimage" to NYC, as recounted on the liveBooks REVOLVE blog here. Thayers' result - heard more than once " I was able to discuss the publications’ visions and to show where mine could complement it. They both enjoyed my work and, the greatest compliment, said that some of my images “are such (insert magazine title here) shots.”

Did Thayer have those successful encounters by "trying out" his clients, to see if there's a fit? Did he waste the time of the photo editors/art buyers/etc fumbling to see if there was a good fit? Not at all. He was thoughtful in his approach. He didn't try to sell himself above or below his abilities or style. He researched where his style could compliment and benefit the magazines and clients. When was the last time you approached dating thinking "hey, they'll really benefit in so many ways by dating me!" (That is the fastest way to getting the cold shoulder from the apple of your eye.)

Equating marketing to dating just doesn't pass the smell test, unless you want to be errant and irresponsible about both, and lather up in some eau de photographer in the process.

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Not Out-Gunned, Devalued

Everytime I post something or read somewhere where something is written that is critical of amateur, pro-sumer, volunteer, or free photographers, whether these folks are in credentialed positions, getting a magazine cover or photo in an ad or newspaper, I hear some variation of "...you pros are just worried about getting out gunned...". Honestly, nothing could be further from the truth.

A pro knows the value of their work, and, as a result, the value of the effort they bring to the assignment. Product shot on white seamless? Seems simple, but it's not. What about transfer edges? Highlight shapes? Angle/perspective, and so on. This is one of a hundred examples I could provide. Case in point - I recently had a client drive a long distance to come to my studio for a product shot. At the conclusion of the shoot, he commented that he had no idea how much went into doing a shoot to get superior results. He expected it to take an hour for four products. It took seven hours (frankly, much of that time was product-build time). Afterwards he recognized what was involved, and definitely pleased with the results.

When someone sells a commodity for $10 that everyone else is selling for $100, it devalues that commodity. If the commodity was easily selling for $100, why would someone - anyone - sell it for $10?

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Photography is, however, not a commodity. Just because some people choose to devalue it to that point, treat it as such, price it as such, doesn't make it so.

Some organizations have chosen to price images, for example, by the pixel dimensions alone. This does not take into account so many things, it's just rediculous. The image of the hindenberg engulfed in flames or JFK being shot cannot be priced by the pixel. Doing so devalues the work because it does not take into account the content of those images.

Consider, for a moment, that an inventor created a product, and it costs that inventor $10 in materials and overhead, per product, to manufacture it. Following common business practices, that product will wholesale for $20 each. Following again common business practices, that product will retail for $40, and likely sell on the street for around $30. Understand, this is an example and these are generalizations.

With those figures in place, the company decides to spend $250,000 for ad space (online and in print) to market the product. It is to be your photograph, of the product looking so cool and so amazing, that is the entire ad, with a tag line "Buy it and be cool". As a result, the client sells 250,000 products. That means that the client spent $2.5M in raw materials, and netted $2.5M in profit. The retailer too grossed $2.5M as the middleman for the product, providing retail shelf-space. How much are you, the creative mind behind the image that convinced the buying public to actually buy, due? 1% of the profits? 5%? How about just 10% of the ad buy? What if your single image were one of four on the page, would you be due 0.25% or 1.25% of the profits, or 2.5% of the ad buy?

A photographer brings to an assignment an understanding of the subject and their quirks. Whether it's a sporting event, where you know how a particular player will likely act, a portrait where your subject has a duration they will be willing to sit for before their unhappiness at being photographed shows in their expressions, or food photography, where the concoctions that photograph like, say, ice cream, are almost inedible despite looking great through the cameras lens, all assignments have challenges. Can any given photographer stumble into a great photo? Sure. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile. The pro however, must get it right at a level of expectation for success that approaches that of a surgeon. The problem is, unknowning clients look at the bottom line and then ascribe equality to an amateur's work and that of a seasoned professional. In the end, the client is unaware of the risks, however, the damage of devaluing photography has been done. The client will just blame the photographer when the shoot fails, not themselves for hiring the photographer without a proven track record of success.

The collateral damage of the client choosing on price, is that photographers will feel pressure from clients to lower their prices, and some will. Then there will be more pressure, and more lowering of prices. Please understand, I am not writing this as someone who has lowered their prices (I have not), but as someone who is watching as photographers' sales reports that used to show average per-image licensing of upwards of $600 now showing those same images for similar uses averaging under $100. Further, photographers who used to earn $2,500 off an original assignment and several thousand dollars in re-sales licensing over the years are now being expected to sign away all rights (and thus all future resales) for $1,000.

In the end, not only are you devaluing your work, and those of your colleagues, you are doing damage to a profession that is a passion for most in it, and you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

I know of no photographer who feels the young upstart photographer, the amateur photographer, or even the pro-sumer will "out gun" them, but almost all of the photographers I talk to about this know that these same folks are devaluing their work. Interestingly enough, that means that the pro sees quality, capability, and talent in the images produced, and knows they are worth much more than they are being given away for.

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No, You're Not Entitled To Anything

As my mother used to say, there are no guarantees in life, except death and taxes .A subset of those non-guarantees, is "nobody owes you anything, and you're not entitled to anything either."

Generally speaking, I think the last generation that thought they had to actually earn something is generation X. Generation Y, The millennials, and the youth of today, believe that everybody should get a ribbon, there are no winners and no losers, and you're owed a job once you graduate.

There are a few universal truths, so let's enumerate a few:

1) There will always be winners and losers. Period

2) Graduation from school prooves one thing - you can finish something you started. Beyond that, you'll have to demonstrate hard work, commitment, and a willingness to pay your dues.

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I don't care if you're God's gift to landscape artistry, sports, fashion, or news photography, or somehow have a perspective no one has ever seen before. You still must pay your dues. You still must do hard work.

If you somehow have a reflex that puts you next in line to take Nemo's place in the Matrix, and you apply that to your trigger finger and focus ring to minimize lag time to take the best ball-on-bat/puck-in-frame/etc images, you don't just get called up to the majors right away. You have to prove you can do all of the other things related to it, like writing a solid caption, knowing the game and all the players, and being able to transmit on deadlines that are often unreasonable. That means starting in the bush league, youth sports, and so on.

If you have a nose for news, and somehow put yourself where the news is about to happen (no arsonists need apply) you might get some attention if you always have the flames licking up the side of a building when the rest of the photo dogs turn up and capture just the smouldering embers. If you can listen to a police scanner and know what's happening in real time, and not have any other assignments to get to before the perp walk, you might make a few good images. That said, even if the paper publishes your work from these spot news "gets", they don't owe you a staff job, or anything other than fair compensation for your images. They have no idea how you'd work on other assignments, or if you can be the generalist they need in addition to being Johnny-on-the-spot.

Fashion is it's own world, and to quote Heidi Klum, "you're either in, or you're out." Fashion is a fickle bird, and not even the best designers survive year to year. One year your work is all over Saks Fifth Avenue, the next, it's crowding the floors at Off Saks. Same for fashion photography. Everyone thinks it's glamorous, and everyone wants to photograph the pretty girls. However, who's photographing the handsome men? There's about a 50/50 split in the population, but you don't see any "will do trade-for-print with male models" ads. All of the ads for products I saw when I just read the latest issue of a photo trade magazine showed women as models - faces painted sliver/gold/bright colors. Yes, I know that sells cars, tools, and (atleast for men) makes the world go 'round and has started more than one war. However, you should not only be able to demonstrate good female model photography, but also male model photography. More importantly, though, is your ability to actually handle a shoot where models are present and being paid. (Models getting paid for modeling, is, after all, their ultimate goal - then you can call yourself a professional model.) Managing the catering, wardrobe, lighting assistants, props, and so on (not to mention the on-set client) takes time and a completely different skill set than knowing how a model (male or female) looks their sexiest. Annie Liebovitz, interviewed recently for Time (here) said "if something goes wrong with a photo shoot, it's my fault. It's up to me, it's my responsibility...if I don't get a good picture, I don't blame my subject, I blame me." Don't look at fashion photographs and in a smart-alecy way suggest that somehow you could do it better. Yes, I know that the proof is in the photograph, but managing everything that it takes to get to the point of that photograph as a final result is almost always a bigger part than closing the shutter at the right time.

It was once wisely said "luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

Even the Declaration of Independence did not say you were entitled to happiness. It said it would protect your "pursuit of happiness".

One of the challenges that face "The Greatest Generation" and the Baby-Boomers is their belief that they are (or were, as it now known in most cases) entitled to a lifelong job. It was (mistakenly) assumed that, for example, if you went to work for IBM or the big bank on the corner, that you had a job for life. You'd work for a few decades, your commitment to them was reciprocated by their commitment to you, and you'd not get fired or laid off, save for gross incompetence. Today though, those companies are laying off the aging (and expensive) knowledgebase for cheaper workers. The problem is, those cheaper workers are coming with the baggage of an expectation of entitlement. They expect to be coddled and fawned over during their annual review, and told how great they are even when they're not.

Just because you read your the manual of your camera and know all its features and have all sorts of custom functions preset, or can follow-focus in manual down the playing field or up the catwalk, or even can light a subject like Rembrant, you're not entitled to have your images grace the covers of the world's greatest magazines. Heck, you're not even owed a drop of ink on the inside pages, or even guaranteed traffic to your online postings of said photos. Hey, you might get some "atta-boys" from the rest of the entitlement crowd that you convince to visit your corner of the internet, but then you're expected to go and hand out the same "awesome photo!" accolades to those, like a moebius strip of kudos, never ending, and never getting anywhere.

There are three podiums at the Olympics for each contest, and only one winner. Second and third are the runners-up, incase the first place winner cheated. The rest of the competitors don't get ribbons, and the only people who say they did a good job are their friends, family, and those that get paid to pay those type of compliments, lest they lose their job. These competitors know they must go back, and try again and try harder if they want to succeed.

From year to year, almost nobody remembers who won which Oscar, let alone who the losers were. Heck, even the presenters, admonished to say "and the Oscar goes to..." but more often than not say "and the winner is..." (belying how they really know things are) can't remember who won from year to year. Each year, the actors and actresses vying for the Oscar slog it out hoping to win once again, knowing that it's hard work acting, and if they want to keep doing it in the fickleness of Hollywood they better work at it.

The landscape is littered with the roadkill of those who think they are entitled or owed success in their chosen field. The sooner those with that attitude change, and really buckle down and do the hard work necessary to achieve success, the sooner they will achieve that success.

Success, real success, long-term sustainable success, is achieved by hard work day in, and day out. Don't rest on your laurels, lest they become the laurels of someone else. Sports legend Pat Riley once said "When a milestone is conquered, the subtle erosion called entitlement begins its consuming grind. The team regards its greatness as a trait and a right. Half hearted effort becomes habit and saps a champion.” What have you done today on your own personal road to become a champion in your field?

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Obama Image Copyright Infringement Issues

To be blunt - NORML's use of the Lisa Jack image of Barack Obama is, in this author's opinion, plain and simple, copyright infringement. Photo District News did two great pieces on this - From Hope to Dope: Another Obama Poster Dispute and Getty: We'll Fight NORML's Copyright Infringement, so I won't re-hash what they wrote here.

What I will say about the image at right, is that the poster is an illustration SURROUNDING a photographic image. Unlike Shepard Fairey's claim of fair-use and derivative use, where (Fairey claims) the resulting image was so significantly different that other than angle of view expression/subject, the resulting work was not substantial enough that the original photographer has a claim (this is the inaccurate position of Shepard Fairey), this use has a hole in the center they filled with a photograph. Other than applying a green duotone tint to the original black and white, it's a photograph. They added in a swirl of smoke, but it's a photo, plain and simple.

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Since Getty is quoted in the PDN piece as saying "will aggressively pursue this matter as the copyright representative of the artist" the question at hand will be the soundness of Getty's copyright registration. If they simply included the Jack images in their own registration process, as a part of a "database addition" registration (which some agencies have done in the past), where they register multiple photographers' work in a single registration, that will be a big problem. If, however, Jack had registered the work herself, Getty will have substantial ground to stand on. The strength of this case will test Getty's (and other agencies) copyright registration procedures, if it goes to court, which is looks like it might. If Getty does go to court, and loses over a questionable registration, it could well signal open season on infringements on Getty and other agencies. Look to Getty to try very hard to settle this case quietly.

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Pushing Pixels: $5 Idiocy

Photography should not be sold by the pixel. Images are not the same as selling sugar by the pound. Yet, as if the stupidity of Getty's $49 imagery wasn't enough (more on that here), Getty Images is now selling images by pixel dimensions. To give you some perspective - below is the full frame dimensions of a file from a Canon EOS 1DS Mark III. Then, in black, is a 170 pixel by 170 pixel box, representing what Getty Images will license for $5 if it's a royalty-free image, and $15 if it's a rights-managed image.



All this, and more, can be discerned from the Getty Images site, here.

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It's been just over a year since Getty announced the completion of their being acquired by Hellman & Friedman (here), and there has been little good in their press releases about Getty Images proper, and a lot about deep-and-cheap deals with Flickr, JupiterMedia, and now this. Oh, and don 't forget all the layoffs and office closings. Look in the coming year for H&F to start shuttering underperforming divisions and quietly looking for buyers of the more profitable divisions. Heck, with Google trying to grow their news offerings, maybe Getty Images' news photographers will begin seeing "/Google News" after their names in the not too distant future?

Whatever Gettys' future holds, pricing by the pixel is just sheer idiocy.

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"Licensing News Photos Is Expensive"

Stephen Colbert suggests that a cost-saving effort on his show would be to reduce image licensing, saying "licensing news photos is expensive", and suggests that childs' play would better illustrate some of his stories.



Seems like maybe a few microstockers in Pelosi's San Francisco district should be shooting some stock this week and cutting a deal with Colbert, no?

(Comments, if any, after the Jump)

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J-Schools & B-Schools

Richard Sine, who writes for free (as do all HuffPo writers) over at the Huffington Post, wraps up his article "Close the J-Schools" (7/15/09) with the following sentiment:

"It dawned on me that the new business models that may save journalism were much more likely to come from the business school than the journalism school. At times I felt like closing down the J-school and sending most of those kids straight across campus, to the shiny new B-school."

While Mr. Sine is correct about the business models, closing down the journalism schools is a bad idea.

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The two core years of journalism classes instill in future journalists in ways few others can, the critical value of integrity, truth, and how to translate that to the written word. History of failed reporters' past, from plagiarism to just plain making stories up, are dissected. How to write a compelling story by deconstructing well written ones, and so on. The same holds true for photography schools, from Western Kentucky to Missouri, Syracuse, to RIT, to Brooks. All teach photography, and some specialize in photojournalism. Sine defends his suggestion of limiting enrollment or closing schools by saying "If you screw up, nobody dies, and nothing collapses." While true in a direct manner, it is indirectly not true. People take action all the time based upon reports in the press. When a city mayor is being criticized in the press for delays on a local construction project, he in turn could put undue pressure on those in charge who would have to take short cuts which could cause a collapse. Peoples' lives are changed over press reports, jobs lost (fairly or unfairly), and so on. Such is the power of the press. When a reporter or photographer picks up the tools of their trade and wields them under the constitutionally protected "free press" First Amendment, those people should have skills and training to wield that power.

Reporters and photographers as they are thrown into the freelance world, are going to have no choice but to follow common business practices and adhere to standards as simple as "income must exceed expense" or they will not be in journalism very long. The businesses that employ staffers are collapsing all around the country, because those at the top have no idea how to properly monetize their content in the "it should all be free online" mentality. As such, some remedial business school learning for the executives is in order, I'd think.

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Burning Bridges

So, how often have you heard the phrase "don't burn bridges, you never know...." usually followed by some reason for not burning that particular bridge.

The bigger question - the one that should serve as guidance, is - "should I ever burn a bridge?"

The short answer is "no", but that doesn't mean that bridges aren't being burned all around you.

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The more verbose way of saying "don't burn bridges", is to say "don't take a proactive action where the purpose of that action is to destroy an ongoing interaction pathway between you, and someone else."

This does, however, leave A LOT of wiggle room.

If someone takes an action that torches the bridge you built, there's the possibility that you might nuke it. Consider the client who, when you say to them "if you'd like to use that photograph of so-and-so for an ad campaign, we'll need to discuss an extended rights package and the associated fees for that", says "huh? We own the photo, we're not paying you another dime, and we're doing what we want with it." That blatantly F-U response warrants calling in the lawyers and filing suit. Result? Bridge burned.

What if, however, you observe a fellow photojournalist working for the organization you do staging a news photograph, and your photo editor, knowing you were there, comes to you and says "hey, did Jane Doe set that photo up, or did it just happen spontaneously, like Jane says?" By answering truthfully, you know that Jane might be fired at worse, and at best, she will be angry with you and never speak to, or trust you again because you wouldn't cover for her. Your truthful answer would burn the bridge. I submit that you should speak the truth, and not further the cover-up.

Suppose you are a working photographer and an educator at a local university, and a friend/colleague of yours is being critisized because, for example, they were shooting at a sports event and their actions changed the outcome of the game. For example, a shutter click at a golf tournament, an errant lens on a basketball court in-bounds that trips up a player running down court, or being in the pit and inadvertently interfering with a refueling stop for a driver that penalizes them a few seconds. When your students say "what do you think of the news about Jim Smith messing up that game...", and your saying "well I know Jim, and he's generally a responsible photographer, but he was in the wrong on that one..." and Jim gets wind of it. If he's honest with himself, he will acknowledge he was in the wrong, but more than likely, he won't like that you criticised him.

On the other hand - suppose you overheard some of your peers taking smack about you, or your photography? Should you get sucked in and defend yourself, and in turn, start talking smack about them, either to their face, or behind their back? No. While you can pretend you don't hear what's being said, you can realize that those that are not only talking smack, but more importantly, those in that group that you thought were your friends are not sticking up for you, aren't really your friends. Don't engage, just apply the old adage - keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Frankly, when I have something critical to say of someone, it must be something that I am willing to also say to that person's face. Do I, for example, think there are people who are doing a grave disservice to the photographic profession? Do I think that there are people who are just plain jackasses? Do I think that there are people who talk smack about or to others, and hope that those they are talking smack about don't learn about it? In all three situations, the answer is yes. Also, in all three situations, I would (and in some cases have when the opportunity arose) suggested as much to them.

Do I know that there are people in the photographic community that feel that I have burned my bridges to them? Sure. Yet, during the burning, it was because I stood up for what I believed to be right (and over time, those beliefs have turned out to be truths) despite the easy path being to just say nothing. The measure of a man is not where he stands in times of comfort and ease, but where he stands in times of adversity and challenge. Over time, instead of me recognizing that the bridges were burnt and saying to hell with so-and-so, the smarter path is to just remain silent, and let the other side re-build the bridge. On more than one occasion, that has happened to me.

If the consequences of doing what is right, honest, truthful, and just, is that a bridge is burned, then, so be it. In those instances, it wasn't your actions per se that caused the bridge to be burned, but rather, a consequence of someone doing something wrong, dishonest, deceitful, or unjust.

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Weighing One Against The Other

Martin Luther King Jr. once famously said "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." But, how do you measure and weigh the good and the bad that one has contributed in weighing whether or not you have respect for them?

The timely example (we'll get to more specific ones in a minute), is to judge Michael Jackson. Now, he has met his maker, and been judged where it matters most. However, where does he stack up in ones' own heart and mind? The easy comparison is to pit his music against the allegations and resulting settlements for his 'issues'. Yet, that does not factor in the good he did for charities, nor the odd manner in which he raised his children. The pendulum swings back and forth, and I could go on with hundreds of pluses and minuses. Thus, you get the point. Measure and celebrate just his music, and you have a hands-down showcase for any number of musical halls of fame. Add in other issues, and the matter gets decidedly cloudy.

While we don't have unions, per se, how do you qualify a "scab" in the world of photography? And, when you do, is it okay to break bread with them and play nicey-nice? What would a reader of this column surmise if they witnessed me having lunch with the greatest proponent of work-made-for-hire, or microstock? I don't know if any one individual or company fits that bill, but what would a reader think?

(Continued after the Jump)

Without knowing the topics of conversation, it would be hard to draw a thoughtful conclusion. Suppose, I was trying very hard to convince them to step away from the dark side? Sometimes, these types of conversations are incremental, or relationship building. Successes can be measured in inches, and are sometimes imperceptible to the untrained eye. The President, regardless of administration, meets with other world leaders to find places of agreement, not to argue (at least not at first) over matters of disagreement.

What, however, would be your reaction if a friend did a job you had turned down, because it was a work-made-for-hire job, or a $1k job that paid $100? And, if this same friend seemingly was echoing your anti-WMFH attitude, but you knew they had signed a WMFH contract to do that job, how would you react? Does your personal friendship survive and your business discourse with them get short circuited?

If, for example, Time Magazine had named Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden Person of the Year, would you cancel your subscription? Was American Photo's celebration of the work of Robert Maplethorpe (a long time ago) enough to get people to cancel their subscriptions? When news outlets get metaphorically 'spanked' by fake news (like the fake reports of George Clooney's death) does the mindset "you reap what you sow" enter into the equation?

As newspapers begin to actually rely on 'citizen journalists' for their content, over their journalistically trained professionals, will you accept the occasional assignment from them and lend your credibility to the publication, knowing that it adds to the credibility of the free 'citizen journalist' content? What if you got sent out to do the cover assignments for the publication every issue, but all the inside pages were filled with 'citizen journalism' and the frequent bad image, would you associate yourself with that?

Lots of questions here, what do you think?

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The Glass is Half.....(what's your answer?)

Business is good? Business is bad? What's your answer?

There is a lot to look at these days, and to come up with an answer. Just as Chicago delivers its chosen son to become President, and one of its premier photographers to become official White House Photographer, both papers are joined in the pit of bankruptcy.

Life Magazine has, as Daryl Lang so rightly points out, devastated the value of a wide swatch of photographic imagery. I can hear the mantra now "heck, Life Magazine published the best images of the 20th Century, and if they are free for me to use, why should I pay for others?" (And, as someone who has been published in that magazine - one caution - I registered the work with the Copyright Office, so I await the infringers mis-step.)

a lack of money will eventually doom C-Registry as the roadkill of the Web 2.0 era.

Speaking of Copyrights, the C-Registry continues to hawk it's mea culpa to anyone who will listen. The problem is, they just were not transparent about the process, nor are they about their future intentions once they reach a critical mass, and they have been given many opportunities to dispel these concerns, and the silence is deafening. I predict that, just as with Digital Railroad, who promised they would never get into stock licensing, so too, debt and a lack of money will eventually doom C-Registry as the roadkill of the Web 2.0 era.

April 15th is just around the corner. Yes, friends, the tax man cometh. How many of you are sitting down right now and realizing that 50% of your profits are going to the government, and realizing that you didn't save anything to pay Uncle Sam, and are now wondering where you're going to come up with the money you owe?

(Comments, if any, after the Jump)

To comment on another piece by PDN's Lang, it was written about the demise of Studio Photography magazine (that I will miss from my mailbox) that "The industry is shifting away from a business-to-business segment and more toward business-to-consumer, spokesperson Kathy Scott said in an e-mail." Hogwash I say. While B2C, in the form of weddings, senior portraits, family portraits, and so on, will remain steady and consistent, B2B continues, from this independent photographers' standpoint, to be a growth area. The higher likelihood is that their titles were not seeing the ad revenue necessary to sustain it, in print form. Photographers are getting their information from broader sources, much of it online. Previously, the print platforms were the gatekeepers of insights and knowledge, and now, as a critical mass (AC Nielsen reports Sixty-four percent of Americans age 12 or older have used the Internet in the past year...Almost half of these Internet users (31 percent of all US residents age 12 or over) report going online everyday) is achieved, sources for trusted and thorough knowledge are available to the masses with a few mouse clicks.

Two weeks ago, against the advice of my investment advisor, I took I bet out on a banking stock that was at $1, and now I have tripled that investment - because I was in a cash position to make (and, yes, possibly lose) that investment. If that investment (bet) had tanked, I would have been just fine, so it was as safe a bet as I felt I could make, with a significant potential upside.

Despite concerns in Q4 of 2008, we have staffing levels that we have not had to diminish, so as the calls are coming in for work, we have the post production capacity and logistical support to prepare estimates and collect on invoices.

It has been suggested that this blog is about hits and traffic, and as anyone who actually reads this knows, thats never been the case. The purpose for this blog is to give insights and analysis on the business of photography. Sometimes instructional, sometimes informative, and, yes, often critical. When we see bad moves by players in the industry, we call them out on it. Whether it was Xerox, PDN, Getty, Icon, Nat Geo, USPW, ASMP, AP, PACA, Conde Nast, DRR, Microsoft, or any of the other players regular readers have come to know more about. When these players try to slip a mickey to photographers, we try to be the antidote.

When the economy is down, as the saying goes, cash is king. The time to buy is in a depressed market - if you can. When you have no ulterior motive, the people standing around trying to figure out what your motives are for doing the right thing often would benefit from a bit of self-examination. As Ice Cube says (here), "check yo self before you wreck yo self."

Friends, the glass is what you make it out to be. From my perspective, the future is bright, and, for some, as they say, it is darkest before the dawn. For others, it's always darkest before it's pitch black. Go figure.

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When Do The Musicians Abandon Ship?

The scene from the movie Titanic where the musicians continue to play (info here) as the ship is sinking, is, to me, evidence of the musicians' head-in-the-sand (pardon the soon-to-be-pun) mentality they exhibited.

Just as the water breached the hull, filling decks, trapping passengers unaware, so too, is the sinking hulk of Getty Images doomed to sink into the history books as the largest photo agency in the world, sunk by the iceberg microstock.

The ship that is Getty Images has essentially broken in two. There's the bow of the ship, represented by their Rights Managed Stock, a consolidation of countless other agencies' rights-managed collections. This was the most prominent of the business, yet when the microstock iceberg slashed its' hull, the stern, made up of iStockphoto and JupiterImages, became the dividing point within the company. Now, this ship has ceased forward motion, and life preservers are being handed out to the hundreds of employees who, over the last year or so, have departed.

(Continued after the Jump)

Just as this article notes about Captain Smith, "His legendary skills of leadership seem to have left him, he was curiously indecisive and unusually cautious", so too "Captain Klein" seems to have taken a 'everything will be a-okay' approach, when he wrote yesterday "We must take decisive steps to ensure we emerge from this recession strong and able to best preserve the success of Getty Images" in his missive to the "engine-room" and "crew" of the R.M.S. Getty (in this case, R.M.S. stands for "Rights Managed Stock").

The paying customers are fleeing, or headed to the stern, for a better opportunity to survive. But how will they? Getty's customers have suckled at the teet of free and cheap for so long, that a budget for a piece that used to be $5,000, and would bring in a handsome profit to Getty and the contributing photographer, has, over the past few years, been slashed to costs of $100 or less. It's like the smack dealer who offers free or cheap samples, gets the addict hooked, then raises rates. Whomever is the Robert Ballard of Getty Images will have to salvage the visual riches of Getty's rights managed collections, and let the steerage visuals sell for fractions of a cent, and then Gettys' Ballard will have to figure out how to raise the rates on clients who have built their budgets based upon deflated budgets. Yet, raising rates on a free-and-cheap clientele will likely proove harder than the actual raising of the Titanic.

Just as the radio callsign of the Titanic was MGY, the stock ticker for Getty was GYI. Just as the route for the Titanic, built in the Harland and Wolff shipyard, was the U.K. to New York City, "Captain Klein's" business dealings took him from Hambros Bank Limited in the U.K., to now being in New York. Almost 100 years ago to the day, The Flickr Collection debuts on GettyImages.com on March 11, 2009, construction of the Titanic began on March 31, 1909 (info here). Funded by J.P. Morgan, the founder of the same company that reported "JPMorgan Chase on Wednesday ratcheted up its expectations for losses", back in November (here) as "Captain Klein" tried to suggest they were doing the right thing "We have tried very hard to avoid lay offs during the continued turmoil in the world’s economy. However, it is now clear that we have no alternative." While these comparisons take a humorous tact, they do point to the notion that sometimes when you build it too big, and get a notion in your head of "unsinkable", that troubling mindset could well apply to Captains Smith and Klein with relatively little humor and a great deal of criticism of the course both have charted.

If you are still employed at Getty Images, you are those musicians. You know your ship is sinking. Telling your clients that everything is just swell and not to worry, is like band leader Wallace Hartley striking up the next upbeat ragtime tune as the deck listed 40 degrees to port, and as the IT people continue to stoke the steam-powered engine of the Titanic turned Getty. With the job market bleak, and 8% unemployment figures, I don't blame you for going down with the ship, and collecting every last paycheck before you're deemed redundant, but I do hope you have found your place amongst the last life boat passengers, have your rolodex in place to depart under escort by a rent-a-cop guard. Don't leave any ramen in your desk drawer, you may need it as you wait out the downturn.

If you know your company is going down, don't lie. Lying is what gets people in trouble, as in, false representations to clients. If you learn that your company is closing down in a specific period of time, it is likely unlawful to collect fees for a license that you know extends beyond that date, so be sure to check with your own attorney for the best legal advice on this, but know that lying is what gets people in trouble as people are looking at people to point fingers at, and lay the blame on.

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Boo Hoo, and Buh-Bye

Our colleagues over at StockPhotoTalk make a humorous jab at Getty/JupiterImages where they link to Oprah Winfrey's Layoff Survival Guide where there is an image of a laid-off worker, with the photo credit attributed to Jupiter Images.

Oh, the irony!

Back in October, I wrote - The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions: Getty Images Buys JupiterImages - " Make no mistake here, this is a consolidation of the deep-and-cheap portals...I see these two companies that have devastated the industry rate structures under the "let's sell 100 for $1 instead of $1 for $200", are two silly little delusional peas in a pod. All their private owners are trying to do is further solidify the market. Boo Hoo."

StockPhotoTalk quoted a Getty representative as saying "It is our intention is to bring together the best of each company's assets and people to better serve our customers. As with any acquisition, there will be areas of work duplication and overlap between the two organizations being brought together, creating redundancies. As a result, some Jupiterimages employees in the US will be leaving within the next 60 days."

So, let me get this straight:

(Continued after the Jump)

Images there used to sell for several hundred dollars per license. Then there were people brought on with new business models and grand ideas of selling them for a fraction of that. These people sold photographers' images for that fraction of the former sales figures. These people processed incoming images knowing that all the new images were going to be sold at the lower rates. These people talked to photographers and told them they couldn't get any more for their images than a dollar or two. These people signed contracts with photographers and then tried to call a do-over on them citing a typo ( Getty Uses A Nefarious Tactic To Raise Rates and Getty Bullies Photographers After Buying Agency), these people forced, by their own collective actions of acceptance and so on, a downward spiral in stock licensing rates, and now that 400 people are losing their jobs we are supposed to feel sorry for them? What about the countless photographers who can no longer earn a living at stock thanks to these people - where are the people feeling sorry for them? "I was just doing my job" is the reponse of the Getty/Jupiter people who would defend their devastation of this industry. No, sorry, that's just not going to cut it. When you are doing your job and you know what you're doing is harming the industry and harming people who's creative talents built the industry, "I was just doing my job" is not a defensible position.

I don't feel one iota of sadness for the collective lot of them. As this mainstream video news report shows, the subject in the interview - one former employee - recounts her picnics and halloween parties with co-workers, and her snapshots of her co-workers are shown. "The wonderful camaraderie - that is what I will miss more than anything" she says. She can move on to some other business in Peoria, and "just do her job", but the growing lot of former employees at Getty/Jupiter (and make no mistake about it - that pool of people will become a lake, then a sea, then an ocean, as automation increases) can file their way to the unemployment line. Buh-Bye.

What's next? You can bet that as the now private Getty gets chopped up into little pieces, a company like Google will snap up the whole thing for what amounts to pocket change (relative to Google's billions in cash they have just sitting around) and make those images available for a penny or so, or heck, for all of Getty's wholey-owned content, the images will be free for screen resolution, and Google will make money running ads next to the photos, or licensing for a few dollars each higher resolution images, and Google will be smart enough to automatically embed tracking information to ensure you're not using the photo beyond when the license stipulates, or more than you're supposed to. Think I'm kidding? Right now, go to Google and type in "Grand Canyon" in the Google Images tab (or click here) and ABOVE the images, are three sponsored links. So too San Francisco, and countless other IMAGE searches!

Nope, not a tear shed here for the people who sat back, collected a paycheck, and convinced photographers that didn't know any better that the Getty/Jupiter pricing model was the best they could hope for. Thanks for screwing things up for the rest of us.

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(Update: See screen grab below in response to comments about not seeing the ads in Google's Image Search results)

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