I just can’t understand how some people think they should be in business or call themselves a professional stock photographer. For example, on one of my stock photography agency forums, it was brought to our attention that there are cases where some members can’t decide whether to sell the same image as RF or RM / (L), so instead of picking one, they choose both. That is just, like, so lame. I mean like, fer shur – gag me with a pitch fork!
I wrote on the forum in reply:
To me this is just pure “image file spamming”. I find it hard to believe that someone with over 4000 images on file can’t be professional enough to understand how harmful this is to buyers, (The Agency), and in general, ervery working pro who sells either RF or L.
The main point being, “If you can’t understand or distinguish what types of licenses you are offering, or the (legal) implications behind offering a particular type of license, YOU SHOULD NOT BE LICENSING IMAGES!”
My thoughts: photographers employing this type of carpet-bombing strategy should be flogged and then escorted to the front door buy two angry gorillas.
Arrrrgghhh! (File under: “Death to all Extremists!” category)
The more I think about it, the angrier this type of rediculous and unprofessional behavior makes me feel. But I can’t spent too much of my energies worrying about this particular bottom-crawler. Instead, I hope that by posting this here, some other new upstart photographer won’t make the same dumb mistake. Frankly, I don’t care at this point if someone chooses to sell RF or RM, but please, think about what type of license you prefer, and then stick to it. Don’t potentially conflict yourself as this other photorapher did, and set yourself up for a heapin’ lawsuit from an angry client and agent.
I am not defending the practice at all, however I note that your post in long on name calling and short on rational arguments over why this would be a bad idea, so I am just posting that to give you a chance to elaborate. If this RM/RF photographer, on the RM side, did not explicitly offer conflict use avoidance, and did not offer any kind of exclusivity, what obligations has he breached by also licensing the same images RF ?
QT –
The short answer has nothing to do with exclsuivity, but just to the slap in the face to a customer / client / agency if the same customer paid $700 RM for a magazine cover use, from Agency A, and then come to find the same image available for all rights for $129.99 from Agency B? Who comes out of this situation looking or feeling good? I care about making my customers feel like they’ve been treated and serviced well and fairly. I don’t, and in 15 years have never had a customer say they’ve felt ripped off, or somehow cheated. Personally, I wouldn’t allow for that possibility to occur by placing the same image in RM / RF Arenas. Thanks for commenting.
Thanks for a straight reply that makes a lot of sense. It is, however, a fact of modern life that identical services can be obtained for vastly different prices from different sources. Just to cite an example related to photography, I found a place where I pay one order of magnitude less for large format drums scans than I used to do, with better quality to boot. This doesn’t make me pissed of at Calypso Imaging or WCI. In this case, maybe Agency A can even provide better research, advice and information on images, customer service, to justify the price. But I understand the risk of bad feelings you mention.