Et tu, Getty?

photo by myron watamaniuk Some rather interesting news about a Flickr/Getty partnership has hit the presses today. From PDNOnline: “Getty Images ...

photo by myron watamaniuk

Some rather interesting news about a Flickr/Getty partnership has hit the presses today. From PDNOnline:

“Getty Images says it will launch
a collection of stock images by photographers recruited from the Flickr
photo-sharing site. The Flickr-branded collection is the fruit of a
strategic partnership between Getty Images, the biggest stock picture
agency, and Flickr, a Yahoo!-owned
site frequented by millions of digital photo enthusiasts. Over the next
several months, Getty editors will invite select Flickr
photographers to contribute some of their work to a new collection that
will be available on gettyimages.com. Flickr will not be a party in the
licensing and will not take a cut of the fees.”

So Flickr isn’t becoming a licensing site, rather, Getty will simply cherry pick some of its photographers. Here’s the PDNPulse parse:

“So who wins? Getty Images. It gets a source of pre-shot, exclusive,
“authentic” imagery that it can plug into its tried-and-true stock
site. It gets an edge over any competitor who might try to do the same.
It gets to introduce its licensing process to thousands of novice
photographers as the standard way things are done in the business.“

I think that’s the kicker. Getty’s licensing process is famously photographer-unfriendly. I thought I’d ask some of PhotoShelter’s own photographers whether they’d be interested in such a deal. Specifically, photographers that came to us through our own Flickr research.

First, Elizabeth Weinberg, who has some really amazing work, and has been doing some great editorial stuff. Here are two of her images from the collection:

Here’s what Weinberg says about how she’d feel about working with Getty:

“I don’t think I’d license Flickr images with Getty because their 70/30 commission split simply wouldn’t be profitable enough to be worth the hassle of acquiring model releases for older images, adding metadata, getting drum scans done to yield high res files, etc.; from what I’ve read of Getty’s terms, they have extremely stringent image quality requirements. Not to sound like a total Photoshelter ad here, but you just can’t get the same commission rate at any other agency that has as excellent a measure of photographic quality control as well as the resources to market their photographers’ work to high-end buyers.”

Next: Peter Baker, whose work has always been some of my favorite in the collection. Check it out:

Baker had a lot to say about the Getty deal. Here are the nuts and bolts:

“Ultimately I think it’ll be pretty nice for a few photographers that suddenly make fifty bucks off a photo for the first time, and really great for Flickr because they now make everyone think they can be commercial photographers if they use Flickr. But it’s a huge win for Getty, as usual, who suddenly has a gigantic pool of photos to pick through, with likely a super eager contributor willing to accept just about any terms, which you can bet are weighed heavily in Getty’s favor.

I probably wouldn’t license anything to Getty, whether it was through Flickr or not. Too many times Getty has used their clout to exploit photographers and turn their photos into a commodity. Clearly the industry is now supporting a wide array of imagery, but photographers ought to look out before their images are taken for a ride, with little revenue or control in return. It’s clear that Getty is largely concerned with freezing out more photographer-friendly agencies (ie: PhotoShelter).”

What do the rest of you think?