Tina Manley wrote:
As we slide further down the slippery slope that was started with Royalty Free and entered free fall with Micro Stock, I am determined to stick with Rights Managed photos only. My photos are all registered with the Copyright office and anybody wanting to use them for any purpose had better be willing to compensate me for my work. I don't see any other professionals giving their work away for a creative common use. When is the last time a plumber unstopped your sink for free? Or an electrician rewired your house for nothing just because anybody can buy wires and plugs? For people whose hobby is photography and who want to share their snapshots, Creative Commons might be an option. For a professional photographer, trying to make a living, it is not an option - neither is Royalty Free or Micro Stock!
The value of lots of kinds of photos *is* dropping. The *real* value, the only kind of value that means a thing, the actual market value -- what a willing seller and willing buyer will agree on. It's dropping because more people can make technically adequate photos, and it's easier to find the ones you might want. Those are mostly technological changes. Also because many many segments of the market will not pay 50 times more for a first-rate photo than for a "fully adequate" photo. I haven't had a plumber unstop my sink for free, but I've had friends help me with that kind of thing. And I've helped them with electrical work, or just lifting things. And I've taken photos for them. My photos have gotten considerably more distribution because of Creative Commons licensing of a very few of them, and I've had at least one real cash sale (for use in a book) resulting from that (the author found my photo on Wikipedia where it illustrated an article on the people in it, and wanted to use it in her book at higher resolution than the copy I'd CCed).
I understand how this big change in attitude must sound tremendously threatening to people who make their living licensing photos. I believe the really good ones will continue to make a living, but I think the ranks are going to get cleaned out a lot, eliminating many of the ones whose main photographic talent was the ability to make a technically good image (which would probably be biting me if I were trying to make a living at it now).
-- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
