The Beautiful Kingdom of Photography

July 24, 2007 by pmelcher.

“community driven” is another word for free labor. What was once a nice idea for online collaboration between designers, post and use images from each other, has become, thanks to the whole Web 2.0 false aura of mutual benefaction, a form of workers abuse.

While the business world is trying hard to find ways for their workers to have more say, control and protection from their companies, Web 2.0 and their photographic association, microstock, are doing quite the opposite. At 20% to 40%, at the most, on images selling on average for $2.50 a piece, with absolutely no job security, the only winners are the new robber barons of the photography industry.

Sure you hear stories of housewives liberated from the constraints of their horrible cheap husbands making in the $100,000 of dollars a year. At 30%, the company makes $300,000 of pure, unaltered, organic and fat free benefit. Considering the low cost of bringing these images to market, as everything as automated as possible, the profits are extremely high. Isn’t the idea of community to share EQUALLY ?
If a company were to do the same to its workers, even its free lancers, especially in Europe where the social laws are stronger, we would have a revolution in our hands. And for a good reason. It is no big surprise that these so called community sites flourish in the United States where social laws are almost inexistent.

The real question for these businesses, relying on user interaction is how long will the users will be willing to play the game. After all, would you start a car factory where workers come when and wherever they want to ? Sure you would pay them less, but what happens if no one shows up ? Once the novelty of making a few bucks a month out of a pass time dies down, where will these micro stock companies will go for images?

Granted, the ones now owned by big publicly or not held companies can also be a trash can for existing images ( ie Getty, Corbis) . Others will have to increase their compensation plan if they really want to remain freshly fed with new images. Because $100 a month, even for housewives, as we are taught to believe, is not enough to feed a family. And they spend almost as much time as a pro to deliver images.

Or international worker legislation might interfere, especially in Europe, as they start smelling a quite rotten fish in the beautiful kingdom of photography. In France, for example, a photo agency is required to pay social security for every free lancer that submits images, out of their commission. A company like Fotolia, created in France, probably gets away without paying by declaring itself a software company. How long before other photo agencies scream unfair competition and drag them, and other microstock companies, into court. Both Corbis and Getty images have offices in France too.

We are in the medieval ages of photography, after all, with its serfs and lords. And we are living the same worker’s abuse that we had thought our civilized western world had abolished.

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