KHA

The bottom line is you seem to be chasing a different market. Your method automatically seems to rule out at least two groups of potential buyers: 1. People who wouldn't want their product associated with an altered photo; a lot of nature-related publications certainly would fall into that category because they don't want their output to be suspect. And even people who might not worry about that ethically might be worried about technical reveals, such as the celebrity photo a few years ago where someone ended up with three arms on the cover of a magazine or something like that. 2. People who saw your photo, loved it, and might have been willing to pay higher bucks for it until they realized they had already seen it in 159 other places and continued the search for something unique. And as people have brought up many times on this forum, why would it be likely to sell on Alamy when you are offering it through a competitor much more cheaply? You know how much you made, but you don't know how much you might've made. But it's a beautiful photo (at least unaltered!), so congratulations on your success with it.

I don't think even Walmart sells stuff for ten cents, though . . . Not even the gumball machines outside. Photographers should give that some thought, because Walmart has economies of scale an individual photographer will never have that allow it to survive with razor-thin profit margins. The microstock industry has devised a model built on loss-leading Black Friday every day of the year, except the loss comes from their suppliers, not them.

Free online software scares me, for the most part! I feel safer with the stuff you have to pay for.

I agree with this. And sometimes even people who approach you aggressively just need to vent. A couple women approached me when I was photographing in the neighborhood of the Sandy Hook shooter in the days after the attack. One of them just went off on me about how she was sick of the media harassing them, and said that her neighbor wouldn't appreciate me taking a picture of their house. (I had mistakenly been taking a picture of a house next to where the assailant had lived because of incorrect address information I had, and was just figuring this out as she came up.) I asked her which was the correct house, and she hesitated in telling me. After she continued to vent about media having overrun the neighborhood and being pushy and intrusive over the previous days, I calmly explained to her that it was important for journalists to document history, and if atrocities like this didn't get covered, humanity couldn't evolve and try to find ways to improve things. (Although the irony was not lost on me at the time that despite her complaining that the media wouldn't leave THEM alone, SHE was the one who walked over to ME, not vice versa.) After my explanation, her manner softened and she seemed to calm down and understand a little, and eventually pointed me to the correct house.

As long as there's no jumping to conclusions without facts, that's good.

I haven't been keeping up with everything, but the last I read was that some sources were saying it was actually more difficult to get it from surfaces than originally thought. I think part of the problem is when experts try to represent what are merely theories as fact, or people interpret it that way. The bottom line is that scientists are still learning about this disease, so some things probably shouldn't be prematurely presented as absolutes only to be rescinded at a later date.

Sounds like you're doing what's best for your situation in stepping back. Other stories will be out there for you when this pandemic passes, and I'm sure there are ways to be a photographic voice for Cleveland without even leaving your property.

By them? I feel like this story is missing some pertinent pieces.

Journalists face risk in many situations, not just this one. And lots of other professions face risk. Everyone has to decide for themselves what their personal risk threshold is. As far as contributing to a story, no photographer has any certainty of knowing whether they are going to have material that will contribute to a story until they get home, carefully examine those backgrounds, and see what they've got! I'm black, and I would have zero qualms about going to an open-carry KKK rally, sticking a camera in someone's face and getting a shot of those eyes hiding behind that hood. If everyone lives their life in fear, change never happens. I do what feels right to me, which may not be what's right for someone else. That's why we're all individuals. I stay six feet away to the best of my ability (often requiring me to back up from people who get too close), but I have sinus issues and can't breathe well in a mask, and I think fresh air (unimpeded) is beneficial to health in general. It's hard to take it at face value that masks are now a necessity when at the outset the information being put forth was that masks weren't really helpful. If that was an untruth told to keep non-medical professionals from buying limited stocks, as is rumored, I think it was a destructive one. It eroded reliability and encourages people to now rightfully question any advice given on the topic.

That was a good video – thanks for posting. I wish he'd explained, though, why he was doing microstock in the first place. It's great that he's urging everyone to pull out now, but if people hadn't submitted in the first place, prices wouldn't be as low as they are currently. Especially since he indicates he wasn't desperate for money. I don't know if maybe he explained in previous videos why he got into it, but I was left wondering why so many professional photographers had no qualms about contributing to the crystal-clear diminishment of their work and of their industry until this latest incident. I know that intense unease over the lack of control over minimum pricing and licensing terms with Alamy has kept me from uploading here with abandon. As I've mentioned before, if I had some say in setting a minimum price I would be willing to accept for my work, I would feel a lot freer about contributing. The fear of seeing my work sell for pennies or a few dollars (although I've opted out of the distributor, novel, and personal use options to try to avoid that) holds me back. I have so many archival images I think would be unique, too, but I think my subconscious has been reigning me in and won't quite let me cross that upload threshold. If we want a better environment for photographers, we might have to fight for it instead of just complaining about it. And that may mean sacrifice in the short term that pays off in the long term. Hold on to just about anything long enough and it becomes valuable (and market it appropriately, of course). But it has to start with the creator appreciating its value.

I might post some of the pictures I've been taking to document this unique moment in time at some point (still working on other things that have put my Alamy posting on hiatus for a long while), but in the meantime I just wanted to pipe up because I always feel a need to whenever there's a question of artists getting paid. While I do take pictures to capture history for myself without payment needing to be a primary motivator, I don't understand the philosophy at all of thinking that photographers shouldn't be able to try to earn a living from their work related to COVID-19. Should news reporters not get paid for covering stories related to it? Or should the reporters get paid but just not their camerapeople? Should bidet manufacturers not get paid for fulfilling the heightened demand for their product that's a direct result of the pandemic? Should delivery companies that have had business skyrocket due to all the people forced to order in not get paid for their services? Are photographers the only people who shouldn't get paid for pandemic-related work, or feel guilty if they do? Imagine a world without photography, and don't tell me we don't provide a service as vital as, or more vital than, many others in the world. Why is it that so many people seem to think creatives don't need and deserve to fund their food and shelter habit like everybody else in the world who undertakes a trade? When I was writing this I was wondering if it was hypocritical because of a thread I started about my conflicted ethics when pondering whether I would take pictures of animals in zoos, since I didn't want to profit off the business of keeping animals in captivity. But I decided it wasn't because coronavirus isn't an entity that might be encouraged by your attentions to it. You're not contributing to the dominance of coronavirus by documenting its existence and its effects on humanity. Hopefully our work does the opposite. In the U.S., we no longer have the president calling the situation a "hoax", so maybe imagery has done some of that work.

Don't forget that some nationalities travel because it's the only way they get to experience warm weather . . .😎

Yeah, reevaluating old shoots can definitely be an informative part of the learning process, and of becoming conscious of your own style. There are so many things I see in photos when I take time to look closely at them that I didn't see the first time. And I just want to clarify for the record on my shoots, in case there's any confusion, that I am happy to take and include shots from people of all political persuasions. In the case I was speaking of in my initial post, there are so many shots I haven't posted yet from that shoot, that ones I like more from an aesthetic or journalistic perspective will generally take higher priority over the rest as far as posting order, but I do intend to get to the others eventually (if I keep uploading here). Initially I was trying to upload them as quickly as possible from a hotel lobby the same day, so I hadn't even had a chance to do a full review of what I'd gotten; I just picked out a couple that quickly caught my eye, then had to leave for the day.

Yes, definitely the same here. And generally the more someone is trying to get my attention, the less I am drawn to them as a subject. At least when it comes to photography. Video is kind of a different story.

Does it speak to you? Does it have personality? Does it have any unique qualities? Does it make you think? Does it make you want to stare at it for a long time? Do you notice something new every time you look at it? Pick it like people pick a lot of things they decide to let into their lives. Because you want someone to let your picture into their headspace. And their headspace is crowded.