Re:This Photograph Is Not Free
by ChuckMcM on Wednesday January 11, 2012 @12:36PM
(#3452735)
I have to agree with this. His reasoning falls apart on his second sale right? How long does he own that camera? How many pictures does he take? What is the marginal cost for the 'next' picture he takes? How many times does he sell the same picture?
There are two kinds of photography, 'on demand' and 'stock' which is to say you hire someone to come out and take pictures at your wedding that is 'on demand', you need a picture of a waterfall in Hawaii to put into a travel brochure you find one in a catalog, that is 'stock'.
The guy who takes wedding pictures has lots of great equipment. The guy that shot mine brought three cameras, one for shots around the event, one taking shots of the location , and a portrait setup for one on one pictures. Now he probably had 15 - 20K worth of gear there, but he does 10 - 15 weddings a year. So even amortizing with a lifetime of 3 years for each piece of gear his equipment 'cost' is worst case 30 shoots, so $666 per shoot.
I really do think the think the effect here is that it is so easy to put photographs on the web, and for many folks they just took the picture for themselves, they don't have any problem at all giving people rights to reproducing their picture anywhere. So people who acquire pictures ask for it free first, and then if you respond that no, you are only interested in selling it, you can come to a negotiation over price.
Unfortunately, from what I've read on photography blogs there are also some pretty large price / value discrepancies between photographers and buyers. This seems to lead to a number of blog postings like the one referenced with (often) one side of the story.
There are two kinds of photography, 'on demand' and 'stock' which is to say you hire someone to come out and take pictures at your wedding that is 'on demand', you need a picture of a waterfall in Hawaii to put into a travel brochure you find one in a catalog, that is 'stock'.
The guy who takes wedding pictures has lots of great equipment. The guy that shot mine brought three cameras, one for shots around the event, one taking shots of the location , and a portrait setup for one on one pictures. Now he probably had 15 - 20K worth of gear there, but he does 10 - 15 weddings a year. So even amortizing with a lifetime of 3 years for each piece of gear his equipment 'cost' is worst case 30 shoots, so $666 per shoot.
I really do think the think the effect here is that it is so easy to put photographs on the web, and for many folks they just took the picture for themselves, they don't have any problem at all giving people rights to reproducing their picture anywhere. So people who acquire pictures ask for it free first, and then if you respond that no, you are only interested in selling it, you can come to a negotiation over price.
Unfortunately, from what I've read on photography blogs there are also some pretty large price / value discrepancies between photographers and buyers. This seems to lead to a number of blog postings like the one referenced with (often) one side of the story.