Two thoughts exactly: nothing more

It is not the usage but the image. A flew of photo agencies, including recently Alamy, have come out with special pricing plans for blogs ( non commercial ones).  It appears to be specially arranged  to compete against  microstock, as the prices are very, very low.

Which begs the question and realization that more and more, these days, images are sold based on usage and never on content.  Since the value of an image can vary immensely from one person to another, corporations, like Corbis or Getty have just decided to ignore it in their budgets. It is a known fact that corporations hate variables. So they take a whole sloosh of images and apply the same pricing. All of these over there are RF, these are Rights Ready, and those are too old. Furthermore, they believe that an image only has a value when it is used and that value is only quantified by the way it used.

As much as simplicity is appealing, as much as it doesn’t reflect the real value of an image. As we all know, some are really easy to get ( the Eiffel tower, for example) and some are really hard ( Angelina Jolie posing with her newborn twins) . One would never apply the same pricing rules to those 2 images, if one was a little versed in photography sales. But it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. In between these two images, exist a whole range of pictures that are either more or less easy to take and also, have added value created by the photographers themselves ( the Eiffel tower taken by a National geographic photographer).

Example:

let say I take a nice image of the Eiffel Tower.  Nothing special. I license this image to a blog. I get 5 cents. Same image, I license it to Microsoft worlwide 10 years unlimited rights desktop usage. $60,000.  Hmmm… what is the value of my image? 5 cents or $60,000?

But more important, is it really the usage of my image that defines its value ? Shouldn’t be the image itself ? More like a painting ? You will buy a Picasso for millions of dollars regardless you put in a closet or decide to attach it on the walls of the British Museum.

Aaaaah, but photography is not art, you will say. You cannot compare. Well, my friend, why would an Angelina  Jolie and Twins go for a cool $11 million ?

Well, it is not the photographer that matters here, it is the subject, you will argue.

Absolutly !!! my point exactly. Photography is even more wicked that its value is not even obvious by who took the image, but what is on it. Sure you have the Masters who commend a certain price. But the bulk load of images are taken by complete unknowns that will remain so. But some of their image will command huge prices.

Because of how they are used? Or because of their content?

At this point you have to agree with me.

While editorial agencies are very aware of the statue and value of their image, stock couldn’t care less. Here, you can have all these images for a penny an image, because after all, no one comes and visits your site. Well, that is terribly wrong and reinforce the idea to clients that photography is a commodity. If someone doesn’t have the budget to pay for a great image, too bad, blog or no blog.

There is value in some images and client should pay for that value.

On another completely unrelated note:  Rumors are spreading that Getty and other wire service are asking their news  photographers to shoot  events with commercial stock resale in mind. Meaning that those  photojournalists no longer shoot what they see but try to , for example, to purposelessly blur peoples faces in order not to need a model release later. To maximize the lifetime potential for an image. As much as it make sense for the agency, as much as it is digging a little bit more in the wound of photojournalism, making it less and less credible every day.

We will probably see more and more denature photographs of world events as photographers will try to cover them on a more “stocky” way .

This entry was posted on July 19, 2008 at 10:29 am and is filed under photojournalism, license, celebrity, commercial stock, transaction, editorial, Royalty free, getty, corbis, news, Microstock. 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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