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« Of time and money | why not ? »

The Beautiful Kingdom of Photography

“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.

This entry was posted on July 24, 2007 at 7:49 am and is filed under Royalty free, Microstock, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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9 Responses to “The Beautiful Kingdom of Photography”

  1. photomavin says:
    July 24, 2007 at 4:07 pm

    Hello Good Friend Paul,
    I have to correct you on a few points. First of all at Dreamstime, we pay up to 80% to photographers. The lowest is 50% and the normal for exclusive photos is 60%. So you are incorrect in assuming the royalty rate at least for Dreamstime microstock photographers.

    I fear that you are looking at microstock through the lens (no pun!) of the traditional world that you and I both grew up in. That was all a B to B business. With the internet we can now reach the individual blogger with images that they need that they would never buy from a traditional agency for hundreds of dollars. It is becoming more of a B to C business at the microstock level.

    If you look at traditional prices for right’s managed you will see that microstock, since it is often used only by one individual for a hardly ever visited website…like mine…the price is right. I use my website www.ellenboughn.com as my resume. I have the occasion to pass on the URL only seldom so the images that are there, have had next to no exposure and thus the fee is fair.

    I don’t advocate the elimination of RM or RF or the fees paid to photographers for those usages. But let’s face it, is a grab shot of a cow in a field taken from the side of the road really worth over $300 when there are thousands of them out there?

    I’ve been looking at Seattle photographer, Chase Jarvis’s, blog today. Now there are some photos that deserve four figures. But check out the size of his crew and the level of his talent.

  2. Joseph says:
    July 24, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    Interesting question indeed. Thing is Microstock is turning non economy into the economy world. Need that could not be satisfied into turnover.

    Technically Fotolia was created and is based in New York, USA. Every photographer pays him/herself social security, but few can really consider microstock as a job or even pay all the equipment or all microstock purchases (since many also buy images for their design needs).

    What is more interesting is the price model of Snap Village: with mid size prices (up to $50) commission is still about 30%.

    The comparison with car manufacturer however is wrong since, pictures are made by users, microstocks know little about picture, they mainly sell and deliver pictures. They would be car sellers rather than the factory. But in fact the car is wrong, since there are millions of pictures available and people buy and sell pictures on it. It is more an exchange between people who cannot afford to go to traditional agencies. Then if people are trading what is the right fee for the middlemen, the traders that make the transaction possible? Not an easy question.

    For illustration most of the value is in search and transaction rather than the image itself. But commission is more complex, and even users don’t contribute only for commission, Albumo for instance want to offer space to share pictures besides the microstock itself. What is the relationship with contributors/customers then? who is the customer of who?

    It is not just about making people work for free.

  3. pmelcher says:
    July 24, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    Dear Ellen,

    In no way was I writing particularly about Dreamstime. Furthermore I have absolutely no objections regarding microstock pricing.
    I am only referring to the somewhat ugly side of the business model that runs the engine, the fuel of microstock. I am writing about the exploitation of the uneducated masses by the few, undercover of “Community” and “global sharing”. It is not just microstock, but all sites that pretend to serve the better cause of the photo community by exploiting individual’s lack of knowledge of both fair compensation and technology.
    You and I know very well that there is no photo community since every one is the competition of the other, whether it be photographers or photo agencies. Same goes for any microstock photographers. They are all competing against each other under the auspices of a self defined benevolent “community based website”. No one takes care of each other on these sites. Each steals a little bit from the other and the owners of the websites profits from it all. The big lie within, the fabrication, the absence of morality, the simple abuse of human beings towards other human beings is what I am writing about, not the pricing of images. And I agree, no photos of cows is worth $300.00. I hate cows.

  4. pmelcher says:
    July 25, 2007 at 7:46 am

    dear Joseph,

    If you create a product for someone else to sell, it is called consignment. There are already examples of this business model in the brick and mortar world. You drop something you own at a shop and wait for someone to purchase it. The store takes a commission on the sell and everyone is happy.
    Again, my point here was more about exploitation of the masses under the umbrella of a so called benefactor of the community, whether it is microstocks, file sharing sites and other DigitalRailroad or Photoshelter. If any of the microstock site photographers gets injured, or die, would anyone notice ? Or even care ?

  5. Joseph says:
    July 25, 2007 at 8:16 am

    I get your point Paul,

    All those WEB 2.0 communities, where user generated content is commercialized are not really communities. It is still an illusion. It might be in future, but for now part of the equation is missing.

    Real communities are where there are solidarity mechanisms like families, companies with employees, some associations, some churches, some states…

    Question is do we want to build real communities or just keep this consignment model on the side of real communities?
    and are those virtual communities endangering real communities or not?

  6. photomavin says:
    July 25, 2007 at 9:29 am

    Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité!

    Oh Paul you are just tooo French.

    At Dreamstime, I think there is much much more of a community of contributors than at any stock agency where I have been…and I’ve worked at them all pretty much.

    Contributors can criticize the administrators and point out anything that concerns them in public forums.

    And I see much evidence of the individuals helping each other. And I certainly do my part by providing the same information to anyone that cares to visit the Dreamstime home page through my blog as I formerly gave only to the photographers that were shooting mostly wholly owned material for RM agencies. So who is really exploiting whom?

    Didn’t you tell me once that when you were a student in Paris, you and your fellow students went to the streets over the kind of soup served in the university kitchen?

    I too hate cows but I do love the French!

  7. pmelcher says:
    July 26, 2007 at 8:17 am

    You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

    Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)
    16th president of US (1809 - 1865)

  8. photomavin says:
    July 26, 2007 at 10:28 am

    “There is nothing so stable as change”—Bob Dylan

  9. pmelcher says:
    July 26, 2007 at 11:23 am

    you meant to quote the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, didn’t you ?

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