Credit! Yaay!

I get asked regularly to work “for credit” because the magazine or publication or event is “unable” to pay for photographers.

This image of Peter Appleyard, a large jazz festival wanted it. Large meaning hundreds of thousands of dollars in budget. Tickets cost $100 each. Supported by all levels of government. But when I asked for compensation, they said “oh no, we are unable to pay for photography”.. and they did not use it.

Here, that image again, this time stolen by a site called All About Jazz (click on the image to see it there):

Two things. First, “credit” has never led to any work by anyone for anyone. It’s nice to add to your portfolio, and I would not mind having a Guardian, NYT, or NatGeo byline, but it never actually leads to money.

And money is what I need to eat, and to learn, and to buy tens of thousands of dollars of equipment, and for gas to put in the car to get to shoots, and to buy memory cards, and to buy a new hard drive every few months, and to buy computers, and… you get it.

A post that puts it very well, so I do not have to repeat it, is here:

So This Just Happened

You should probably read that the next time you want to use a “free” photographer.

 

8 thoughts on “Credit! Yaay!

  1. Michael,
    Galina, a Video Producer at Yahoo, just invited me (in fact, twice!) to provide a high res version of one of my shots for credit alone “in connection with marketing materials we are preparing to promote Flickr and its community”.
    On the one hand, a low res version is already available to them on Flickr, on the other hand Yahoo’s coffers are huge that enough they should be able to, and should have a policy to, encourage semipros like myself, who make up a significant portion of their user base. Of course, since Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr, many feel that they see their user base as just a base to be used.
    Tony

  2. CORRECTION, MY REPLY SHOULD READ:
    Michael,
    Galina, a Video Producer at Yahoo, just invited me (in fact, twice!) to provide a high resolution version of one of my shots for credit alone “in connection with marketing materials we are preparing to promote Flickr and its community”.
    On the one hand, a low resolution version is already available to them on Flickr, on the other hand, Yahoo’s coffers are huge enough that they should be able, and should have a policy, to encourage semipros like myself, since we make up a significant portion of their user base. Of course, since Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr, many feel that the new owner’s definition of “user base” is “a base to be used”.
    Tony

  3. Hey Micheal,
    This is an excellent post. I’m interested to know, did you find that they stole your picture with Google’s image search like you showed me how to use to look for this sort of thing? You should do a post on that tool, if you haven’t already. The internet is a powerful tool, it’s amazing that companies, or individuals, think that they can really get away with this sort of thing un-noticed. I’m glad you called attention to this.

  4. Alas, the site owner essentially says “forget it, I cannot pay anything”. He means he decided to pay nothing. So he is doing exactly what was mentioned above: getting away with it.

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