The recent agreement between Flickr and Getty has lead many "experts" to praise this as a move that will help support the price point for photos and improve the overall situation for professional photographers. I guess I see it a bit differently. This is just another event that will make it tougher for the pro. This essentially gives equal sales access to the amateur and I think will drive down the price paid for an image rather than driving it up.

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1747656/

http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/17240/flickr-inks-deal-with-getty-images

It's not a big deal.

Here's how it works:
Getty will hand pick select photographers to sell their work on Getty for RM prices (around $49 and higher). Flickr is NOT becoming another microstock site. No one who has snapshots of their cat or family vacations on Flickr will be able to call themselves a "Getty phtographer." Everything will remain the same. This deal really has no effect on anything, IMO.

If a photographer's work is selected, it doesn't mean anything. Their images will be available for sale on Getty, but they don't make any money unless they make a sale on Getty (basic stock photography principles). They let Getty sell their selected work. That's it.

Yeah, all it really means is Getty agents will be scouting Flickr for photos that might be worthy of selling on Getty. They aren't necessarily offering to rep those photographers, they're just offering to add individual photos to their stock catalog. What's wrong with that? In the stock world, good images that meet an agency's criteria can come from anywhere. It doesn't affect what Getty charges for licensing or what photographers are getting paid from it, it's just Getty announcing that they feel there's talent represented on Flickr and they plan on devoting time and energy to scouting it out. I don't see it any differently than the time and energy that gets spent sorting through all the submissions they receive through the normal application process for having them sell your images.

I think Nathan is talking about the immutable laws of Supply and Demand. The more supply there is, the less money one can demand.

Why does this change the supply at all? Getty has no restrictions on submission now that would keep any of the same folks from selling their images. It's not about shooters, it's about images...and Getty hasn't reduced photographer payouts as their catalog has gotten larger, so why would this change anything?

shatterkiss wrote:
Why does this change the supply at all? Getty has no restrictions on submission now that would keep any of the same folks from selling their images. It's not about shooters, it's about images...and Getty hasn't reduced photographer payouts as their catalog has gotten larger, so why would this change anything?



Supply and demand is exactly what I am talking about.
This changes the supply by giving Getty easy access and probably advanced search capability for millions of images that they have not had access to in the past. For every image that they sell from Uncle Joe with a 10Mp P&S, a few dollars will be not available to purchase images from a pro. With the addition of millions of potential images to sell, the average quality of images available for sale will decrease...and that drives prices lower.

Yes, I am fully aware that Getty will probably impose strict guidelines on what images are sold, but the average quality will be lowered by this influx of images.

You're dead wrong.

There will be no selling on Flickr. There will be no images from Uncle Joe with a 10MP point and shoot. I don't think there will be an addition of millions of images. Only a select few (thousand?). If it is a million, it doesn't matter either.

Plus, there's already how many microstock sites out there? More than 5, 6, 7?
Alamy has 12 million images in their library and they've already switched to an optional microstock model to compete with microstock stock agencies because they're losing their ass with the rights managed model.

What you're describing already happened, chief. Years ago. This little Flickr deal is NOTHING.

nathanlake wrote:
With the addition of millions of potential images to sell, the average quality of images available for sale will decrease...and that drives prices lower.

Really?
Then how come I get this email from Getty/iStock every week or month or whatever that shows featured images from iStock and Getty, and the work from iStock is clearly, consistently better than the outdated work from Getty, every time. A lot of professionals and veterans agree with me on this.

The fact that they can choose a well made image from an artist from Flickr, instead of some 60 year old veteran photographer who shot for Corbis, Getty, or whatever the hell your favorite stock agency is, has nothing to do with the quality of the image. There is no relation there.

Whether you like it or not, great photographers can pick up a digital camera and create great photographs, even if they don't do it for a living.

Do you really think companies will pay Getty prices for Uncle Joe's D40X, non-colour managed images from Flickr? If they want that and cheap they go to microstock. If they want to pay Getty prices they'll look for "pro" images. If your "pro" images do not compare favourably next to Uncle Joe's, well, that's another issue.

panos.v wrote:
Do you really think companies will pay Getty prices for Uncle Joe's D40X, non-colour managed images from Flickr? If they want that and cheap they go to microstock. If they want to pay Getty prices they'll look for "pro" images. If your "pro" images do not compare favourably next to Uncle Joe's, well, that's another issue.

The point is that people will have no idea that the photos came from Flickr. Did people not read the newsitems that have been posted on this? Getty isn't allowing customers to buy photos from Flickr, they're having their editors scout Flickr for photos worth selling by Getty. So you've all got this backwards - they're not lowering their standards to Flickr's common denominator, they're searching through Flickr looking for photos that meet Getty's standards, then contacting those photographers and offering to sell the images on Getty (after verifying proper releases and other details). Once the photo is in Getty's catalog, the fact that it came from Flickr is totally immaterial.

shatterkiss wrote:
The point is that people will have no idea that the photos came from Flickr. Did people not read the newsitems that have been posted on this? Getty isn't allowing customers to buy photos from Flickr, they're having their editors scout Flickr for photos worth selling by Getty. So you've all got this backwards - they're not lowering their standards to Flickr's common denominator, they're searching through Flickr looking for photos that meet Getty's standards, then contacting those photographers and offering to sell the images on Getty (after verifying proper releases and other details). Once the photo is in Getty's catalog, the fact that it came from Flickr is totally immaterial.
What was stopping Getty from contacting flickr members in the first place? Why do they need a deal with flickr for this?

Nothing was, they're just making it official. I suspect that the reason we're reading about it now is that Yahoo (owners of Flickr) sent out press releases to try and drive up Flickr pro memberships and keep people from being suspicious in the event that they're contacted by someone claiming to be a Getty editor. Getty gets to one-stop-shop potential new talent on an image-by-image basis (rather than photographer-by-photographer), Yahoo potentially sees a stock-price bump and an influx of Flickr memberships. I'm sure Yahoo also coded a custom interface/app for Getty to allow them to browse the Flickr catalog in a way that made more sense for them, or even integrated it into their own in-house search/browse interface, as Flickr's API is fairly extensible.

nathanlake wrote:
This is just another event that will make it tougher for the pro.

Perhaps. Hopefully a real pro will be able to consistently create photos whose quality demands higher prices.

Calling someone a "pro" doesn't necessary mean they automatically deserve to be paid more assuming all other things equal.

nathanlake wrote:
For every image that they sell from Uncle Joe with a 10Mp P&S, a few dollars will be not available to purchase images from a pro.

Sure, but there's enough abundance out there for all of us.

The mentality that "If you get more, I get less." is very limited and fear-based.

We can all thrive together without having to jump at each other's throats for money.

There really is enough money out there for you, for me, and for all the rest of us.

No worries.

I'm sorry but if Uncle Joe is taking better shots with his 10MP P&S than a lot of pros, I think he is every bit entitled to shoot for Getty.

The Flickr deal doesn't change the fact that Getty still has certain requirements for their photographers. Most Flickr members I see aren't tagging their photos properly or obtaining model releases and the ones who do often already shoot for agencies/publications. Sure there are exceptions to that but this whole thing is really no big deal and has already been going on for awhile anyway.

Sure 80-90% of the photos on Flickr are snapshots but there is still an immense pool of talent on there and some amazing shooters who shouldn't be discounted just because they post there.

This will certainly raise the bar for competitive, quality images that will be available on Getty Images. Better for the buyers, more refined work for the sellers.