photo credit: Vinay Deep

But it’s the web! It’s just a web image. It’s cheap. It’s not worth as much as print usage. It’s only 300 pixels wide. It’s small. It can’t be worth anything like a full page in the magazine. It’s just our electronic version. Nobody reads it online anyway.

Just some of the excuses you’ll hear when publishers want you to throw in “digital rights” i.e. web and pdf uses for free or for nearly free.

Wrong!

Here’s why. A great article by Paul Melcher over on Black Star Rising gives you 10 reasons why your pixels are worth as much (if not more) on the web than they are in print. http://rising.blackstar.com/10-ways-to-fight-for-your-digital-rights-as-a-photographer.html

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Alamy announce a ‘Find a Photographer’ service (1)
• Why photo credit lines aren’t worth the paper they’re written on (6)
• Assignment Photography: How to charge and price up assignments – part four (16)
• Assignment Photography: How to charge and price up assignments – part five (6)
• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

Back in the days of film photographers would use sticky labels to show a transparency or print belonged to them and copyright and contact info. Literally stuck on the slide mount or the reverse of the print. With the advent of digital there was no longer a physical object to stick these on. CDs could be labelled but once your client took those images off your CD and save them onto their machine your data was separated from your images.

So how do we protect our images out there in cyberspace?

Enter Meta Data. A way of storing text fields invisibly inside a file be that PSD, TIFF, JPEG or other digital file types.

If you have Photoshop you can use the many Meta Data fields by opening an image and then selecting File from the top menu and File Info from the dropdown. This opens the image Meta Data fields window. Then click on Description. This field is the most widely used with Headline, Description & Keywords plus Copyright info fields. This is an Adobe field and maps its data to the IPTC Status and IPTC Content fields. Take a look at those too.

Photo Meta Data is underused. Way underused. Yet it could be the way that photographers get round the planned “Orphan Works” laws in the pipeline in the US and UK where companies who can’t identify the owner of a photo will have the power to use it for free!.

Meta Data was standardised by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) who developed the various Meta Data fields used as a way of being able to read data across all the major news image providers and users. Back in the infancy of digital communications the “IPTC fields” in an image showed the Caption, Description, Licence and copyright information of an image transmitted across the newswire.

Imagine the chaos if a busy newsdesk received a load of wired in images all without captions and locations! From there it grew into an effective way of showing ownership and the rights attached to a digital image.

The Photo Meta Data project has created a site all about Meta Data called www.photometadata.org Bookmark it now as it will turn into a great resource with tutorials and links to free MetaData resources, readers and tips.

Rather than repeat the comprehensive information on photometadata.org I thought I would list 5 reasons why Photo Meta Data should be in every single image you publish:

1) Without data showing you are the owner and that the image is subject to copyright your image may be treated as an orphan and used without your consent. It’s widely held that images with no “owner” are often seen as fair game by publishers. Make sure yours shows the image is controlled.

2) When delivering files to a client make sure that you fill in the Rights Usage Terms field (found in IPTC Status). State the terms of the licence for the reproduction of your image. It will remind your client and/or anyone else coming into contact with it that it is licenced and only to be used in the manner stated.

3) Make sure you put your name, address, telephone numbers, email address and website address in the IPTC Contact field. I also put these at the end of the Description field. People who need to contact you about usage of your image can then do this easily and not use “I couldn’t find them to ask” as an excuse.

4) It can lead to a nice surprise. An image of mine I had long forgotten about was “found” by a newspaper picture desk and used in a weekend edition. It had been sent to them by a client I had shot it for as part of their PR strategy but this second use some years after was totally unrelated to PR and therefore billable. I received a phone call from the team marking up the image uses and a cheque followed. I had marked the IPTC Rights Usage Field with “only for use in connection with Acme Inc. PR – all other uses chargeable”.

5) IPTC is there for a reason, it’s for you to put your ownership into that image. In the current digital “one click copy” era and with unauthorised uses on the rise can you afford not to use it?

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Why photo credit lines aren’t worth the paper they’re written on (6)
• What exactly is a photography license? (1)
• Orphan Works Legislation explained…. (1)
• Creative Commons Wordpress plugin could spell big trouble for unwary blog publishers (8)
• Alamy announce a ‘Find a Photographer’ service (1)

photo credit: Yukari*

If I could embed an mp3 of a violin I’d do it.

In a 6.30pm email to all contributors yesterday (March 18th) the CEO of the Alamy Stock Library, James West announced that the mainly editorial stock agency may well have to succumb to a subscription based model based upon unlimited downloads as a worst case scenario. It would seem the UK newspaper industry is in such a mess it has decided to take its ball home if it can’t buy usage for microstock rates.

I’ve seen some bun fights over on Alamy’s forum and some toys thrown out of the pram (and in this case rightly so) but I’m sure when James clicked on the send button in his office at the end of that day he had no idea of the intense shit storm he was about to unleash. Just read the blog comments. Up to 134 and counting. About 5 in favour of giving our beleaguered newspapers an as much as you can eat buffet for a fixed fee. 99% screaming (literally) for a way to opt-out of Newspaper subscriptions.

Almost 24 hours (save 3 minutes) later James responded to those comments on the blog and no doubt the trillions** of ‘Angry from Croydon’ emails he’d invited his contributors to send him via his personal email inbox.

From James West himself in a comment below:

Clarification to readers – approximately 17,000 contributors received my email about UK newspapers and 300 opted out. The author has used the reaction on the Alamy forum to gauge contributor opinion, which is not representative of opinion across the Alamy contributor community as a whole.

James West
CEO
Alamy

In this follow up response James mentioned allowing an opt-out.

If you’re still unconvinced, please email Member Services, with the subject line “UK newspaper opt-out”, and we will exclude your images from any deals we do with UK newspapers.

If you are going to take my offer of an opt-out, please do something for me in return: wait and see. Don’t rule this out until you have had a chance to gauge the impact it will have on price and volume for yourself. You will be able to opt-out at any point in the future if you wish.

This appeased some but did this stop the masses from revolting? Hell no. Off they went again. 98 comments to date. Some rather well thought out and lucid arguments too. Grab a coffee and read through especially if you’re new to Alamy and/or stock. I can’t help wondering whether Alamy’s policy wing deliberately tosses out a bad news scenario in order to brainstorm possible solutions for free. I know that’s a cynical attitude to take. It could be that they are genuinely concerned about how their contributors feel.

At least they sort of pseudo-consult (albeit in a ham fisted manner) unlike Getty who are more than likely to just tell you to bend over and brace yourself.

24 hours later the cavalry arrive in the shape of another clarification blog post from Head of Content Alan Capel.

You guessed it……. still not enough detail to quell the fires of revolt! Though we did now realise that RM images were fair game for the Newshounds too! Despite assurances that prices would be set on usage, there’s a foul smell of a download model emerging which would let these key customers (only 8% of Alamy’s business mind) fill their boots for an all you can eat monthly fee. RMs RFs RPs the lot.

Contributors rightly point out that under the current model the Newshounds quite often “forget” to account for usages. As it is the key customers get access to download hi-res images on a “self billing” arrangement which trusts said organisations to account for each and every use they have made of the image.

Worse though, and the real crux of a subscription scheme like this is that Alamy can negotiate a price that isn’t far off what they get now on a contractual basis. Guaranteed income. No such guarantee for the contributor who will get the crumbs and see their work devalued even further. Can’t blame Alamy for wanting to secure cash flow in a recession but it’s the contributor that provides the content that gets the rough end of a subscription deal every single time.

Client gets cheaper imagery – Alamy get guaranteed payments – Contributor gets sod all!

The Alamy Forum (PP side note: not for those of nervous disposition) often reports unpaid usage attributed to the Newspaper accounts. So if Alamy can’t control this now (despite assurances they’re taking it seriously) PP wonders how the hell they’re going to control usage under subscriptions where the late nite sub-editor is going to look upon the whole of Alamy as his personal free stock resource. “I’ll mark those uses up later” – not.

More worrying is the precedent this is going to set within the industry. BAPLA have already spoken out against the Newspapers’ attempt to dictate the value of photographer’s work. PP feels that once the magic download rabbit is let out of the hat the other volume clients are going to come asking for it too. There could be a slow creep until the whole editorial and educational use sector is subsumed.

Best kill it now. Like the ill-fated Novel Use scheme. That didn’t work either.

PP thinks Alamy’s contributors have a great diversity of content that’s just not available anywhere else (yes anywhere). Some of it is complete crap but thankfully Alamy Rank is doing a good job in letting that sink to the bottom. There’s good cause for the Newspapers to pay real money to licence Alamy’s diverse content. Without it they’d have to send someone to the outer reaches of whatever godforsaken place they’re doing a piece on and get it shot. And that’s going to cost them way more than the current heavily discounted licence fees they enjoy from Alamy.

Of course they could:

1. Nick it off the web or FlickR (mind you don’t nick a Getty image now Mr Newspaper man); or
2. Persuade a newbie to part with their image for the absolutely wonderful “can’t resist oh no its just too good” reimbursement of a credit line.

Why can’t they just be thankful they can licence rare content for the current 75% off calculator knockdown price. But no, they want it even cheaper. Hey, that’s capitalism! But it takes two to tango and if Alamy show some cojones and stand firm the Newspapers can’t do much about it.

Fast forward to 25th March and in response to the tidal wave of opt-out emails James West feels compelled to write to everyone again. This one isn’t on the blog and it gives more detail on the probable (his words not mine) usage price points of £25 – £55 per use. If I thought that was even remotely possible I’d applaud though it covers the current discounted rates for spot up to 1/8th, getting 60% of £55 for a DPS in a national newspaper is going to seem like a hugely bad deal.

Fact is that Getty and AP who supply newswire sport, breaking news and celebrity images are already way way below that price point. I just can’t see Alamy managing to thrash out a contract with a newspaper in a recession that comes close to £25 – £55 for every single image for single non-exclusive editorial use.

PP is with a number of commentators who call for Alamy to let this sector go. By all means continue to service them at regular prices but don’t cave in chasing 8% of revenue from a dying industry. Newsprint isn’t exactly flatlining yet but they’re in A&E and the prognosis isn’t good.

Further developments are awaited with an uneasy mix of interest and trepidation. Lets hope for the sake of our future editorial sales Alamy’s negotiations with our UK Newspaper magnates are more successful than this guy’s attempt at appeasement.

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Ready Image licences (0)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Protected or Exclusive image licences (0)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Managed image licences (0)
• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)

photo credit: bloomsberries

Good question.

I saw a statistic somewhere on the number of blogs that are created each week and it’s mind boggling. The number that make it to any sort of maturity is only a small proportion but its still, on a global scale, quite a few! Now imagine those blogs had no images on at all. Just words. That would be really boring wouldn’t it?

As photographers we are finding ourselves in a world where images are more in demand than ever before. The online use of our work is eventually going to outstrip print use. I almost guarantee it. The web is still in relative infancy and I reckon we ai’nt seen nothing yet when it comes to web use. Yet we charge pissy little amounts fro web use don’t we? Look at stock. RF for web use is micromicropeanuts even at a non microstock agency….but the RF usage could well be forever and ever……..

Charging for electronic advertising use is another post altogether and one that we’re going to have to address for it makes no sense to get $50 for online with 500x the exposure of the dearer print use…!

Still……back to the point of this post – use by blogs. These bloggers need images like humans need oxygen. They may well like your images. So if you find your part of your portfolio on someone’s blog you’re going to be angry right? Or are you? When does added exposure and promotion equal usage fees? What if the blogger (who never asked your permission first) claims that good old defence of “Fair Use”.

Rob Haggard’s (A Photo Editor) blog has some thoughts and a neat discussion….

“I’ve been asked a few times by readers “What’s fair use and what’s illegal when using photography that’s not yours on a blog?” I can’t actually answer that question, because I’m not a lawyer, but I would like to help bloggers understand the best practices for using photography that doesn’t belong to them…”

I suggest you go and join in the discussion right here as its something that isn’t going to go away anytime soon…

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Creative Commons Wordpress plugin could spell big trouble for unwary blog publishers (8)
• Alamy announce a ‘Find a Photographer’ service (1)
• Why photo credit lines aren’t worth the paper they’re written on (6)
• What exactly is a photography license? (1)
• Welcome to thephotographybiz.com (0)

But wait help is at hand. Have you got 10 minutes to learn how you can help protect your copyright? Yes? Then please watch this video. It explains it all

Here’s the link referenced in the video:

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

At the site above you will be able to take action to help fight the passage of this US legislation which is threatening the rights of all creatives, photographer, artists, illustrators, musicians, writers.

If you are in the UK here’s an online petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/Stop2913/

If you are reading this you likely make some sort of income from your camera. This Bill is going to make it easier for our work to be infringed, ripped-off, passed off and ultimately used without payment.

Couple that with the requirement to pay-to-register every single frame we create so that it is “protected” and it is a lose, lose situation for creatives everywhere.

PP urges you, wherever you are in this crazy world, to take action and sign local petitions, write to your Senator, Congressman, MPs etc. We must make our voice heard and we need to do it fast.

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• What exactly is a photography license? (1)
• 5 reasons to always use Photo Meta Data (0)
• Why photo credit lines aren’t worth the paper they’re written on (6)
• When does fair use of a photo become copyright infringement? (2)
• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)

photo credit: Lili Vieira de Carvalho

Welcome to the final part of the tutorial on pricing up assignment photography. This part is going to show you how to apply your base usage rate (BUR) to assign license extensions for re-use of your images in a real world example.

In part four of this tutorial we priced up an initial licence for a commission to shoot a Fitness Centre brochure.

We granted a one year use for brochures and web in the UK as our initial licence included within our shoot fee.

How to handle a request for re-use or a licence extension

The images are delivered and you’ve been paid. Six months later your client calls you and says they want to run the images again in fitness magazines in the UK as advertisements. They are also building a fitness centre in Germany and want to use your images in a German edition of the brochure and they want to reprint the brochure next year, but only for the UK, so need a one year extension to the licence.

Lets refer to our handy re-use fees table. This one is produced (and is ©) the Association of Photographers (AoP) based in the UK. The table shows you guidelines for how to price up the additional license uses. It is freely available to download as a pdf from the AoP copyright4clients site here. It is designed to allow you to take your initial Base Usage Rate (BUR) figure and use the table as a guide to price the licence extensions.

Lets look at this table in detail. Click the thumbs to enlarge.

List of additional media types and time periods

List of additional territories

Each table has a range of percentages (%) upon which to base your negotiations. The AoP recognise that in any business there must be room for negotiation so this table is used as a starting point for those negotiations. It gives you, the photographer the confidence to price fairly for additional usage. It gives the client the knowledge that you are not plucking figures out of the air.

Using this table to price up our assignment re-usage example

Our client wants to buy the following additional usages:

1) UK magazine advertisements for 3 months
2) German version of the same brochure
3) One additional year’s usage for UK only

In part four we set our BUR at £1500

1) UK Magazine advertisements: Call up the media types page and look down the column until we see “press includes magazines, newspapers etc.” Look along the row. Additional media types within the initial use period are charged at 100% of BUR. But our client wants 3 months use only for three ads in a couple of magazines.

In this case I would charge 33% of BUR for 3 months UK magazine advertising. 33% of £1500 = £495

2) German version of the same brochure: Call up the territories page and select “single additional country”. Look in the “principal media” column as we’ve already licenced for the brochure media type for use in the UK. The table recommends 20-100%.

In this case I would charge (depends on the client size of course) 50% of BUR for additional territory = Germany. 50% of £1500 = £750

3) One additional year’s usage for UK only: Call up the media types page and look down the column until we see “Brochures” Look along the row. Additional year after licence period is charged at 25-50% of BUR. Look down the media type column for “Internet”. Look along the row. Additional year after licence period is charged at 30-100% of BUR.

The client wants both UK brochures and internet for an additional year. Internet is fast becoming the most widely viewed advertising media (especially for high-traffic websites) so you should not see Internet use as being a lesser option than print.

In this case I would charge 75% of BUR for the additional year UK brochures and web use (giving the client a 25% discount on the additional year) 75% of £1500 = £1,125

Total cost to client for additional uses = £495 + £750 + £1,125 = £2,370

But hang on PP, that’s more than they paid you for the original shoot….how can that be right?

The golden rules of usage

a) Use of the image not time it took to shoot

Remember, the original shoot we priced up in part four was for one year UK only in two media. We undertook the shoot based upon that usage. We priced the shoot based upon that licence to use. This is the essence of usage. The more widely an image is used, the more you, the photographer should receive. This is not Royalty Free and this is why assignments should never be priced based upon time.

Also realise that in this example, your client’s spend for advertising in magazines and printing/distribution of a second language edition is going to be far in excess of your additional usage fees.

b) Use the BUR system as a way of creating building blocks of pricing so that you can handle any request for any use, any time, any territory with confidence and the ability to negotiate.

Final thoughts….

That just about wraps up the five part series on pricing assignment photography. I hope you found it useful and it has given you a methodology to be able to price your photography based upon the benefit it gives to your client; not the time it takes you to shoot.

If your client is buying extra usage, multiple medias, territories or time then by all means haggle, barter, negotiate. Assignment photography is a business like any other. Businesses do deals every day of the week. Nothing wrong with negotiation, just make sure you always get something out of it.

Quid pro quo Dr Lecter? ;)

PP

p.s. if you need to start from the beginning here’s Part One

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Assignment Photography: How to charge and price up assignments – part four (16)
• Alamy announce a ‘Find a Photographer’ service (1)
• Fight for your right to licence your pixels for a proper fee (2)
• Why photo credit lines aren’t worth the paper they’re written on (6)
• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)

photo credit: Lili Vieira de Carvalho

Welcome to the next part of the tutorial on pricing up assignment photography. This part is going to show you how to apply your base usage rate (BUR) to assign a license in a real world example.

The previous three parts of this mini tutorial showed you how to:

1) avoid pricing by making it up as you go along
2) work out how much you need to earn to stay in business
3) understand the need for a constant figure for each assignment to enable you to fairly price usage licenses

Base Usage Rate (BUR)

I’ve already mentioned that the BUR figure is a constant BUT that it can be a different constant. Indeed it has to be, else you’re going to end up charging a PR shoot the same as an advertising shoot and that’s not right. So using you NTMPD figure as a base I want you to arrive at four separate BUR figures for assignment types:

PR
Editorial
Commercial
Advertising

My test NTMPD figure was £480 GBP ($960 USD). This is what I need to make per day if I shoot for 104 days a year, just to break even.

So our BUR figure needs to be more than that right?

Not necessarily! Why? Because we have a range of photography assignments we undertake. We do everything from PR to Advertising so our BUR should suit the job. This is so that:

a) you don’t price yourself out of the market
b) you don’t undercut yourself
c) you can charge according to the value to the client (i.e. usage)

Here’s my example BUR figures:

PR £250 ($500)
Editorial £500 ($1000)
Commercial £1000 ($2000)
Advertising £2500 ($5000)

Remember these figures are your “creative fee” only. They do not include expenses or the hire of equipment , models, catering etc. These should be charged separately on your invoice at cost or a reasonable mark-up. Every job will have different expenses attached but your creative fee should remain fairly constant within that area of operations.

Here’s where this gets tricky. There’s a big difference between the USA and the UK. In the USA usage fees are often charged on top of the creative fees and expenses. In the UK the initial usage fees are normally included in the creative fee. However, the concept of BUR still works for the US.

Okay let’s make up a fictitious assignment and test this out.

A small local design agency has called you and asked for a price to do a shoot for their client. It’s a series of shots in a newly built fitness/health centre. The agency is looking for about 10 shots to be delivered. They estimate it will take half a day (note: never let the client tell you how long it’s going to take!).

So where do we start?

The first thing to rule out is charging on time. Charging for your time is not going to make you rich, and it’s very unlikely even to make you a living wage. Charging for your product is what you are aiming for. If you want to know why charging time is bad business for photographers read this post here.

The first question you should ask the agency is about the usage of the images. Brochure, web, advertisements in the press?

The three key things you need to know are:

1) Where are the images going to be used? List all “media” (where media = each type of placement i.e. brochure, web, press ads would be three media)

2) How long are they going to be used for? You need to know the length of time the images are going to be used for.

3) What territories are the images going to be used? (i.e. state/county, national, international or country, europe, world) etc.

Armed with these three pieces of vital information (you shouldn’t be pricing without knowing these) we can start the formula.

Pricing the example job

Lets look at the roster of BUR charges we set again:

PR £250 ($500)
Editorial £500 ($1000)
Commercial £1000 ($2000)
Advertising £2500 ($5000)

The usage needed is for a brochure, website use and possibly adverts in the press in the future but they are not sure…..

PP note: this is very common. Often clients request copyright or “unlimited use” because they don’t know exactly what they are going to use the images for. Sometimes, if you have produced some great images, once seen the client decides to use them in extended advertising or point of sale, or other media. By licensing your usage, you can charge for each extension of use. But if you granted “unlimited use” at the outset because they said it was “just for a few leaflets” then…….you just lost a load of cash….

So now we know the usage the client needs we pick a BUR creative fee figure to work from. Keep in mind that although the BUR figure is constant (for the purposes of the formula) it can be whatever you like. The BUR is a way of estimating future usage fees. This job is what is known a “below the line” advertising. Its a small local design firm, its a local fitness centre. It’s not a major agency and major client. Its one of those jobs that falls in the middle between regular “commercial” work and true “advertising” work.

So for this example I’m going to set a BUR figure of £1500.

My estimate shows £1500 as the creative fee. This is also noted as the BUR for future usage rates to be based upon. I then add my post-production fees for the 10 master files, a fee for hosting a web gallery, etc etc (this is a whole new tutorial in itself!) plus my expenses.

**Important Bit!**

Under the line item “license to use” (or “licence” if you are in the UK!) we set out what rights are granted. If you need a reminder on what a license looks like:

Download a blank licence to fill in

PP note: as mentioned before – this is where US and UK/Europe seem to divide. There’s no “law of charging” but in my experience US photographers then charge for usage separately from their creative fee, whereas UK/European photographers include the first usage in their creative fee.

Here’s how I would do it.

Licence to use includes: Brochures and web use for 1 year, UK. (Remember its use/time/territories in that order).

Had they only wanted brochures I would have granted: Brochures, 2 years, UK.

Initial Licences: In the UK the AoP (Association of Photographers) recommend granting either one media, one territory for two years – or – two media, one territory for one year

In the US those inital licences would attract further “usage fee” payments. I’m all for usage fees but I do think clients like to see a base usage built into the estimate. Comments from US readers on this would be appreciated.

.Job done…..and that’s all there is to it.

You have set your BUR fee and attached usage conditions to that fee. You have now controlled the usage of your images and charged accordingly. You have rights-managed your images and have the mechanism set up to be able to charge for licence extensions further down the road.

Next time on “How to Price Up assignments”…..

So, we’ve done the fitness centre shoot. It went great. We’ve got ourselves 10 stellar images. Client loves them. They love them so much that six months later they call you and say they want to run the images in fitness magazines in the UK as advertisements. They are also building a fitness centre in Germany and want to use your images in the German brochure and they want to reprint the brochure next year so need a one year extension to the licence.

Q. What are you going to do now? A. Get out your handy re-usage fees table and work out the additional usage fees to charge…..and that will be the subject of the final installment, Part Five.

p.s. if you charge on time or give away unlimited use of your images to clients don’t bother to read part five, it won’t apply to you….. ;)

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Assignment Photography: How to charge and price up assignments – part five (6)
• Alamy announce a ‘Find a Photographer’ service (1)
• Fight for your right to licence your pixels for a proper fee (2)
• Why photo credit lines aren’t worth the paper they’re written on (6)
• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)

photo credit: Lili Vieira de Carvalho

In this part of our pricing photography tutorial I am going to start to describe a system for pricing up any assignment you are asked to do based on usage of the images you produce.

In Part One of the tutorial I showed you why making it up as you go along is not a good idea and in Part Two we discussed how you need to know your costs of business to be able to break even before you price to make a profit.

In this section we are going to discuss the pricing strategy. A method that can be applied across all commercial assignment photography sectors.

First PP rule of pricing: there is no rule of pricing

That’s not to say there aren’t methods; like the one I’m going to show you here. But photography is an unregulated business and nearly all practitioners are self-employed and thus there are quite possibly hundreds of ways to price photography assignments.

Over the years my methods changed too. To reflect changing times and copyright legislation. The 1998 Copyright Act in the UK gave us photographers back our copyright. Prior to that the copyright on our images was automatically given to the person paying for the assignment.

So the method I’m going to discuss here is pertinent only to those photographers creating images in countries of the world where copyright is automatically assigned to the creator of the image. For those poor photographers having to hand over their copyright, my commiserations and I hope you charge megabucks for the privilege!

Second PP rule of pricing: you need a constant if you’re going to licence usage

Why?

Well without a constant, a reference point, an agreed baseline, your client is going to think that you’re making it up as you go along. That leads to distrust and that’s the last thing you want. You’re going to be quoting your constant as an agreed creative fee.

Its upon this creative fee that the licences you grant for usage are going to be based.

We’ve already got a constant. But its not the one we quote to the client.

In Part Two we worked out your “need to make per day rate” or NTMPD rate. That was based on 104 shooting days a year. It shows you what you need to make on each of those 104 days to break even.

If you haven’t got this figure yet – go do it now.

That figure is constant. It is a baseline that you apply to the variable (104 shooting days). You shoot more days, you can afford to earn less and break even. You shoot less days, you need to charge more to break even. Except we don’t want to play it like that. Nobody wants to work 365 days a year for $50 a day do they? :) So the constant we got for break even should stay rooted and fixed. If we shoot less then our constant is wrong and should be higher. If we shoot more then we make profit.

But we are going to work out a profitable constant for our markets that makes us profit on our projected 104 days shooting.

Third PP rule of pricing: sectorize your market

PR grin and grab photography is not going to pay as much as above-the line Advertising photography. Editorial is not going to pay as much as a below-the-line gig shooting a brochure for a local manufacturing firm. That’s how it is all over the world in every industry. A Kia car is cheaper than a Lexus etc etc..

So although we have a constant we need different constants for different sectors. It’s OK, this is quite common. In fact, IMHO its the best way to know that you are always pitching your prices so that you remain:

a) profitable; and
b) accountable to your client; and
c) with a system that can be applied not only to the assignment and its usage, but to repeat and additional uses of your images too.

The constant you are going to be working with is called your Base Usage Rate (BUR) and I’ll show you how you apply that in Part Four.

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• How to deal with clients who want your photography for the cheapest possible price (3)
• Assignment Photography: How to charge and price up assignments – part two (4)
• Assignment Photography: How to charge and price up assignments – part one (2)
• Alamy announce a ‘Find a Photographer’ service (1)
• Why photo credit lines aren’t worth the paper they’re written on (6)

photo credit: cell105

Uh oh,

A very large lid has just been taken off a huge can-o-worms that could have far reaching repercussions for both photographers and blog publishers who don’t realise what they may be letting themselves in for.

What is it?

Photodropper is a brand new free plugin for Wordpress blogs that lets blog publishers insert photos from the popular photo-sharing site Flickr into their blog pages. See example of the CC licence above – I inserted this using the plugin.

The search for the photos is performed from within the Wordpress ‘write post’ screen itself and one click on the resulting thumbnails that the plugin returns inserts all the code necessary to embed the Flicr photo into the blog post.

“Hooray” I hear you cry. What’s wrong with that? Sounds like a great idea.

I agree (apart from people sharing good images for free), but there is a glaring problem here.

The photographer sharing their work under the Creative Commons licence can choose the license type that allows commercial use. This means that a blog set up for commercial gain can install this plugin and use Creative Commons images that are not prohibited from commercial use.

Trouble is, the photographers that set their Creative Commons licences often don’t understand anything about the legalities of image use. i.e. Model and Property Releases and Trademarks etc. Many of the Flickr contributors are hobbyists and happily so.

While these images remain displayed on Flickr, an image sharing site, they are not being used commercially. But, the minute an image gets on a commercial blog then that image becomes subject to the real-world laws of needing clearances for certain uses.

photo credit: wit

Photodropper have this to say:

“If you run a Commercial Blog, be sure to check “Show only photos that can be used commercially” in the Photo Dropper options.”

They obviously forsee unreleased images being used commercially as a problem because they have made this quote bold on their site here:

http://www.photodropper.com/wordpress-plugin/

They also have this to say:

“This is only a tool – you are responsible for adhering to copyright rules for all photos you post.”

and

“Use of this plugin will be at your own risk. No guarantees or warranties are made, direct or implied. The creators cannot and will not be liable or held accountable for damages, direct or consequential. By using or downloading this plugin it implies agreement to these conditions.”

…which is a nice disclaimer!

Real world test of the plugin

I installed the plugin and as per instructions I checked the box in the Options panel so only those photos able to be used commercially were returned in my searches. Or at least only those the photographer said could only be used commercially……..

While writing this post I searched for a number of things. Many searches returned images of people as you’d expect. Many of those people images were shots taken on the street or in public places. Also returned were images of well known trademarks and logos from huge international companies.

photo credit: chelseagirl

Flickr is not a stock library, so there’s no way of knowing whether the person portrayed in the image has a bona-fide model release or not. But let’s say that experience leads me to believe that 99% of these images will not be released for commercial use.

Yet ALL the images returned in the “safe for commercial use” searches were posted and attributed under the Creative Commons license that “allows” commercial use.

That’s very worrying.

What defines a commercial blog anyway?

IMHO (I’m not a lawyer – read my disclaimer!) its any blog which generates revenue. Even if its a very small amount via advertising related products and services (like the ads on this blog). If it sells anything, or offers anything for monetary gain or subscription.

That said, magazines are classed in the stock world as “Editiorial use” and you don’t need releases for editorial (supporting articles) use. Most blog images just illustrate the concept or message behind the post (like the ones I have inserted) so even though I have ads running – the posts are actually editorial comment.

The problem will come on those blogs specifically designed to sell something. A lot of webmasters are using Wordpress nowadays as its easier to get to grips with, and get a site up and running, than learning HTML from scratch. On these sites the choice of image will be crucial. Like I suggested; a site selling ringtomnes and featuring an unreleased image of a recognisable teenager on a phone would be hard pressed to say the image is not endorsing their product.

photo credit: Tracy O

What will be the repercussions of misuse?

If the stuff hits the fan because that innocent photo of a smiling teenager and phone you just used to illustrate an article on your blog selling subscription ringtones has no release, things are likely to go pear-shaped in the following order:

1) The girl’s parents hire a lawyer.
2) The lawyer goes after the publisher of the photo – hey, that’s you, the blog owner.
3) You plead innocence and blame the plugin.
4) The plugin has a disclaimer. You, the blog owner, are responsible for ensuring you understand and adhere to copyright and the need for releases.
5) You blame the photographer that uploaded the image to Flickr.
6) “Hey”, says the photographer “I’m just doin’ this for fun” I ain’t no lawyer. I don’t know what you need – anyway, you used it.

……..and that, my friends is the bottom line. The publisher almost always takes the blame and the financial penalty.

If you use an image in a commercial context featuring a person, or a piece of property that needs a release for commercial use and you don’t have one then you’re a law-suit waiting to happen.

So,

Please, bloggers of the world, tread very carefully out there. This plugin, if used in the right way is a nice way of getting free images from all those lovely people that don’t seem to want to make money off their skills! I’ll address that thorny little topic in a future post.

Hope you liked the “safe”images I picked for this post :)

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Why photo credit lines aren’t worth the paper they’re written on (6)
• Alamy announce a ‘Find a Photographer’ service (1)
• When does fair use of a photo become copyright infringement? (2)
• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Ready Image licences (0)

photo credit: alexanderdrachmann

Hoo boy….

There’s one “L” of a debate :) going on over at the Alamy stock photography forums (link to the debate at the bottom of this post). It seems that some contributors are placing the same image at two separate libraries with a simultaneous RM and RF license.

They are placing the same image as Rights Managed on Alamy and Royalty Free on the micros :o

So why is this so wrong and can you do this within Stock Agency terms and conditions?

First off, if you’re not clear what a rights-managed and/or royalty-free licence type is then read these posts first:

What is a rights managed licence?

What is a royalty free licence?

In the rights-managed tutorial I said the following in answer to the question of RM and RF licences co-existing on the same image at the same time:

Why can’t I have the image as Royalty Free on one library and Rights Managed on another?

* Because a rights managed image has something very attractive to buyers that a Royalty Free image never has. A history of its usage. Most stock libraries will not allow you to place an image as Rights Managed if it has ever been sold as Royalty Free. This is to protect their buyers from buying an image with an unknown history. You are effectively managing the rights in your work with an auditable history trail.

But, it would seem, that many non-exclusive stock image libraries just don’t care.

Traditionally, before the rise of the internet based library the photographer and/or his/her agent would have said audit trail of image use history. An enquiring buyer would be able to find out the history of that image.

RM still offers a history but its now harder for the photographer and/or his/her agency to get the whole picture.

Why is this?

Many non-exclusive agencies don’t reveal who the client is so you only know sector, industry etc.

Your image may be RM at a number of agencies so each agency would have to refer the potential sale to you, as only you know the other locations where the image is placed for sale.

…and how many times do they call you to ask that??

Alamy’s own EULA that the buyer agrees to gives no warranty that the image is RM and can be bought RM only. They can’t, they are a non-exclusive agency and have no control over other placements.

PP thinks this is very wrong. Why?

The RM model is selling managed rights. The RF model is not selling managed rights. By their very defintion to any rational person they cannot co-exist for the same image.

It would be like hiring a car for a weekend for $100 then finding you could have bought the whole car for $10 for unlimited use at a place down the road.

If I was a buyer I would be more than annoyed if I had just spent $500 on a RM image only to find it for $200 RF on another site.

If I was a buyer I would be absolutely furious if I had just spent $500 on a RM image only to find it for $2 RF on a microstock site.

So what’s the way forward?

Well, as with everything in life, if it isn’t regulated someone will find a loophole. The stock shooters who currently think its fine to sell RM on Alamy and RF on the micros are merely exploiting the traditional agency’s failure to react to the emerging microstock licensing model. The failure to tighten up their own terms & conditions to prevent this. That, and (in PP’s humble opinion) the contributors lack any morals and respect for how the industry works on a professional level.

So what could Alamy do?

Being non-exclusive means they can’t make a contributor only sell with them (else that would make them exclusive like Getty – which is why, coincidentally, Getty don’t have this problem). but they could insist that:

a) any images for sale on their library as RM will not be also offered for sale simultaneously on their library as RF

b) any images for sale on their library will not be also offered for sale elsewhere in a different licensing model

b) any images for sale on their library as RF will not also be offered on a microstock agency as RF

The new kid on the block, Photoshelter, an agency in the mould of Alamy (but still finding its feet) have implemented a) after an outcry on their forums. That is to be applauded.

So PP says:

Come on Alamy, get your finger out and protect your buyers, protect your contributors with morals, and put an end to the micro-creep once and for all before it rears its head up and bites you in the…..

If you feel strongly about this issue why not leave me a comment below or go and

join in the lively debate over at Alamy.

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Selling on Alamy: Royalty Free or Licenced? (5)
• Alamy go all ‘microstock’ with ‘Limited Use’ scheme (2)
• Breaking news: Alamy allow 2 week Novel Use opt out from 10th June 2008 (2)
• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Managed image licences (0)