Dave Stevenson
I can report with some authority that there’s nothing like seeing your work in print. Whether it’s words, pictures or, in a few lucky cases, both, seeing your own work deemed good enough for widespread reproduction and sale is not something that diminishes with time. Nor, in fact, does the unbridled delight of hearing strangers react positively to your work.
Sadly, my landlord – and, for that matter, my greengrocer, bank manager and a taxi driver the other night – couldn’t care less. Perhaps reasonably, they couldn’t care less how my work makes me feel: all they care about is that I can pay for my bananas, rent or taxi trip.
This isn’t surprising, and ways for professional photographers to be profitable are running alarmingly low. I received a fascinating, if disheartening, email a few weeks ago from a (talented) professional photographer, who described the current stock and corporate photography market as a ‘blood bath’, in which corporate photography buyers were routinely demanding unlimited licences for photographers’ work, and in which enthusiastic amateurs were, thanks to their willingness to work for little pay and to ignore the actual cost benefit of a byline (none, in case you were wondering) crowding out professionals.
That’s precisely how the market works, though. It might be unscrupulous of corporations to demand full copyright and unfeasibly low daily wages from photographers, but if there are people willing to do it, there’s very little professionals can do other than react to the market and look to add other strings to their bows.
It doesn’t help, of course, that even the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) seems to be in a flap over exactly what makes a photographer exactly that. As an organisation whose job it seemingly is to promote the interests of photographers, it was surprising indeed to see the RPS front a campaign to get people to contribute their photographs to a project designed to promote British tourism. What was in it? Why, the chance to see your work published in promotional materials. Try paying your mortgage with that.
Actually, the RPS’ effort to get photographers thinking about commercial photography isn’t a bad thing. It is, after all, an organisation that promotes photographic education rather than business. What stuck in the craw of many was the enthusiasm with which commercial third parties leapt on the bandwagon, eager to get hold of potentially high-quality stock photography with none of the costs or licensing issues normally attached. Great Western railways, the Highways Agency, BMI and Flybe all get dishonourable mentions for attempting to bag themselves stock photography on the cheap.
Buried in the small print of the campaign were clauses that allowed South West Tourism and the RPS to use photographers’ images for free. Worse, third parties could also have a licence, presumably, with no financial benefit to the photographer. Another clause said the RPS’ main incentive – a classy byline next to your shot – wasn’t guaranteed.
In fairness, the RPS, which in mitigation does plenty of excellent work for photographers, took note of the uproar its campaign sparked and pulled the whole thing before it really got started. In a statement, the organisation said the project was met with ‘considerable protest from members and others,’ which is easy enough to believe. The transfer of rights from photographers to the campaign’s sponsors was ‘too all-encompassing,’ according to the RPS’ director general, Stuart Blake.
And with that, professional photography was saved for another day. Except, of course, for all the competitions being disingenuously run all over the world.
Let’s take, for instance, the tempting photographic competition being run by Regen SW, a sustainable energy company, which offers a thousand pounds to the best photo that encapsulates sustainable energy. The sting in the tail? The competition’s terms and conditions give the company the right to use entrants’ shots in advertising, press releases, in fact any media, and forever. It even – and I can feel my blood rising just typing this – has the brass tacks to claim the rights to sub-licence entrants’ photos to other organisations. Suddenly, that thousand pounds goes from being a tempting prize for the winning photographer to a stone-cold bargain for Regen SW, which stands to gain thousands of free images to use as it wants. In fact, with careful marketing, Regen SW could even make money by licensing the images to interested third parties. Regen SW is by no means the only company to engage in this kind of behaviour: the National Trust had similar terms and conditions in a competition it ran in 2008, and even The Guardian became embroiled in controversy in 2006 when it asked for readers’ photographs, noting in the small print that by sending them in you were effectively signing copyright over to the newspaper.
The problem for me is that this isn’t representative of professional photographers being pushed out. I – and commercial photographers – will probably accept that over time a market changes. Certain segments grow, some shrink, some profitable activities become less so, and previously unprofitable activities suddenly start making money.
However, my feeling is that if your images are good enough to use on billboards, in advertising material, or in the national press, then they’re good enough to make you money. Advertising and PR, after all, are money-making endeavours: it seems only fair that advertisers share some of that money with the people who made them successful. That means, while professional photographers are certainly being squeezed by unscrupulous clients, amateurs are too. Whether photography is your profession or something you dabble in a few weekends a year, there’s no reason you have to accept that your passion goes unpaid.
