Flickr's Not for Me

Two years ago, I wrote about a Five Year Plan. And I've been doing all of the items in the to-do list, except for editorial. But Flickr, and what Flickr represents for professional photographers, is connected to many of the factors in the final list, the opportunities list. “Everybody is a photographer” The long tail Microstock Online distribution Copyright degradation w/ new generation File sharing “Free the net” Orphan works legislation Internet audiences and their characteristics Licensing arrangement degradation Intellectual property ignorance Social networking sites

I just deleted all my images on Flickr. So far, all the infringements I've found have been via Flickr, which isn't completely far-fetched, considering it's a photo sharing site. But it's not for me, as I have no interest in Flickr's "currency". The people who seem to have "made it" via Flickr seem to have been in the right place at the right time, and it seems that's past. And the Getty link just looks like bad news. Thus ends my initial foray into Flickr as a professional.

But that still leaves open the question as to whether or not the list is full of opportunities, or spells the end of photography. The Five Year Plan post has kind of haunted me for the last two years, and I don't feel like I'm any closer to answering the question. Judging by most of the talk on the internet, nobody else is either.

It's pretty easy to pine for the days of yore, of giant expense accounts and ad jobs falling out of the sky, when photographers used expensive, hard-to-use equipment and all you had to do was be good at photography and let 'em know, and then it was briefcases full of money and novelty-sized checks all day.

Not that those days truly existed, and not that pining does anybody any good.

Infringement in the New Photography Era, Part II

Again with this image. This site used it (and many other Flickr images) to illustrate a story about break-ups. This site is heavy with advertising, and ballparking their listed advertising rates, could be clearing $21,000 a week.

This one was much more interesting than the others:

Dear XXX XXX,

I'm writing you because you're listed as the Admin contact on the whois record for XXX. I couldn't find any email addresses on the site itself, but I've submitted the following via the online contact form there. If you don't handle licensing arrangements, please, put me in touch with the person who handles them.

I found the "XXX" post, by XXX XXX, on your website during a routine search for my images on the web. My image, "New Valentines - 01" appears on the second page of the post.

I'm flattered that you are using one of my images to illustrate your the post, I think it works well to illustrate the concept, and I'm grateful for the link back. However, per the "Advertise" section of the site, you are generating substantial profit from the page, and therefore, to some degree, from the use of my image.

As you may already realize, I earn my living through my imagery, and unauthorized usage of my images interferes with that, and is also illegal per the 1976 Copyright Act (copyright.gov).

I will be happy to negotiate a reasonable fee, say $XXXX for three years online usage, for continued use of my image on your website. If we can't come to an agreement, you must remove my images from all of your pages.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Rob Prideaux

Hello Rob! Your image is removed now.

But you should understand that images don't make any profit at all there. You had there free advertising for your talent to make even more from your images. And it was for free ;)

Good luck with your great photos!

Sincerely, XXX

Hi XXX,

Thanks for your prompt action. I'm sorry we can't come to a mutually beneficial licensing arrangment, especially since at $2000 or $1500 per banner ad per week, XXX stands to be pretty profitable. If you should find another of my images that fits your needs, please don't hesitate to contact me regarding licensing.

All the best to you,

Rob

Good ;)

But there is price for your text links too - and you don't pay that. It's kind of good deal for you as photograph - free lifelong ad on site where it cost 2k per week - isn't it?

The is no problem for me to remove your image but for you it looks like a good deal.

Anyway you know better what is works better for your business.

I hope this model will give you more options to create even better pictures.

Btw, your inquiry was most professional - you really sounds much more better than your collegues - that's fact ;)

Have a nice day Rob!

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English is not her first language, but you get the gist. The things that jump out at me about this exchange are:

She states that "images don't make any profit" there, which I guess means that they don't purchase the images they use. I'll suggest that the images that they use there help them to make a profit, however, since they increase the appeal of the site, and therefore draw more users.

She points out that I had "free advertising". Never mind that my target market and her audience probably don't overlap at all, it's still a good angle for her to try.

And when I point out the revenue the site seems to be earning, she suggests that makes the free advertising even more valuable to me. Ha, nervy.

So, the question was - why bother? And the longer answer is- because it keeps me in shape. There is a comprehensive effect when I go through this process. I get practice at negotiation, at structuring licensing proposals, at pursuing my rights, at valuing my photographs.

And that last part is pretty key. Much like the proverbial broken window in the warehouse, maintaining my rights to one of my images helps maintain my rights to all my images.

Infringement in the New Photography Era, Part I

Creative works in the United States are protected by the Copyright Act of 1976. In a nutshell, the Act says that when you create something, you own the rights to use it, and others cannot use it without your permission, (excepting certain Fair Uses). The Act provides remedies in the form of financial penalties when someone uses your work without permission, which is called copyright infringement. (Copyright Office, Photo Attorney, etc). In fact, it was Photo Attorneys guest post on A Photo Editor that dragged me back into copyright territory.

Today's environment has made infringement much more common.

1. The internet and prevalent digitization of works have made it easy to share cool stuff widely.

1. The continued lack of understanding about, sympathy for, or respect in intellectual property rights outside of professional circles, trivialize intellectual property theft.

These two factors mean that lots of people have the ability and the will to infringe on copyrights.

I've found my images in use on website. In each case, I contacted the site owner, and notified them that while I was flattered they'd used my image, and appreciated the photo credit, I make my living from my images. In the case of sites that are for profit, I proposed a reasonable license fee. For non-profit sites, I proposed a zero-fee license, to formalize things, so it doesn't look like I don't care about my copyright.

I don't know where I got the idea, but my brain says that if I don't vigorously pursue any infringement of my work, then any infringer that I end up taking to court could point to a series of uncontested infringements and reason that I was not interested in retaining the work.

I'm not sure how many pictures of an octopus in a jar exist, but of the ones I've seen, mine's the prettiest. This blogger used it to illustrate a fishing story about pulling up an octopus in a jar. Perfect. He runs Adwords on his site, but probably doesn't get much traffic. I proposed a small licensing fee for continued use. He refused, stating that he doesn't make much money, and replaced my image with a video of an octopus exiting a bottle.

This image is my most popular image on Flickr. And the most commonly infringed. Another blogger used it to illustrate her story on quotations, one of which had to do with breaking up. She doesn't run any ads on her site, so I proposed a zero fee license agreement, but she balked at the indemnification language in my standard agreement (she's a lawyer), and replaced my image with a similarly themed one. Her site has since disappeared.

These are really small-time infringements. Why should I even bother? It takes time to follow up on these things, and besides, what harm, after all? And isn't it free publicity? These people are probably never going to pay to use my images, so what good is it trying to negotiate with them?

I guess the short answer is: the way you do anything is the way you do everything. For the long answer, stay tuned for part II.

Everybody Is A Photographer

The day after my son was born, Jackie and I were in the hospital room watching him sleep. A woman in scrubs came in the hospital room and told us that she's the photographer and do we want pictures of our baby? She was stonefaced and abrupt. I was taken aback, because I thought she was another nurse, because we'd been taking all kinds of pictures with the iPhones, the point-and-shoot, the family's cameras, etc. And also, I'm a photographer.

But it was a valuable moment, because for that moment I was the photography buyer, and I got to see what a sales call might look like. And it was really bad. It seemed like she didn't want to be there, wasn't interested in us or our baby, and was totally closed down.

Was that nerves?

It made me realize how awkward it can all be, especially now that the ratio of content creators to professional content buyers is so high.

Based on this experience, it looks like the best approach is to be curious about the buyer and the situation. Interested. Open. Personable. But that only works if it's authentic. And it can only be real if it comes from confidence.

So, yeah, everybody is a photographer. Anybody can point a camera at a subject and stand a good chance of getting a fine photograph.

But not everybody is a salesman, a businessman, a marketer, a leader, an accountant, and an artist.

Not only does Flickr make you smell better, it also makes you more attractive!

In an earlier post I wrote of my five year plan and how an assessment of Flickr, among other things, might be useful.

I signed up for Flickr around that time and uploaded my portfolio. Along the way, my photostream has sucked up the Animal Model Kits project and the Capsules thing I'm working on.

I found the upload process pretty annoying, at first. There is a tremendous volume of crap (photos, comments, tags, private/public 'special icon' comments) you can associate with your photos. Figuring out which colorspace to use has been annoying, and it's clear this is not for professionals; then again, some of the stuff that IS for professionals is usually way more poorly designed and implemented (eg, DPP at first). But you get used to it, and just because it's irritating doesn't mean it's useless.

Is it just another popularity contest? And if so, am I a snob?

Over the four months I've had a couple favorites and group invitations. I get a little sense of 'oh you picked me!' but then I look at the rest of the photos in the group and meh. But I haven't really participated. What I've done is kind of like going to a party full of photo fans, and standing against the wall clutching your photo album. Except the party is at the Superdome and there are 84743965432564356748237 people there.

I used to hang out at this website called photosig, which is like Flickr only cruddier, and with a sort of economy, in that you must critique photographs to accumulate points so you can upload your own photographs. Most of the critiques were as follows "Beutiful cat, come chrck out my photos".

The system requires users to critique 10 photos for every photo I wanted to upload. I'd just finished a project in school, with eight photos in it, so I needed to critique 80 photos. I tried to select photos without cats, and that were at least trying to be artful; I also tried to be more, uh, critical, and gently point out aspects of the photograph that I thought were working and those that were not.

This was 4-and-a-half years ago; I was still in school, didn't have much of a style, hadn't learned much about lighting, and my ideas were really important to me. Actually, they still are...I guess what I mean to say is that I was really invested in the ideas. To make matters worse, I was secretly-yet-actively trying to get someone, anyone to tell me whether or not I was a photographer.

Into this swamp I put my precious new project. The first critique came in at about the 10 minute mark, and was fair, if not completely blown away by my insightful genius as I wanted.

About 15 minutes into it, however, a critique appeared that went something like this:

Why are you posting these stupid pictures this is not an art site maybe you should go to artsig. You are a terrible person and you're wasting your time and everyone else's. I hate these pictures. Also, the light falloff on the right is annoying.

I was stunned. And then angry. I went and looked at his pictures. I wish I could say that they were awesome and he was right - but they were all humdrum pictures of his kids playing sports and some mall-level portraits of the same. I couldn't understand why he was critiquing them in the first place, much less why his critique was so hateful.

In the end, I sat on it for awhile, then, using the site's guidelines for critiquing, contacted an administrator and asked her if she would delete his comment, which she did. If I had to do it again, I would have left his comment there, but at the time, I need to do something, lash out with all the emotion I was feeling about it, and dashing off an email seemed to fit the bill (I guess.).

These days, I can handle criticism. In fact, I could handle it back then. But there's criticism, and then there's jackassery. In any case, I'm kinda glad Flickr has neither an economy, nor a culture, of critiquing. It's just for sharing photos and for being popular. Or not popular.