Voluntarily letting everyone use your picture(s)

Bull****. Anyone can make a decent image, but these companies are wanting people who make GREAT images to give them away.
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Companies are still willing to pay for "GREAT images" for national campaigns, because a found image is rarely going to work as needed. As a rule, the search for cheap (or free) images is the domain of small-time stuff where decent is all that's required. An intern with a $600 DSLR can produce a good enough web catalog image that once would have been farmed out to a pro. An amateur with a decent rig can produce real estate photos good enough for advertising.


I don't have to come to grips with anything, the law is on my side.
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I have no clue what this angry non-sequitur is supposed to mean. The law doesn't say that photography has to be as valued, commercially, as you think it should be - that's what we're talking about.

No, you don't ever have to let someone use your image for free. But a far greater number of people are willing to do so - and because, as I said initially, the specialized knowledge of photography is no longer in play, are able to do so.

I'm a good old fashioned libertarian socialist, so I'm not particularly fond of this. But I'm also a realist, and such is the way of the world.

Call bull**** all you want, but let's look at editorial day rates, stock sales and prices, etc. and talk about the reality of photography.

Your hostility on thread after thread is rather alienating.
 
Roger Hicks said:
George Bernard Shaw is reputed to have said to Henry Ford, "Ah, well, there is the difference between us, Mr. Ford. You think only of art, and I think only of money." Those who created art were always paid for it throughout history. It's only since Goethe and his ilk, the 'troubled artists' of the late 18th/early 19th centuries, that people have assumed that art should be free, and that artists should not be rewarded. In other words, a refusal to value art financially is an even more convincing key to the problems we face today.
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I'm sorry, this is a strange reading of history. Large numbers of people earning a living via "pens, brushes, cameras" is unprecedented. It was (or is) a luxury of the middle class 'first world' in the 20th (and to a lesser extent) 19th centuries for large numbers of people to be able to support themselves via artistic/intellectual pursuits. Art today is more economically valuable than it ever was prior to, say, the Industrial Revolution. (Or even prior to the 1990s.)

In the pre-modern times of which you speak, the per-capita number of working artists was infinitesimal compared to the modern era you bemoan. Western artists were paid because they provided a personal service to the aristocracy and the Church. Yes they were paid, but they were rare - and ultimately an irrelevant example to an era in which art (like most everything else) has been democratized.

It is also an accident of history to have so many people with the ability to pursue creative hobbies in their spare time (painting materials being ungodly expensive in the 16th century along with that 'no free time' thing) - and while that was never particularly relevant in the film days, the barriers to entry and dissemination are almost non-existent for photography now.
 
this thread did remind me of this in my life:

I made a 16mm documentary film in the mid 90's about a cult subject. No big deal, but some people did like it and it played in small theaters around for a bit. I never made any money off it because making a film was so unGodly expensive. But I had always wanted to make a film and I did and I moved on.

A couple of years later I got it transferred to video. Some people made the effort to find me and request a copy of the film. I made a good living doing something else at the time and just thought What the heck, I'll just give it to anyone who asks for it.

With the exception of one person, no one that I had given the film to even bothered to say thank you.
 
With the exception of one person, no one that I had given the film to even bothered to say thank you.


Thanks for all the fish.......and a tip of the Hatlo hat.


(does that satisfy you now?)
 
Open eyes, if you choose your profession!

Everyone knows (or should knowing) that photography as a livelihood means eating hard bread nowadays.

But I see no reason, from which we should condemn people just because they do some work for free disposal, especialy in terms of wikipedia, from which we all benefit...
 
Last night, I just gave about a dozen photographic portraits to Wikipedia. I was inspired by this thread.

All of people Wikipedia had entries for but no photos.

One photo was of an author I was friends with in my 20's, who killed himself last year. Another was of a dead publisher.

Not much commercial value to the photos, but I'm sure numerous people will find them interesting, and I feel they were a tribute to the memory of my departed friends.

I don't care or expect to be thanked by anyone, I did it because I felt like it.
 
i enjoyed reading the OP's story-- thanks for sharing! :)

as for the rest of this thread, i don't even know what to say. i voluntarily take photos of animals at an animal shelter/rescue organization on a weekly basis. while i would love to get paid for it, i don't see myself as selling myself short because i'm doing it for free. really my photos aren't all that spectacular anyway and it makes me feel good to see the animals that i've photo'd be rehomed, so i'm happy.
 
If the animals don't pay up.......gas 'em.


nighstar said:
i enjoyed reading the OP's story-- thanks for sharing! :)

as for the rest of this thread, i don't even know what to say. i voluntarily take photos of animals at an animal shelter/rescue organization on a weekly basis. while i would love to get paid for it, i don't see myself as selling myself short because i'm doing it for free. really my photos aren't all that spectacular anyway and it makes me feel good to see the animals that i've photo'd be rehomed, so i'm happy.
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I Love Film said:
Last night, I just gave about a dozen photographic portraits to Wikipedia. I was inspired by this thread.

All of people Wikipedia had entries for but no photos.

One photo was of an author I was friends with in my 20's, who killed himself last year. Another was of a dead publisher.

Not much commercial value to the photos, but I'm sure numerous people will find them interesting, and I feel they were a tribute to the memory of my departed friends.

I don't care or expect to be thanked by anyone, I did it because I felt like it.
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I'm sure many people will find your photos interesting and even though you don't expected to be thanked, well, we all do thank you.

And I personally thank you for your wisdom in this thread.
 
nighstar said:
i enjoyed reading the OP's story-- thanks for sharing! :)

as for the rest of this thread, i don't even know what to say. i voluntarily take photos of animals at an animal shelter/rescue organization on a weekly basis. while i would love to get paid for it, i don't see myself as selling myself short because i'm doing it for free. really my photos aren't all that spectacular anyway and it makes me feel good to see the animals that i've photo'd be rehomed, so i'm happy.
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That's great, I've been thinking of doing something like this too.
 
I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone for their generosity,... :D but I think I'm more confused than ever.

What's the difference between posting a photo to wikipedia vs posting one right here on rangefinderforum? :eek:

Can't some nefarious corporate entity come in here to steal and profit off any of my glorious works of art just as easily as they can off wiki?
 
Jack Conrad said:
Can't some nefarious corporate entity come in here to steal and profit off any of my glorious works of art just as easily as they can off wiki?
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Quite possibly. But they wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on if you contested it. So if your glorious work of art wasn't so much "priceless" as worth an excrement-load of money, you might be able to afford a lawyer to collect a bunch of bucks from them. [If the artwork were both glorious and worth about $1.95 (which would be the best of my photos) then paying the lawyer wouldn't work so well.]

Published through Wikipedia, though: that's a guarantee that anybody is free to use it for any purpose (including serious for-profit usage) without any fear of any kind of legal encumberance. And most certainly without needing to pay you, or me, or anyone else so much as $1.95, or $0.19 or anything at all.

Whether you think that's right or wrong - or something that's neither - it's just the way it works, given the licensing Wikipedia insists on.

...Mike
 
mfunnell said:
Published through Wikipedia, though: that's a guarantee that anybody is free to use it for any purpose (including serious for-profit usage) without any fear of any kind of legal encumberance.
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Out of genuine curiosity, are there any examples of serious for-profit usage that might have occured?
 
Lax Jought said:
Out of genuine curiosity, are there any examples of serious for-profit usage that might have occured?
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Damnifiknow, as it were, but that's not the point, nor is it where Wikipedia is coming from.

Completely outside of Wikipedia, and photography - but within the open-source paradigm Wikipedia is coming from - I've used some open-source code in a project I've been working on for a Very Large Bank. Trust me: all Very Large Banks are for-profit entities. As it happens, I had to do a shed-load of work to re-write it to work in the target environment I was aiming at, and I was using the software as a testing tool, not as something that's part of a customer-facing bank system, so it didn't and doesn't directly generate any of their multi-billion-dollar profit. (But if it did, it would still be legal.)

However, because the software I used is truly open-source, I didn't need to worry about using it, didn't need to clear my use through eleventy-three layers and lawyers of management, or otherwise fuss. It was a tool, it was available, and I was able to re-write and re-work it to my heart's content. And just get on with my job.

That is the angle (from it's open-source roots) Wikipedia is coming from - which is a very different angle from the way photographers generally look at intellectual property issues (because photographers have a very different set of challenges from those facing software engineers, and are looking down the barrel of copyright law, rather than patent law).

...Mike
 
And to the OP - your prerogative... but this attitude reminds me a little of, say, the Native Americans, who had little concept of "owning" land. Someone else grabbed it.

Being relaxed about IP doesn't mean it will end up shared by our fellow humans - it will be owned by our new corporations.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Dear Mike,

Are you sure? This is a shocking revelation. I would never have guessed...

Cheers,

R.
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It's such a shame that I outraged your innocence. Given the time of year, I'm wondering how we might let you down gently about the Easter Bunny thing ;)

...Mike
 
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