Before giving away photographs for free, read this...

[choui168]

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A photographer friend of mine was recently asked in flickr by a certain organization to use one of his photos for their desktop calendar/corporate giveaway. In return my friend would be "marketed" as the calendars would be given to major ad agencies who would look for suppliers which include photographers.

And since this organization was not a charitable institution, my friend declined the offer as it is not the first time someone asked to use his photo with only the promise of "exposure" as compensation.

What would you, as a photographer, have done if this happened to you?

The photos that you took are not just a result of simply pressing the shutter button. It is a result of the time, effort and money that you spent (I'm not even touching the subject of experience here). Do know that whoever it is that will use your photos will benefit in some ways: i.e. getting good quality pictures for marketing materials at no costs then in turn reap profits from it.

This also applies to photocontests that take your ownership rights of submitted photos even though they award only the winning photos. How would you feel after breaking your back crouching and bending just to get the perfect point of view, not winning anything and seeing your photos afterwards being used as marketing material? Isn't it taking advantage of your enthusiasm? Exposure will come naturally if you work hard on developing your skills. I have witnessed photographer friends who are just barely a year into this field and are already well on their way to becoming the best of the bests. And they did it through sheer hard work, attending workshops after workshops, and spending countless hours shooting and post-processing gigabytes of photos.

Before I end this post, please read this funny blog by another photographer who faced the same situation as my friend. I'm sure you will enjoy this, and thank for your time

Thomas Hawk Digital Connection Blog Archive You Know How Sometimes Businesses Like to Go On Flickr Trying to Score Photos for Free?

[anakin]

funny master

[micaijo]

i got a message from flickrmail nga mag donate kuno ko sa akong pics. lols

and love how kulit TH is. na pikon tuloy tong s xxxx.

[dbgg1979]

I do agree with the sentiments of the person talked about in the first post. He is a friend too. I'd like to share my experience in flickr.

I.
I have received plenty of requests via flickr and given away a lot of photos already. Blog articles, magazine articles, surprisingly a book cover page. For the latter, they offered to send me a copy of the book even though attribution for me was enough. They emailed me that they already sent the book, I still haven't received the book yet. But that's ok. Most of these are every day photos I took with my point and shoot camera.

A lot of the photos in my photostream are set to Creative Commons - Attribution. It's not that I don't give value to my work, I just want to go with the idea of what flickr should be - a community to share your photos with. So I share a lot to the Creative Commons Pool. I'm also an active contributor in Fotopedia.

My advice to flickr users. Set your photo license to the right one. Set it to All Rights Reserved to declare your intentions. Of course that's never a guarantee but at least you have indicated what's necessary. If you don't feel safe with it, then set it to be viewable by only you or your friends/family. Then just provide others with the "secret" link that you can easily generate via flickr. Enable the option for people to purchase your photos via Getty Images.

But most of all, never forget to contribute to the flickr community. Set some of your photos to Creative Commons. Flickr is not meant to be a site for your commercial work but rather a community to share your photos with.

II.
Regarding photo contests. The condition that all submitted photos will become a property of the organizer is just not right. But then again, its the organizer's way of doing things and its up to the photographer to agree to such terms or not.

[blizzaga4]

hahahah nice find!!! Very interesting chat! He really squeezed the orange out of the publisher! "Hello?" "Hello?" -no reply- )

[abortretryfail]

out of business?... I wonder why

and numerous times I've been told, "...do it for free and we'll tell others about you"

and soon you'll have people saying, "why should I pay you? you did it to that person for
free... or... you did it for them at half cost"