FREE photos, that's what people want. There are websites with millions of brilliant photos for free. Better stuff than I'll ever do. Photographers are just shooting themselves in the foot when they participate in such things. Kayak lessons and rentals cost money though, that's for sure! Thanks a lot, my friend!
Howdy again sir Keith! Hey so these sites like pixel and pixabay do they pay good money for people's photos? Or you're saying photographers give too many photos away by making them free online?
Well, I don't think Pixabay gives the photographer anything at all. How could they, they don't charge a cent. I just downloaded a photo from them of Peyto Lake, Alberta. No charge, free for commercial use, no attribution required... doesn't say who the photographer is. Nobody cares. That's THEIR rules, I'm not making it up. Here's the photo, it's a really good one:
I mention this because I just posted my own photo for a contest here... here's my post:
If you look, you'll see that they look pretty similar. They're both taken from the same visitor viewing platform, that's obvious to me. So is the free picture as good as mine? It's probably better in my opinion. It's got nicer clouds in any case. It's got nicer light. So with all that said, how am I going to try to sell mine?
My photo is legit - I tell you the camera settings, I can tell you the date and time. So what? How could it be sold when Pixabay will give you the one above for free? One answer to that is I have the full high-resolution image, which means I could print mine larger. Most people wouldn't give a hoot. I've sold lots of stock photos. The most I ever got for stock is about $0.30.
wow sir Keith..that's interesting and for what it's worth I think your photo is better because the water looks more like a lake with different shades, the pixabay lake looks almost fake with mostly one solid color. Plus I like the mountains against the solid blue sky of yours and your's has that person sitting there which gives some perspective of size and distance. But that's just my 2 bit opinion.
The most you ever sold a stock photo for is 30 cents? wow, that just sounds so wrong!
Well, thank you for that. The idea of stock is that the same photo can sell over and over if it's a good one, but I wouldn't even bother to submit my photo to a stock agency. In fact, I don't send them any photos at this point because it's not worth my time. In my opinion, online photography is basically dead. You can still sell physical prints, framed prints, canvas prints. I don't bother with stock anymore. That's just me, what do I know? I'm clearly not much of a businessman. It's like if Chevy starts to give away trucks for free, who is going to buy a Ford F150?
I understand and agree sir keith. I'm sure glad free photos are available to us non photographers but I can see what it does to pros who would like to sell photos. I'm glad the old vintage ones don't cost!
It's a matter of vast over-supply and low demand relatively speaking. I read an article from 2014 which said that 1.8 billion photos were being posted online every day. That was in 2014, it must be way more now. So that completely changes photography, it can't be helped. A photo has got to be insanely good to have any inherent value and stand out in that kind of crowd.
FREE photos, that's what people want. There are websites with millions of brilliant photos for free. Better stuff than I'll ever do. Photographers are just shooting themselves in the foot when they participate in such things. Kayak lessons and rentals cost money though, that's for sure! Thanks a lot, my friend!
Howdy again sir Keith! Hey so these sites like pixel and pixabay do they pay good money for people's photos? Or you're saying photographers give too many photos away by making them free online?
Well, I don't think Pixabay gives the photographer anything at all. How could they, they don't charge a cent. I just downloaded a photo from them of Peyto Lake, Alberta. No charge, free for commercial use, no attribution required... doesn't say who the photographer is. Nobody cares. That's THEIR rules, I'm not making it up. Here's the photo, it's a really good one:
I mention this because I just posted my own photo for a contest here... here's my post:
https://steemit.com/landscapephotography/@keithboone/landscape-seascape-contest-week-015
If you look, you'll see that they look pretty similar. They're both taken from the same visitor viewing platform, that's obvious to me. So is the free picture as good as mine? It's probably better in my opinion. It's got nicer clouds in any case. It's got nicer light. So with all that said, how am I going to try to sell mine?
My photo is legit - I tell you the camera settings, I can tell you the date and time. So what? How could it be sold when Pixabay will give you the one above for free? One answer to that is I have the full high-resolution image, which means I could print mine larger. Most people wouldn't give a hoot. I've sold lots of stock photos. The most I ever got for stock is about $0.30.
wow sir Keith..that's interesting and for what it's worth I think your photo is better because the water looks more like a lake with different shades, the pixabay lake looks almost fake with mostly one solid color. Plus I like the mountains against the solid blue sky of yours and your's has that person sitting there which gives some perspective of size and distance. But that's just my 2 bit opinion.
The most you ever sold a stock photo for is 30 cents? wow, that just sounds so wrong!
Well, thank you for that. The idea of stock is that the same photo can sell over and over if it's a good one, but I wouldn't even bother to submit my photo to a stock agency. In fact, I don't send them any photos at this point because it's not worth my time. In my opinion, online photography is basically dead. You can still sell physical prints, framed prints, canvas prints. I don't bother with stock anymore. That's just me, what do I know? I'm clearly not much of a businessman. It's like if Chevy starts to give away trucks for free, who is going to buy a Ford F150?
I understand and agree sir keith. I'm sure glad free photos are available to us non photographers but I can see what it does to pros who would like to sell photos. I'm glad the old vintage ones don't cost!
It's a matter of vast over-supply and low demand relatively speaking. I read an article from 2014 which said that 1.8 billion photos were being posted online every day. That was in 2014, it must be way more now. So that completely changes photography, it can't be helped. A photo has got to be insanely good to have any inherent value and stand out in that kind of crowd.
holy smokes sir Keith! wow that's a mind-boggling figure and like you said it's way more now, probably 2 billion every day! amazing.