"Stock Photo Hell?" An Article.

[Bigtime]

Interesting article from todays Herald, I was wondering what your take on this is? I noticed the Getty Images option on Flickr a couple of days ago:

Stock photo hell

By Kevin Brooker, For The Calgary Herald June 21, 2010

Oh goody, another story about the struggle of traditional media to remain economically viable. This time it's commercial photography, and here's the seismic shift: as of last week Flickr, the popular photo-sharing website with over 40 million registered members warehousing an incalculable number of blurry birthday party snapshots, will now enable users to earn money by selling those pictures to commercial publishers.

The middleman is Getty Images, a Seattle-based stock photo agency that for the past year has been testing the scheme with a select 100,000 images posted to Flickr by professional and semi-professional photographers. The conclusion? Easy cash, baby. Now bring on the amateurs.

For those unfamiliar with how stock agencies work, not to mention how quietly ubiquitous they have become, here is the drill. A publisher -- say a magazine, advertiser or website -- visits Getty's online archives and searches via keywords for an image it is hoping will illustrate a certain concept. When it finds it, or more typically, something kind of, sort of, a little bit like what it originally wanted, it pays a licence fee for a high-resolution copy, of which a portion goes to the original shooter.

Although Getty hasn't finalized its fee schedule, it expects its rates to match the industry standard for single use, around $150 to $250. Flickr users must opt in if they wish to be considered.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Stock+photo+hell/3180453/story.html#ixzz0rUr3LQpE

Personally I don't have a big issue with it. I feel that Mr. Booker is very biased in his view of Flickr and the quality of some of the photos on there, perhaps he should look at the work that many of you post to it? I know I'd LOVE to see your work of skylines and buildings inserted into more articles and stories, instead of the usually dull and boring images used currently (for proof of this look no further than the Heralds own "Building the Bow" photo album).