Getty Creative to retire RM completely

[Bill Allsopp]

On 06/11/2019 at 19:50, Radim said:

I'm afraid it might inspire Alamy

If it does then they will lose most of my work - possibly all 40% of RM is bad enough. Will not be worth the bother any more.

[John Mitchell]

4 hours ago, Shergar said:

It would be great to have the Huffington post back. 

 

Yes, but as I remember they didn't pay much.

[John Mitchell]

5 hours ago, Brian Yarvin said:

Nothing to worry about David! Over the past ten years, revenue potential from stock photography has dropped drastically and submissions have vastly increased. I used to joke that all agencies had to do in order to get more images was lower prices - that turned out to be more true than I ever could have imagined.

 

When I was doing freelance writing, I used to joke that all magazines and newspapers needed to do to attract more writers was to lower their pay and grab more rights. This proved to be prophetic as well.

[Shergar]

38 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Yes, but as I remember they didn't pay much.

Yep $29 and you can bet that 1 month deal would be history. but they did buy a few.  Edit. Huh! looking back that image sold for 3 consecutive months.  

 

Country: United States
Usage: Editorial
Media: Editorial website
Placement: Secondary screen
Image Size: up to 1/4 screen
Start: 01 July 2012
End: 01 August 2012

Edited November 16, 2019 by Shergar

[John Mitchell]

9 minutes ago, Shergar said:

Yep $29 and you can bet that 1 month deal would be history. but they did buy a few.  Edit. Huh! looking back that image sold for 3 consecutive months.  

 

Country: United States
Usage: Editorial
Media: Editorial website
Placement: Secondary screen
Image Size: up to 1/4 screen
Start: 01 July 2012
End: 01 August 2012

 

That number sort of rings a bell. The Canadian version of the HP often used Alamy images as well. I knew people who wrote articles for them and didn't get paid anything at all. Hopefully that has changed.

[Marianne]

Sad that $$ sales are looking so good now. I started in photography when the micros were strong, so after the "good old  days," who knew that what you more experienced old-timers saw as a time of decline would now look like the "good old days." 

 

I follow the micros on another forum and iStock has been sinking for a long time. They chased away a lot of their best people. Getty must be dropping their regular prices by even more though as they have grabbed a lot of places that used to purchase from Alamy.

 

Here's one example that makes me unsure whether these clients will be lured (back) by RM. I regularly license work to  a publisher that I would have thought wanted only RM but years ago they told me that even though they purchase images from me with a nonexclusive RM license, they have no issues if I"m licensing the same images elsewhere as RF. I used to see that they would fill in gaps with images from Alamy, but the last two years that has switched to G, and they seem to be getting at least half their work from G, rather than just filling in gaps. They have also dropped their prices. They still pay $$$ but low $$$. 

 

A friend of my daughters used to work at the largest publishing house in NYC and he spent lots of time searching for free photos! My husband is with a large financial services firm and they source all their images from S. 

 

The only hope is for magazines that hire photographers to shoot articles and need to fill in gaps, hopefully they want RM. I am encouraged to see that Alamy is no licensing to NatGeo - they've licensed at least one of mine to them for a book, so hopefully they will be attracting that type of high end prestigious clientele. I still get the occasional inquiry on PS from magazines, and they generally pay $200-300 for RM images, so hopefully that market will remain, and Alamy will be able to grab more of it.  

 

Of course, if top photographers from G upload their RM images here, we will face much stiffer competition with so much top work coming in at once. 

Edited November 16, 2019 by Marianne

[John Mitchell]

16 minutes ago, Marianne said:

Sad that $$ sales are looking so good now. I started in photography when the micros were strong, so after the "good old  days," who knew that what you more experienced old-timers saw as a time of decline would now look like the "good old days." 

 

I follow the micros on another forum and iStock has been sinking for a long time. They chased away a lot of their best people. Getty must be dropping their regular prices by even more though as they have grabbed a lot of places that used to purchase from Alamy.

 

Here's one example that makes me unsure whether these clients will be lured (back) by RM. I regularly license work to  a publisher that I would have thought wanted only RM but years ago they told me that even though they purchase images from me with a nonexclusive RM license, they have no issues if I"m licensing the same images elsewhere as RF. I used to see that they would fill in gaps with images from Alamy, but the last two years that has switched to G, and they seem to be getting at least half their work from G, rather than just filling in gaps. They have also dropped their prices. They still pay $$$ but low $$$. 

 

A friend of my daughters used to work at the largest publishing house in NYC and he spent lots of time searching for free photos! My husband is with a large financial services firm and they source all their images from S. 

 

The only hope is for magazines that hire photographers to shoot articles and need to fill in gaps, hopefully they want RM. I am encouraged to see that Alamy is no licensing to NatGeo - they've licensed at least one of mine to them for a book, so hopefully they will be attracting that type of high end prestigious clientele. I still get the occasional inquiry on PS from magazines, and they generally pay $200-300 for RM images, so hopefully that market will remain, and Alamy will be able to grab more of it.  

 

Of course, if top photographers from G upload their RM images here, we will face much stiffer competition with so much top work coming in at once. 

 

I guess the solution, or one possible solution, is to work harder at producing more images -- be they RM or RF -- that photo-buyers will have trouble finding anywhere else and make them exclusive to Alamy. I used to get the types of inquiries for RM images that you mention through my PS website, but they have all dried up now. My PS site used to easily pay for itself every year.

[Panthera tigris]

6 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

 I used to get the types of inquiries for RM images that you mention through my PS website, but they have all dried up now. My PS site used to easily pay for itself every year.

Ditto, its like a tumbleweed strewn abandoned town for me now, has been for about 3 years. The sherif moved on and the bad guys have found richer towns and I am stood in the middle of Main Street trying to figure out what I am doing there.

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, Panthera tigris said:

Ditto, its like a tumbleweed strewn abandoned town for me now, has been for about 3 years. The sherif moved on and the bad guys have found richer towns and I am stood in the middle of Main Street trying to figure out what I am doing there.

 

That's about right. Funny because a lot of my PS galleries still do surprisingly well in Google search results. I now have links to my Alamy collection from my PS site. Perhaps that has resulted in some sales here, but who knows.

[geogphotos]

4 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

That's about right. Funny because a lot of my PS galleries still do surprisingly well in Google search results.

 

 

That surprises me because I see absolutely nothing on Google - my Photoshelter site seems totally invisible and SEO completely non-existent.

[John Mitchell]

15 hours ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

That surprises me because I see absolutely nothing on Google - my Photoshelter site seems totally invisible and SEO completely non-existent.

 

It surprises me too. However, it's somewhat moot as I don't get any legit image inquiries any longer.

 

As mentioned, I think that gallery descriptions are very important when it comes to SEO. I also have a lot of small galleries with specific subjects/locales, which might (?) help as well.

Edited November 17, 2019 by John Mitchell

[Normspics]

It seems that Alamy has hybridized their RM licence to resemble rights granted under RF and Alamy seem aware of the market shift towards RF as by the Alamy Image Manager having RF option as recommended, but for those publishers that have systems set up for RM but are eyeing RF, Alamy seems to have covered that by having RM resemble key elements of the RF licence or having a growing library of RF content. Either way I think Alamy is well paced visa vie the G decision.

[geogphotos]

I closed my Getty Creative account as soon as this was announced and they certainly haven't wasted any time removing my images. Just had a confirmation that they have all been taken down.

 

I feel strangely relieved and now will be re-working the captions and keywords ( getting rid of all the gettyesque 'Beauty in Nature' type of thing) and sending them in batches to Alamy. 

 

So that particular dead end has been navigated! Phew.

Edited November 18, 2019 by geogphotos

[David Olsen]

It was three days for them to take down my images after terminating the contract.  My contract says I have to wait 3 months before submitting elsewhere.

[Chuck Nacke]

I have nothing positive ( 0 ) to say about G and I was contract with them for years.  I am also sorry to see this extensive thread

about them on this Alamy forum.  As of 11/18/2019 I do have images on G from another agency that I have contributed

to for decades.  When G took over their distribution it was a very sad day for photographers as well as a long standing

pinnacle of "Photojournalism" (Edo has written about several of their photographers).

 

Keeping in mind that I have 'Photojournalism' in my blood, I started working for a medium sized daily newspaper when I

was 15,  Alamy is the best outlet I have seen for my work in 2019, even though sometimes it would appear that Alamy is licensing my RM images for RF prices? 

I have bet that Alamy will continue to be the "Only" outlet for real photographers, Photojournalists,  I "Pray that Alamy does not "screw up."  James and all are you listening? 

It is not about balance sheets, It Is About Images, the ones created by "hard working photographers" and that make an important contribution to history.

 

Chuck

Edited November 18, 2019 by Chuck Nacke
claity

[Panthera tigris]

4 hours ago, David Olsen said:

It was three days for them to take down my images after terminating the contract.  My contract says I have to wait 3 months before submitting elsewhere.

 

I bailed over a year ago and it was same for me, almost instantaneous removal of images.

[John Mitchell]

8 hours ago, geogphotos said:

I closed my Getty Creative account as soon as this was announced and they certainly haven't wasted any time removing my images. Just had a confirmation that they have all been taken down.

 

I feel strangely relieved and now will be re-working the captions and keywords ( getting rid of all the gettyesque 'Beauty in Nature' type of thing) and sending them in batches to Alamy. 

 

So that particular dead end has been navigated! Phew.

 

I always wonder why agencies (not only G.) add vague phrases like "beauty in nature" to keywords. I'm pretty sure that clients don't use them in their searches. Or do they?

[geogphotos]

5 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I always wonder why agencies (not only G.) add vague phrases like "beauty in nature" to keywords. I'm pretty sure that clients don't use them in their searches. Or do they?

 

I can't claim to really understand it all but it is about using a Controlled Vocabulary.  The other ordinary keywords that you might submit with an image are not visible but may still be searchable. I think that where I went wrong is by dropping my normal key-wording and attempting to adopt just the Controlled Vocabulary words - so I now need to rework and undo all that.

[MizBrown]

On 16/11/2019 at 12:58, John Mitchell said:

 

That number sort of rings a bell. The Canadian version of the HP often used Alamy images as well. I knew people who wrote articles for them and didn't get paid anything at all. Hopefully that has changed.

 

Any number of people will write free articles to promote their consulting business, events, or products.   HP never paid writers, understanding that the puff pieces on various things were a deal for people who didn't have to pay for advertising space.  I recognized some of the offenders promoting travel and retirement in Nicaragua.   If they've started paying, that would be news to me. 

[John Mitchell]

4 hours ago, MizBrown said:

 

Any number of people will write free articles to promote their consulting business, events, or products.   HP never paid writers, understanding that the puff pieces on various things were a deal for people who didn't have to pay for advertising space.  I recognized some of the offenders promoting travel and retirement in Nicaragua.   If they've started paying, that would be news to me. 

 

Yes, that's right, the people I met wrote travel pieces for free for the HP in order to get invited on press and fam trips. Some of the articles were good, others were, as you say, puff pieces. My guess is that, like a lot of publications these days, they still don't pay most freelance writers simply because they don't have to in the age of crowdsourcing. However, it's nice work if you can get it. Sponsored trips can be a lot of fun and worth a lot of money.

Edited November 20, 2019 by John Mitchell

[Brian Yarvin]

John, may I gently remind you that while you might not consider those "free" trips a form of income, the tax authorities in many countries will disagree with you.

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, Brian Yarvin said:

John, may I gently remind you that while you might not consider those "free" trips a form of income, the tax authorities in many countries will disagree with you.

 

Fortunately I don't live in one of those countries, plus I don't participate in such trips any longer.

 

You aren't moonlighting for the IRS are you? 🧐

 

P.S. If you reread my last post, you'll see that I didn't call the trips "free", plus I didn't say that they were not a source of income. Those are your words. Income generated after the fact -- e.g. from the sale of articles and photos -- is always taxable.

Edited November 20, 2019 by John Mitchell

[meanderingemu]

4 hours ago, Brian Yarvin said:

John, may I gently remind you that while you might not consider those "free" trips a form of income, the tax authorities in many countries will disagree with you.

 

not only the tax authority, immigration also.  I'm always surprised how many people don't realise that working in exchange for something other than money can still be viewed as "employment", I've met a few who had issues and had it affect their entry into a country.   

 

 

[MizBrown]

20 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Yes, that's right, the people I met wrote travel pieces for free for the HP in order to get invited on press and fam trips. Some of the articles were good, others were, as you say, puff pieces. My guess is that, like a lot of publications these days, they still don't pay most freelance writers simply because they don't have to in the age of crowdsourcing. However, it's nice work if you can get it. Sponsored trips can be a lot of fun and worth a lot of money.

Nobody is going to be honest if they're promoting a tourist destination.  I've seen articles that said that one coffee shop and restaurant in Granada represented local coffee culture with Aeropress preparations (can't buy an Aeropress in Nicaragua and it's non-trivial to find a vendor who will ship them here).  On Trip Advisor, the owner said 96% of his customers were tourists.  The dinners were twice the price of gringo gourmet organic meals in Managua: $60 vs. $30 US.

 

One man I know tried writing for International Living, which does pay some, but they fixed his article to change "shacks on the hillside" to "cabins on the hillside."  He quit writing for them after that.  They had paid him around $70 US. 

 

I've been able to manage my life and my exposure to possible problems here, but I wouldn't tell anyone from middle class parts of the US that it was safer than the US. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Panthera tigris]

Hers another example of a strange implementation of RM ....

 

"Rights granted for the life of the product for supplementary educational publications and materials"

 

My reading says that they can create  supplementary products (RM period is 30 years). What is RM and what is RF continues to get greyer.

 

I find Alamy's recent advertising of "support" for RM a little disingenuous as - what is RM/RF is getting a little grey.