eric kim goes open source...

I hope this will work out for him, but it further enforces if it's on the internet it's free. That's ok with me, as long as we all know what it is and treat it accordingly. Not sure how he will make his "enough to get buy on" or to afford some of the latest gear or nice plane trips to exotic locations to talk with people like Alamby.
 
It's sloppy use of terminology.

Open source usually means the raw source of a program can be read and used by others (within some licensing terms). The closest photography equivelent would be if people related photoshop psd files and let people use and modify them - the layers, the actions, the image data, etc - to produce new works.

Kim just set licensing terms on the output itself. Nothing wrong with that but open source is a weird terminology choice. It does market well to tech people I suppose.
 
Hmm.. I read the article and the comments. Why does this guy generate so much hate? I think he has some decent work. He makes a living out of something he loves and I for one respect him for that. Wish I had that kind of balls....
 
That's a pretty ballsy move. I just resolved myself in the opposite direction recently! (That is, not giving away free usage to photos that I have an intent to publish in the future).

Honestly I can't imagine ever actually downloading someone else's photo, printing it, and hanging it on the wall as art. Just seems wrong. It will be interesting to see if this helps or hurts his ability to make a living.
 
stompyq said:
Hmm.. I read the article and the comments. Why does this guy generate so much hate? I think he has some decent work. He makes a living out of something he loves and I for one respect him for that. Wish I had that kind of balls....
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i think it's because he is doing what many others would like to be doing.
i have been asked by a few folks over the years to teach 'street' workshops...on my own not through a local establishment...and i always defer...
if i were a bitter man i might be jealous enough to dislike him too.
 
stompyq said:
Hmm.. I read the article and the comments. Why does this guy generate so much hate? I think he has some decent work. He makes a living out of something he loves and I for one respect him for that. Wish I had that kind of balls....
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Good question....it's a strange internet phenomenon.
 
In a way, I think this is a little akin to what is happening in the music industry, ie artists making the pragmatic choice to forego income from record sales, instead focussing on income from live perfomances. Without second guessing his intentions or sincerity, Eric perhaps has made a similar pragmatic choice, opting to forego income and the effort to generate that income from print sales, in favour of other means, in his case, perhaps workshop income.

EDIT: the deeper question here perhaps, is whether the market for one's photography is more viable than the market to simply sell to other photographers. If the latter, that is depressing, although in my opinion, most photographers price their work too high. I think the market can bear more than free, though.
 
Actually, after giving this some thought, I believe I understand his model. We all love Beethoven and Mozart and Chopin. When you learn to play the piano, you can get this music for free. What you pay for is the lessons on HOW to play the piano.

So if he gives his work away for free, and I think his photos are pretty good, perhaps he is thinking that people will want to come to workshops and learn how to shoot like he does. Maybe he will make his money that way.

In fact, given the absolute flood and torrent of street photos and the deluge of digital street images (most of which are not anywhere near his work) perhaps this is the only model that will work. You can always find something cheaper or free on the internet, but learning something that could truly set you apart is not so easy to find on the net.

For example, go find a sample USDA Feasibility study for a B&I loan. It's quite difficult if not impossible. And learning how to do it is even more difficult to find. Perhaps I should learn something from Eric Kim.
 
So reading this, it only applies to non-commercial use of the photos. I wonder how many sales to individuals he has has a year. If nothing else, this is permitting what people were probably doing anyway. I may have an overly pessimistic view though.
 
Brian Legge said:
So reading this, it only applies to non-commercial use of the photos. I wonder how many sales to individuals he has has a year. If nothing else, this is permitting what people were probably doing anyway. I may have an overly pessimistic view though.
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I think so too. He seems most interested in teaching photography more than anything. I hardly browse his website/flickr, but has he been trying to sell prints?
 
A lot of photographers today, even really famous ones, are not making money taking pictures and selling them. They're making money selling dreams to people with the money to take their workshops, who think if they spend the money to study with someone famous that that famous someone will help their career. It doesn't work that way, and the career isn't worth having anymore anyway.

I love photography, and I still make decent money from it, but I make more as a high school English and History teacher than I have ever made as a photographer and I think the days of me making decent money from my photos are numbered. In fact, I make more than most professional photographers...as a second year teacher. People used to say if photography became that devalued that no one would take pictures, and then the value of images would go back up. Problem is, there are enough idiots willing to give it away forever.
 
Does this mean we can edit his blog in the spirit of open source? No? How about access the raw files and edit. No? This is nothing more than free press.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Problem is, there are enough idiots willing to give it away forever.
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A huge amount of music was always made by people who played for others for free. That's mostly how it was done until the advent of recording. Paid musical careers depended on an aristocracy who could pay others to play. There was a time when music for 99.9999% of the population was played by those same people in a shared, social environment. No formal exchange needed.

Photography and a substantial amount of music are going that way again. This may not be a bad thing for people to make their own photos and music and other works of art.
 
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