Comments on: Aaaand we come full circle…

By: PowerProNet

PowerProNet — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:25:52 +0000

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By: Emerson

Emerson — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:51:23 +0000

Well, stop the suspense! What did you decide?

By: Ian Murray

Ian Murray — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:53:52 +0000

So, that fun time when Rachel and her friends were swimming last summer?
That has to be reformatted into a business encounter wrapped up in model releases, contracts and legalese.
Sure the friends will sign because they are friends.
If I were Rachel I’d sign because Rachel has an opportunity.
But it’s sad isn’t it?
Now the market, tired of cheesy Lifestyle yearns for authenticity. The trouble being that authentic means real people.
Ian Murray

By: Julia Dudnik Stern

Julia Dudnik Stern — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:17:45 +0000

“Be an example instead of a sucker” is the equivalent of ideologically influenced starvation. Not a very practical piece of advice, but it does illuminate the point of putting your money where your mouth is. So, Rachel, are you primarily an activist who plans to advocate quality of art and photographers’ rights for the remainder of her career–or primarily a commercial photographer who needs to sell images make a living?
Of course, nothing is this linear, and it’s a tough personal decision. From a purely financial perspective, however, it’s a no-brainer: You would not be a sucker if you signed up; you’d be financially better off than photographers represented by most other stock houses. (I say this with the benefit of knowing what many Getty-represented photographers make, and one of them made a similar comment above.) Those who think doing business with a small agency is better are speaking from the heart, not the spreadsheet. Small agencies may do better from a per-image perspective, and they may be nicer to deal with than the big bad wolf, but their total dollars come nowhere near the returns of Getty, Corbis–and perhaps Masterfile and others we think of as smaller but who generate upwards of $20 million per year in sales. And practically all of those agencies pay the same commission percentages as Getty. In the stock-licensing industry, distribution is more valuable than images.
PhotoShelter is an excellent case in point: It gave photographers a “fair” 70% commission, but little sales. 70% of nothing is still nothing, whether or not it’s a photographer-friendly nothing.
Many professional stock shooters who have been making a full-time living from stock have not been able to get Getty to represent them. That suggests that you have a unique opportunity: There are very few agencies that can put your work in front of this many professional designers and art directors.
Please don’t misunderstand this comment as advocating that you jump on the offer. I only wanted to put it in context. If you are OK selling your work as stock and can get over the ideological objections to the business model in general and what you think is wrong with Getty in particular, it still does not guarantee that the images will sell. So if money is the primary concern, your best chance of sales is with Getty.

By: Ian Murray

Ian Murray — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:38:54 +0000

Chris,
Try the Photoshelter Archive.
There’s also Alamy
Ian

By: chris

chris — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:12:13 +0000

art director here, working for ad agencies, I think I know a thing or two about selling my soul.
only you can really tell whether joining getty is right for you. you know what you think of them (and that’s unlikely to change) and you know yourself. make an educated guess based on that as to whether you will be able to come to terms with working with them or not. both decisions are fine but it needs to be based on just that one aspect.
reasons and excuses are deflections from the issue. you have to be happy with how you act. getting a check will not make whatever feeling you have in your tummy go away, it’ll just numb it for a bit and then wear off. not being able to walk away fully, as someone outlined further above, makes this decision one you have to take now.
a question for the round of commenters: what other stock photo sites have a wide range of images and are worth checking out now that photoshelter is no more and getty and corbis, which I use all the time, are poo-poo? I tend to find one or another photographer I’d like to work with or buy an image from via flickr, blogs like this one or cards but I lack another stock photo site to get images for my comps and presentations from. (I tend to shoot the actual ads and not use stock there.) yes, I know about istockphoto but that place ain’t all that.
(no, that’s not my email address above. but if you want it, I’ll share it privately.)

By: I'm Leaving Getty

I'm Leaving Getty — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 06:01:40 +0000

I have not had a good experience with Getty, and will be leaving them entirely when the 1-year exclusive (on the images they sold) runs out. I’m get paid 40% of what Getty gets for my images, and I can’t imagine that you would let them take your images and keep 80% and only give you 20%! They do not work hard to get top dollar, far from it. They let the images go for a pittance, then they keep most of the take. You will end up with peanuts. I suggest you run, run far away from Getty. There are plenty of other agencies – even if they pay the same 40% as Getty pays you should be able to find an agency that treats their photographers better and works harder to get top dollar for the images.

By: Bets

Bets — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:19:07 +0000

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!! and run to the bank w/ the $!
Theo will be happy to sign a photo release!!!

By: Stephen Gray

Stephen Gray — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:49:12 +0000

Pride don’t buy film. Unless the terms are just too crazy (I don’t know what they are), go for it. Sure you have the option of shopping them yourself, etc., but are you doing that now? will you? are you willing to work really hard on your own to sell them? really? and you know, it could take a while or those small agencies could go under–it’s happened before.
What I’m saying is–this is a bird in the hand. I’m assuming they only want a subset of your portfolio, so give them the images you’d be willing to give them. Take whatever money they give you and put it back into your work.
The rest of your images, including the ones you haven’t even shot yet, sell however you want.
Think of it as diversifying your portfolio. These days, that’s really what it’s going to take. No one’s going to be able to keep shooting seriously off of a single revenue stream. Those days are over.

By: Jacqueline Bovaird

Jacqueline Bovaird — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:17:07 +0000

Are you kidding? let the big bad getty make you some money! otherwise someone else will be making your money…think of it that way