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May 28, 2011
After a long period of indecision I've decided to contribute my photos to Getty Images; or rather to submit the 24 or so images their image "editor" has selected from my Flickr archive. An example.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Starfish Hill, Cape Jervis, 2010
Flickr has become the world's shoebox, a place where anyone can store their pictures, or put on an exhibition. In a partnership with Flickr the Getty Images editors handpick photographs from Flickr’s community of 3 billion images and they refresh the collection with thousands of new ones each one month. Images from the Flickr Collection are meant for professional use, typically come with royalty-free or rights-managed licenses, and start at $49.99 for 500KB RGB photo and go up in price with increased size.
This partnership is upending the role of traditional gatekeepers and destroying the older economics of scarcity. And it too is leading to a cottage industry of hand-wringing and nostalgia for the old days. Photography, ain't what it used to be.
Essentially, Getty acts as the middle man by informing the prospective buyer of details such as pricing and Conditions of Use before sending a request to the owner of the image.These become stock images used by those who want to spice up a presentation or blog post etc.
I was not a member of the Getty Images Call for Artists group on Flickr. I kept on getting Flickr mail which I ignored, apart from contributing one image.
Why the indecision? After all, this partnership gives photographers a new way to make some money for their work, something that is always appreciated in the artist community. It was mostly due to the computers in the digital suite being switched over from Windows-based PC to Macs, and then setting up the back up systems.
I wanted to see how things panned out--- a stock company’s motives can often be to merely warehouse images for themselves with no guarantee of return, despite your images providing them an asset.
Professional photographers are disturbed--their occupational world is being torn apart by digital technology---eg., the digital camera enabled almost anyone to take a photograph that was accurately exposed, in focus and sharp. What's happening to professional photography is just one instance of "the mass amateurisation of publishing", to use a phrase coined by the cultural critic Clay Shirky, who has no time for elegies for vanishing worlds.
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There are those fearing a glut of images which may not be of the best standard and a lot cheaper. A mentality of “Why should I pay X dollars for your professional photography when I can get something that ‘looks as good’ for a dollar on Flickr?” may emerge,.
Many agree that the partnership is a “cash-grabbing” scheme for Getty.