Photographer Fails To Win Olympic Gold for Himself, Peers
Last year, NBC contacted photographer and blogger, Doc Searls, and asked if they could use his ice crystal photos as part of their Vancouver Olympics title screens, and he agreed…for free. While one part of me applauds someone on flickr not hoarding their images and being open source about them, the other argues that a network willing to lose $100 million to broadcast the Games, can also afford to pay for creative. There’s just something not right about giving media monoliths artwork for free—even if getting credit alone makes you giddy.
by Bucky Turco on February 17, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Editor-in-Chief:
This is going to happen more, not less. The sheer volume of content online makes it relatively easy for the motivated buyer to wander around, find what you want, and ask the inexperienced creative for rights, if not for free, for next to nothing. Stock for pay is simply going to go away. It can't be a coincidence that Corbis has never been profitable.
The only photographers that will be able to make money will be product photographers, whom are contracted to photograph things that don't publicly exist yet. Whether the medium is video or still is irrelevant, but if a product/service/concept exists in the public space, content will be produced around it… for free.
I think its awesome I can hardly wait to pay my mortgage with Kudos.
Agreed. Countless positive things have come out of the open source / copyleft / yay indie! movements, but this strange aversion to getting paid for your own hard work is not one of them. Folks, not requesting cash from a corporation who could care less about your feel-good community ethics does not make you a better person, just a poorer one. If you really want to damn the man, take his money.
You know they paid the devil to float around in that canoe.