Photo Business News & Forum

Three Classes of Photographer: What Getty's Bankruptcy Means for Staff, Assignment Shooters and Contributors

2026-10-01T00:13:51.815-04:00

October 1, 2026 · @JOHN HARRINGTON

On Monday the New York Stock Exchange halted trading in Getty Images (NYSE: GETY) at 12 cents a share and started delisting it. As this is written, the company is expected to file for Chapter 11 any day, with Alvarez & Marsal, Guggenheim and Simpson Thacher running the process and the lenders lined up to take the keys. I covered the thirty-year road to this point earlier this week. This post is about what comes next — not for the bondholders, who have advisers, but for the people who actually make the pictures.

Getty does not have one kind of photographer. It has three, and they are about to have three very different Octobers.

There are roughly 115 staff photographers, salaried employees who shoot work-made-for-hire. There is a much larger pool of assignment freelancers, paid a flat day rate — $350 to $400 is the going number — for an all-rights buyout of whatever they shoot. And there are the contributors, more than half a million of them across Getty and iStock, who upload their own work and get a percentage of whatever it licenses for.

The same event — a Senate hearing, a red carpet, an NFL sideline — can have all three standing in the same pen. They shoot the same frame of the same moment. One of them gets a salary and a 401(k) match. One gets about $375 and signs away the copyright. One gets fifteen cents on the dollar, sometime in the spring. And none of them has the same claim on Getty's estate when the petition is filed.

I wrote eleven years ago that a staff photographer is simply a cost line that accounting and HR will eventually compare against the freelance rate, and that the freelancer who works for less than the staffer costs is cutting the staffer's throat with a slow bleed. Getty's bankruptcy is where that comparison gets made with a federal judge watching. Here is what I think happens to each class, realistically, and who ends up holding what.

(Continued after the Jump)

Please post your comments by clicking the link below.

Class one: the staff

Getty's 10-K puts the staff corps at over 115 full-time photographers and videographers, supplying editorial content across news, sports and entertainment, for which the company pays very limited, if any, royalties. The Washington bureau, for example, is maybe seven of them. Glassdoor's small sample puts a staff photographer's median base at $76,000 and total pay around $82,000; the senior Washington shooters are well above that, because AP, Reuters and the other DC media bureaus with staffers, would hire them tomorrow. Loaded with benefits, gear, travel and desk, a staff shooter costs Getty somewhere between $150,000 and $190,000 a year. My 2015 math for a DC staffer came to $761 a day. It has not gotten cheaper.

So the question I keep getting asked is the obvious one: if Getty can buy all rights from a freelancer for $375 more or less, why does it keep anyone on salary at all?

The answer is that it mostly doesn't. Getty’s own marketing and investing materials says it covers more than 160,000 news, sport and entertainment events a year. Divide that by 115 and you get 1,400 events per staffer, which is impossible. The staff cover perhaps one event in eight. Everything else is already the freelancer or the contributor. The staff survive only where four things make them irreplaceable:

The credential. A White House hard pass, a Senate gallery credential, an Olympic accreditation, an NFL sideline pass — these are issued to a named person after months of vetting, and the issuer caps how many an organization gets. You cannot send a stringer into the Oval Office, unless they obtained a freelance pass, and those with that are not many. The Washington bureau is its hard passes, and the hard passes almost always require an employee.

The rights fee. Getty pays enormous sums for exclusive commercial rights to leagues and event organizers. When you have spent tens of millions to be the only commercial camera on the floor, the $130,000 you pay the person holding it is a rounding error. The entire staff corps costs $15–22 million a year, less than a single major rights contract.

The pipeline. Enterprise subscribers — the product with nearly 100% revenue retention — are paying for the frame on the wire ninety seconds after the play. That means remote cameras, Ethernet from the pit, a live desk in London, and shooters trained on the system for years. The $375 freelancer shoots, drives home, and uploads tonight.

The copyright. This is the one nobody talks about. A photograph by an employee in the scope of employment is a work made for hire — Getty owns it outright, forever, with no termination right. A freelancer's photograph qualifies as work-for-hire only if it fits one of nine statutory categories and there is a signed agreement, and a stock image mostly does not. What Getty actually gets from the freelancer is a copyright assignment — and under Section 203 of the Copyright Act, the author can terminate an assignment after 35 years. Getty's business is a 150-million-image archive valued on perpetuity. For the frames that become the historical record, Getty wants the version of ownership that can't be clawed back. That requires an employee.

What happens next for the staff. In the short run, nothing. Wage and benefit motions get approved on day one of every operating Chapter 11; the paychecks, the health plan and the 4% match continue. Expect a key-employee retention plan, because the editorial staff is precisely the collateral the lenders are protecting — Editorial is the only segment that grew last quarter, up 9.2%, and losing the World Cup and Washington and LA teams mid-case would damage the estate the lenders are about to own. Nobody fires the DC or LA bureaus in October.

The risk comes after emergence, and it is not the job. It is the terms. I reported in 2015 that the tiers that once set staff photographer pay had been eliminated, and the share of licensing revenue staffers earned on their own images had been cut to a twelve-month rolling window. I said then the next step was zero. A creditor-owned board with a shorter horizon than the Getty family will finish that job: the window goes, the 401(k) match gets trimmed again (it has been cut before), raises freeze, and the staffer's deal converges on the freelancer's with a W-2 attached. The credential and the pipeline still require an employee. They do not require that the employee be paid like one.

And the equity is already gone. Getty ran a tender offer in February to exchange employees' underwater options at $0.78. Those were underwater again by September and will be cancelled in the plan. Whatever retention value a staffer thought they had in GETY stock was never real.

Class two: the assignment freelancer

This is the class that does most of Getty's actual shooting, and it is the one with the least to say about it.

The deal is a flat day rate — $350 to $400 at the moment as far as anyone knows – but even if it’s $450 or $500 that’s low for what it should be, and I have seen lower — for an all-rights buyout. Getty's own filing describes it plainly: the company uses a global network of freelance photographers to cover events, and in many cases owns the resulting copyright and pays no royalties because the photographer is paid a set rate to shoot. The freelancer brings the $20,000 of gear, the car, the insurance, the health plan, the laptop, the mileage and the parking, shoots the event, edits it, transmits it, and signs the rights over. Getty gets a photographer with the equipment of a staffer at less than half the cost of a staffer, with no obligation to call again.

When I wrote that there is not a single wire service or newspaper that pays $459 — the daily cost of the cheapest staff photographer — for an independent, and that many pay less than the cost of renting the equipment, this is the market I was describing. A commenter on a 2009 post put the editorial day rate at $250. Seventeen years later it has moved up $100–150 (or slightly more) which is less than inflation. The freelancer is subsidizing Getty with their own balance sheet, and has been for two decades.

And yet — and this is the part that stings — the freelancer is, in one narrow legal sense, the best-positioned photographer in the building when Getty files.

Here is why. Anything a freelancer shoots after the petition date is an administrative expense of the estate under Section 503(b). Administrative claims get paid in full, in cash, in the ordinary course, ahead of every bondholder, every landlord and every pre-petition creditor. The debtor-in-possession loan the lenders are negotiating exists precisely to fund them. An assignment shot on the day after the filing is more secure than a staff paycheck for the week before it. The freelancer who gets a call to cover a congressional hearing or a celebrity event in LA in mid-October should take it; that invoice is as good as money.

The freelancer with unpaid pre-petition invoices is in a different place. Those are general unsecured claims, pennies on the dollar — unless Getty includes assignment photographers in its critical-vendor motion, which it very likely will, because the business has no product without them and they can decline the next phone call. Expect pre-petition freelance invoices to be paid, but file the proof of claim anyway.

What happens next for the freelancer. Post-emergence, the rate goes down. I would bet on it. Day rates are the single most compressible line in Getty's editorial cost structure: there is no contract term protecting them, no union, no collective body, and an effectively unlimited supply of people who will take $350 to $400 or so to be on the sideline. A creditor-owned board that has just absorbed a nine-figure litigation settlement and is looking at the Q2 cost-of-revenue line — up from $125.8 million to $134.5 million, partly on event coverage — will find the day rate before it finds anything else.

The freelancer will also be asked to absorb more of what staff used to do. Fewer staffers at second-tier events means more buyout assignments, which looks like more work and is actually the same work for less money with the copyright gone.

So the freelancer's position is this: the safest invoice in the case, and the weakest hand in the restructuring. You will get paid for October. You will get paid less for every October after.

Class three: the contributor

The contributor is the photographer most people picture when they think of Getty, and the one Getty thinks about least.

There are more than 600,000 of them by their own statements. They produce the work at their own expense, keep the copyright, and grant Getty a distribution license in exchange for a royalty. iStock's non-exclusive rate starts at 15% for photos; exclusives get 25% to 45%. Subscription downloads pay in cents. I documented the slide from the editorial side in 2010, and by 2015 was quoting the $1.51 and $0.49 licensing fees on contributors' sales reports. A contributor commenting on that post said their monthly checks had gone from around $1,800 to eleven cents.

In aggregate Getty pays contributors a lot — nearly $220 million in royalties in 2024, which is more than it pays its entire 1,650-person workforce. Per head, it is the opposite of a living.

The pipeline is the exposure. Getty's payment cycle runs long by design: licenses granted in January are reported on 20 February and paid on 25 March. Every contributor is therefore permanently carrying two to three months of earned-but-unpaid royalties. Against $220 million a year, that is $35–55 million of photographers' money sitting inside Getty on the day it files.

Legally, those balances are general unsecured claims. They are not held in trust. The contributor agreement is a contract with Getty Images (US) Inc., and the contributor ranks alongside the bondholders who are trading at 47 cents.

Practically, most of it will probably be paid, for two reasons. First, contributors are the textbook critical vendor: the business has no product without supply, and the supply can walk because it holds the copyrights. Getty will ask the court for permission to pay pre-petition royalties in the ordinary course, and the court will almost certainly say yes. Second, contributor agreements are executory contracts that Getty will assume rather than reject — the content is the business — and assuming a contract requires curing every monetary default on it. That is the stronger protection.

Two groups of contributors get nothing, and should know it now.

The first is anyone under the payment threshold. Royalties below roughly $50 are carried forward rather than paid — a rule iStock invented and Getty kept. Thousands of accounts have balances that have accrued for years without ever clearing it. In bankruptcy those become unsecured claims too small to file. Nobody litigates $31. The threshold was always an interest-free float; now it is a write-off.

The second is anyone waiting on the AI money. Contributors have been saying since 2023 that Getty has not honored its pledge to compensate them for the use of their work in generative-AI training. Whatever that promise was worth before, it is now an unliquidated, disputed, pre-petition unsecured claim that will be estimated at zero and discharged. The Nvidia, OpenAI and Perplexity deals survive the bankruptcy. The commitment to share them does not.

What happens next for the contributor. The rate card does not go up. A reorganized Getty will have $150 million less in annual interest and, for the first time since the Hellman & Friedman dividends, actual room to pay contributors more. I would bet heavily that it does not. Contributors are the only class with no contract term protecting the rate, no credential that makes them irreplaceable, no pipeline that depends on them individually, and no collective body. They are the easiest line to cut and they were cut before the leverage ever arrived.

There is exactly one moment in this process when that changes, and I will come back to it at the end.

Who gets the better deal, and who gets the shaft

Lay the three side by side and the answer depends on which question you ask.

	Staff	Assignment freelancer	Contributor
Pay	$76K median base; senior DC shooters $110K+; benefits worth ~30% on top	$350–400 per day, all-in	15% of the license fee, non-exclusive; cents per subscription download
Who pays for the gear, car, insurance	Getty	The photographer	The photographer
Copyright	Getty's, forever (work-for-hire)	Getty's, by assignment (terminable after 35 years, in theory)	The photographer's
Money at risk when Getty files	Last pay period; severance if cut pre-petition	Unpaid pre-petition invoices	2–3 months of royalties; everything under the threshold; the AI pledge
Claim priority	Priority wage claim (capped), then first-day motion	Administrative expense post-petition; unsecured pre-petition	Unsecured, likely cured via contract assumption or critical-vendor motion
Leverage in the case	KERP, because the lenders need them	Can decline the next call	Can pull the library, collectively
Likely 2027	Same job, thinner terms	Same work, lower rate	Same rate card, maybe lower

On security, the staffer wins. Salaried, insured, retention-bonused, and sitting on the collateral the lenders are buying. Nobody in that bureau misses a paycheck during the case.

On the legal claim, the freelancer wins — for the thirty days after the petition. A post-petition assignment is the safest receivable in the building. It is a strange thing to say about the person with the worst day rate.

On ownership, the contributor wins. They are the only class that still holds the copyright. When Getty's library gets valued, it is the owned content and the assumed contracts that count; the contributors' copyrights are not Getty's to sell. That is real, and it is the only card the class holds.

On the shaft, it is the contributor, and it is not close. Lowest rate, longest payment lag, smallest claim, largest exposure, no benefits, no credential, no retention plan, and a pledge about AI revenue that evaporates the day the petition is stamped. The contributor supplied the product, carried the inventory risk, financed the float, and will be asked after emergence to keep doing all three for the same fifteen percent — by owners who no longer even have the excuse of the interest bill.

The freelancer gets a smaller version of the same thing: their rate is the first line a creditor-owned board will cut, and their copyright is already gone.

And the staffer gets the deal that is slowly being turned into the freelancer's. The twelve-month window on licensing revenue was the warning. The next contract is the confirmation.

Two classes of photographer. Really, four.

The thing to understand about this structure is that it is not an accident of history. It is the design.

Stand on the riser at the Oscars or an Inauguration, and to your left is a Getty staffer with a regular credential, a salary, and remotes set up. To your right is a Getty freelancer with the same equipment set up, $375 for the event, and a signature on a buyout. Nearby the “main event” is a contributor who was not credentialed at all, shooting the arrivals from the public side of the rope for whatever iStock pays per download. And back in the Getty library are the frames from the same room in 1998, shot by a staffer who has long since left, generating licenses that pay nobody but the company.

Four photographers. One event. One moment. Four pay structures — and the one that pays Getty best is the one where the photographer is gone and the copyright stays.

That is the whole model, stated as plainly as I can: Getty's margin is the gap between what it pays the person who made the picture and what it charges for the picture, and every ownership change since 2008 has widened that gap by moving photographers from the left side of the riser to the right. Staff positions were converted to assignment buyouts. Assignment buyouts were converted to contributor royalties. Contributor royalties were converted from 50% to 29% to 20% to 15% to two cents. Unsplash converted them to zero. Each step was a cheaper way to acquire the same frame, and each step was taken by an owner who needed the cash to service the last owner's debt.

This is why the usual photographer argument about Getty — staff versus freelance, as if those were sides — misses the point. The staffer and the freelancer are not competing classes. They are the same class at two different points on a conveyor belt that only runs one direction. The staffer who looks down on the $375 photographer is looking at their own job description in five years. The freelancer who resents the staffer's salary is resenting a deal that is being dismantled above them. I called the underpriced freelancer a scab eleven years ago, and I stand by the economics, but the honest version is harsher: the company set it up so that the only way for either class to win is for the other to lose, and then collected the difference.

The contributor is the end of the belt. Below the contributor there is only the archive — the photographer who is no longer paid at all.

And here is the part that should actually alarm the staff. A reorganized, deleveraged Getty with creditor-owners has less reason than ever to keep anyone on the left side of the riser. The old justification for leverage — we have to squeeze because of the interest — is gone. What replaces it is a board that owes nothing to the Getty family, nothing to the Allsport tradition, nothing to Jonathan Klein's idea of a news organization, and everything to a recovery multiple. The question that board asks about every staff position is the one I wrote down in 2015: what does this person cost per day, and what does the alternative cost? The credential, the rights fee, the pipeline and the work-for-hire copyright protect perhaps forty positions worldwide from that question. The other seventy-five should be reading the freelancer section of this post as a preview.

What to do, by class, in the next sixty days

If you are staff. Take the retention bonus if offered and read the conditions — KERPs usually require you to stay through emergence, and the money is forfeited if you leave early. Get your severance terms in writing now; pre-petition severance is a pennies-on-the-dollar unsecured claim, post-petition severance is paid in full, and that distinction is worth more than any raise you will see this decade. Keep copies of your contract, your licensing-share terms and anything that documents the twelve-month window, because the next version will be worse and you will want to know exactly what changed. And start treating the credential as yours — it is issued to you, not to Getty — because it is the single most portable asset you have if the bureau you're in gets thinned.

If you are an assignment freelancer. Say yes to post-petition assignments; those invoices are administrative claims and will be paid. For anything unpaid from before the filing date, submit a proof of claim before the bar date even if you expect the critical-vendor motion to cover you — it costs nothing and preserves the position. And then do the thing I have been asking for since 2015: know what a day costs you, bill the rental on the long lens and the remote, bill the mileage, bill the production day. The rate cut is coming post-emergence. The only defense is a fully loaded invoice that makes the staffer look cheap by comparison — which protects both of you.

If you are a contributor. Three things. First, pull your current royalty balance and screenshot it; that is the number you are owed. Second, watch the docket for the claims bar date and file a proof of claim for the full balance, including anything carried forward under the threshold — the amount may be small, but a few thousand of those filed together is a different conversation. Third, and this is the one that matters: this is the only moment in Getty's thirty-year history when contributors have structural leverage instead of moral standing. A critical-vendor motion requires the estate to tell a federal judge, in writing, that contributors are essential and can walk away. That argument is true. It would be a shame if the only people who never made it were the contributors themselves. A coordinated bloc filing claims — including on the unfulfilled AI compensation pledge — would be the first time this class appeared in the case as a party rather than a cost line.

The window opens the day Getty files and closes at the bar date. I do not expect it to be used. I am writing this down so that nobody can say later that it wasn't there.

Getty Images is expected to file for Chapter 11 within days of this post. Not legal advice; anyone with a meaningful balance inside Getty should get a bankruptcy attorney's read on their specific agreement. Related: Getty Images' Downward Spiral Approaches Judgment Day (2015), Staff vs. Independent (2015), Getty Images Gets Infusion of Cash from China (2016).

The Long Squeeze: Getty Images (NYSE: GETY), 1991–2026

2026-09-30T18:29:42.451-04:00

How three decades of leverage turned the world's largest picture library into a bankruptcy case — and what it cost the people holding the cameras

Sep 30, 2026 · @JOHN HARRINGTON

On 29 September 2026 the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in Getty Images (NYSE: GETY) at 12 cents a share and began proceedings to delist it. A Chapter 11 filing is expected within days, and post NYSE trading shows it ending at $0.0829, a far cry from a historical closing high of $94.37 (intra-day $95.43), which represents a 99.91% decrease from it's high.

Nothing had happened to the photographs. The archive still holds over 150 million images. Staff photographers still covered the World Cup and the White House. Editorial revenue actually grew 9.2% in the second quarter, the only segment that did. The pictures were fine.

What failed was a capital structure assembled over eighteen years by three private equity owners and one blank-check merger. Roughly $1.5 billion of debt sits on a business that earns about $300 million a year before interest. The company elected a 30-day grace period on 1 September rather than pay bondholders, and a court has entered judgment against it for a warrant dispute the plaintiffs valued at $92 million.

Here's how that happened, and what it cost the people who supplied the pictures. The two stories are the same story. Every dollar of dividend paid to a sponsor and every dollar of interest paid to a lender came out of the same revenue pool that photographers were paid from, and over thirty years the photographer's share of that pool fell from roughly half to fifteen percent, and even less, per image.

The thesis in one line: Getty Images did not fail because stock photography stopped working. It failed because four consecutive owners treated a cash-generating picture library as a financing vehicle, and the people holding the cameras funded the difference.

(Continued after the Jump)

Please post your comments by clicking the link below.

Before Getty: the fifty-fifty era

For most of the twentieth century a stock photographer and an agency split the license fee down the middle.

The model was rights-managed. A client described exactly what they wanted — a quarter-page in a trade magazine, North American rights, eighteen months — and the agency priced it against that use. Large agencies maintained detailed pricing matrices calculated on image placement size, publication type and distribution reach. A billboard cost more than a newsletter. That was the whole point.

The prices were real money. Otto Bettmann sold images from his archive for between $50 and $3,000 in 1981. A photographer with a strong file and a good agency could build an annuity out of a single shoot, because every use was a new transaction.

Two features of that arrangement mattered more than the percentage, and both of them are now gone.

The first is that photographers controlled all rights to their images and the agency was an agent. Not a marketplace, not a platform — an agent, with a fiduciary flavor to the relationship even where the contract did not say so. The second is that price and use were linked. When a client's use grew, the photographer's income grew with it.

The benchmark still exists, which is what makes the comparison fair rather than nostalgic. Stocksy, the photographer-owned cooperative, pays 50% on standard licenses and 75% on extended ones in 2026. Fifty percent is not a historical artifact. It is what an agency pays when the agency is owned by the photographers instead of by a buyout fund.

1991–1997: two companies with opposite theories

Getty Images was built by merging a business that wanted images to be scarce with a business that wanted them to be abundant. The abundant one won.

PhotoDisc was founded in Seattle in 1991 by Tom Hughes, Mark Callaghan and Mark Torrance. It sold themed batches of images on mail-shipped CD-ROMs and introduced a new licensing model: royalty-free. Buy the disc, use the pictures forever, for anything, without reporting back.

Royalty-free solved a real problem. Designers with small budgets could not afford rights-managed, and did not want to phone an agency to negotiate a brochure. But it also severed the link between a client's use and a photographer's income, permanently. That severance is the single most consequential event in this entire history, and it happened in 1991, before Getty existed.

The early economics carried a specific excuse. Customers chose from expensive print catalogs, discs were burned onto a new and expensive storage medium and shipped out, and those production costs meant a reduction in the rate paid to photographers. Fair enough, arguably.

What happened next is the pattern worth remembering, because it recurs at every stage of this story. The internet arrived and eliminated the printing, pressing and shipping. Agencies that had established lower royalty rates for photographers kept those lower rates even with the decreased costs on their end, which meant more profit for them.

The cost justification disappeared. The rate cut stayed.

Meanwhile in London, Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein were running the opposite play. Getty Investments was founded on 14 March 1995, and Getty Communications grew by acquiring archives — Tony Stone, Hulton — collections of irreplaceable images whose value rested on exclusivity. Scarcity was the asset.

In September 1997 the two companies agreed to combine.

1996–1998: the public company is born in the teens

Getty Communications listed on NASDAQ in 1996 as American Depositary Shares, and the stock spent its first two years in the teens.

This is worth stating plainly because the number gets misremembered. The merger prospectuses print the price on their cover pages, revision by revision. In the 1997 S-4/A the last reported sale price per Getty Communications ADS was $15.3125. By the early-1998 S-4/A it was $14.50. By the final 424B3, $13.75.

This Photo Business News historical article dates the listing precisely: an IPO on 2 July 1996 on the NASDAQ, and a move to the NYSE on 5 November 2002 — which is when the GYI ticker begins.

In February 1998 the merger closed and Getty Images, Inc. began trading on NASDAQ, with Mark Torrance of PhotoDisc as co-chairman alongside Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein as chief executive. The same month the company acquired Allsport plc, a sports photography agency with an archive of four million edited images. Revenue for 1998 was $185.1 million.

Allsport is the seed of the editorial business that still exists today — the staff photographers at the Olympics and the World Cup descend directly from it. It is also the only part of Getty that ever operated on the opposite logic from everything else: owned copyright, salaried shooters, no royalty outflow. Hold that thought until the end.

1998–2005: the run to $94.37

Getty spent seven years buying the industry, moved to the NYSE under the ticker GYI, and peaked at a closing price of $94.37 in November 2005.

The acquisition machine ran hot. The Image Bank was acquired for $183 million in 1999. Hulton, Allsport, Photonica and others followed. By 2003 revenue had climbed to roughly $500 million.

The market's thesis was that the internet would produce a natural monopoly in licensed imagery and Getty would be it. For a while the numbers agreed.

For photographers, the consolidation had a quieter effect that nobody priced. Every acquisition removed an agency that a photographer could have gone to instead. One photographer who shot for Photonica in the mid-to-late nineties describes it exactly: "I was able to do quite well for myself with stock. They were subsequently bought by Getty and my profits went way down very quickly."

At the time, Photo Business News was made this structural version of that point in June 2007, before the stock broke: When Your Agent Is Not Your Friend.

That is what a roll-up does. It is not a conspiracy and it is not even a decision — it is the arithmetic of a market with one large buyer. The photographer's leverage in a rate negotiation is the existence of a competing agency, and Getty was systematically purchasing those.

By 2005 the stock was priced at roughly forty-five times earnings on a company whose product was about to be commoditized by people uploading pictures from home.

2006: buying the thing that was killing you

In 2006 Getty bought iStockphoto for $50 million. It is the most consequential fifty million dollars ever spent in this industry, and it was spent on accelerating the collapse of Getty's own pricing.

iStockphoto was the first microstock agency. It introduced the concept of the minimum payment threshold and low-priced royalty-free licenses — remember the threshold, it matters again in the bankruptcy. Anyone could contribute. Images sold for a few dollars.

Getty's strategic reasoning was defensible: microstock was coming regardless, better to own the disruptor than be disrupted by it. The reasoning was also a trap. Getty now had a premium business whose margins depended on high prices and a microstock business whose growth depended on low ones, and it owned both. Every quarter, the cheap one grew faster.

By March 2009 iStock's founder was gone — Livingstone Out At Getty Images — and that August we wrote that was filing the pricing under "$5 Idiocy".

Here is the number that anchors everything that follows. Getty disclosed it in April 2008 as part of the agreement to be sold: iStockphoto's 2007 revenue was $71.9 million, of which $20.9 million — 29% — was paid to contributors.

Twenty-nine percent, in the year before private equity arrived. That is the last clean, company-disclosed, audited-context figure we have for what Getty's microstock contributors actually received as a share of revenue. Everything after it goes one direction.

It is also worth noting what 29% was already a fall from the traditional agency split was 50%. So by 2007, before a single leveraged buyout, royalty-free and microstock had already cut the photographer's share of revenue roughly in half — and the price per license had fallen by an order of magnitude underneath that. The compounding of those two effects is the whole squeeze, and private equity did not invent it.

Private equity industrialized it.

2005–2008: the first collapse and the $34 exit

The stock fell 77% in twenty-six months and was then taken private at a 55% premium to the bottom.

The sequence, from contemporaneous reporting: from a high of $94.37 in November 2005 the stock dropped to $41.67 just one year later — what often happens to a growth stock that quits growing. Then Getty's shares tumbled 77 percent to $21.80 on Jan. 18, and four days later the company said it would consider strategic alternatives.

Activists arrived first. Blum Capital took a 5% stake and said it wanted to bring about changes in the board or management, raising a third possibility: an "extraordinary corporate transaction." The stock gained more than $2.00 a share on the news. The company was in play.

In February 2008 Hellman & Friedman agreed to buy it. From the merger announcement: "Getty Images Inc. (NYSE:GYI)... stockholders will receive $34.00 in cash for each outstanding share of common stock they own. This price represents a premium of approximately 55 percent over the closing price on January 18, 2008." About $2.1 billion for roughly 61 million fully diluted shares, plus about $265 million of assumed debt.

Photographers watching from outside had called the turn in real time. Photo Business News tracked the slide week by week: GYI hitting a new 52-week low in September 2007, Klein conceding that the core stock photography business had stopped growing and was in fact declining, the stock down 30% in a day that November, another 52-week low in January 2008, and, the week the sale process was announced, "There's a sucker born every minute — Getty Images For Sale!" Two weeks later: "Getty Images — Down For The Count."

And it is worth being precise about what H&F bought, because the received wisdom that Getty was a declining asset in 2008 is wrong. For fiscal 2007 net income was $125.87 million, or $2.10 per share, on revenue of $857.59 million, up 6.3%. The company finished the year with $364.5 million in cash and short-term investments.

A 14.7% net margin. A net cash position. No leverage problem of any kind.

That is the last time Getty Images looked like that.

2008–2012: Hellman & Friedman, and the dividend machine starts

H&F owned Getty for four years, took roughly $880 million out of it in dividends funded largely by debt, and sold it to Carlyle for $3.3 billion. It is the most profitable chapter in this story for anyone, and it is the chapter that installed the machinery that eventually broke the company.

The two recapitalizations are on the record. Getty paid a $504 million dividend at the end of 2010, and in March 2012 borrowed $350 million to help fund a further $455 million dividend. Reuters reported the 2012 payment as a $379 million dividend funded with debt and $115 million of cash — the figures differ by what is measured, gross distribution versus net to the sponsor, but the shape is identical.

Working from the merger proxy, Photo Business News put the equity H&F actually invested at up to $941.3 million, and noted that the 2010 and 2012 dividends effectively allowed H&F to make back most of that investment before it ever sold a share. This blog tracked what was happening underneath at the same time: "5 percent of our workforce will be asked to leave Getty Images" in March 2009, more cuts the same month, more in October, Klein's public statements picked apart in February 2010, and in May 2010, Getty Images and the Incredibly Shrinking Usage Fee.

Understand what a dividend recapitalization is, in plain terms. The company borrows money it does not need for operations and hands the cash to its owner. The owner's return is realized immediately. The debt stays on the company. The interest on that debt is paid, forever after, out of operating cash flow.

In a picture library, operating cash flow is license fees. License fees are the same pool photographers are paid from.

This is the precise mechanism by which a buyout fund's return and a photographer's royalty rate became competing claims on one pot of money. Nobody had to sit in a room and decide to cut rates in order to service debt. The pressure is structural and continuous, and it shows up as a permanent, quiet headwind on every compensation decision for the next fourteen years.

In August 2012, H&F sold to Carlyle. The reported enterprise value was $3.3 billion, against the $2.4 billion H&F had paid four years earlier — on top of the dividends already taken out.

Hellman & Friedman won this deal decisively, and they won it by leaving.

2012–2018: Carlyle loses, and photographers pay for it

Carlyle financed $2.6 billion of the $3.3 billion purchase with debt, which landed on Getty's balance sheet. Then the business went sideways and the debt did not.

The consequence was stated bluntly in the documents that later accompanied the SPAC: with most cash flow going to debt service and dividends, there was very little left for capital expenditure and research and development. Shutterstock spent those years building a better platform. Getty spent them paying interest.

By 2015 Getty completed a distressed debt exchange — the technical marker of a leveraged buyout in trouble. Carlyle's equity was underwater and everybody involved knew it.

In February 2015 Photo Business News laid the arithmetic out from Moody's own reports: $2.6 billion of acquisition debt, leverage at 6.7 times EBITDA in 2012 rising to 7.1 in 2013, a B3 rating on $2.5 billion by December 2014, and cash down to about $27 million. The same post reported that staff photographers' share of licensing on their own images had been cut to a twelve-month rolling window, with the tiers that once set their pay done away with. A contributor's comment under it: "I used to get monthly checks for around $1,800/month. My earnings this month amounted to $.11."

A year later the blog did the Carlyle math: Carlyle had saddled Getty with $2.8 billion of the $3.3 billion price, putting Carlyle's own disbursement at no more than $500 million — and the $100 million Visual China Group infusion of February 2016 amounted to 3.8% of the debt. Along the way it covered the decision to give tens of millions of images away free with an embed tool, the end of the Flickr deal, and the Corbis sale to Visual China that handed Getty exclusive distribution of its largest rival's archive.

And this is the window in which the worst royalty decisions were made.

In December 2016, Getty told its freelance contributors that it would reduce royalties for non-exclusive images licensed by subscription to as low as 2¢ per license — 93% lower than current royalties. The cut was scheduled to take effect on 23 December 2016, at the height of the busy holiday season.

Two cents. Per license. Announced two days before Christmas.

The same report noted that Getty already paid the lowest non-exclusive credit royalties in the industry — 15% to freelance photographers and 20% to illustrators. Contributors organized. An international group, the Microstock Coalition, petitioned Getty to keep the existing structure and raise credit royalties to 40%. Many photographers deactivated their images or demanded their accounts be closed.

It changed nothing. "Royalty changes don't affect buyers. In the end the buck stops with the contributors."

It's important to be careful not to claim a causal chain nobody has documented — no filing says "we cut royalties to service the term loan." But the timing is what it is. A company with $2.6 billion of acquisition debt, a distressed exchange behind it and a sponsor sitting on a loss cut its lowest-paid suppliers by up to 93%, and it did so in the same period that it also announced it would phase out rights-managed imagery by 2020 in favor of royalty-free — killing off the last licensing model in which a photographer's income scaled with a client's use.

In 2018 Carlyle exited, selling control back to the Getty family with preferred capital from Koch Equity Development, at a valuation well below the $3.3 billion entry. Carlyle lost money on Getty Images. The royalty cuts did not save them.

2021–2022: Unsplash, the SPAC, and $33.93

In 2021 Getty acquired Unsplash — a library of images given away free, where the photographer's royalty is zero by design. Read that next to the 2016 cut and the direction of travel is unambiguous.

The idea of taking Getty public again had been in the air for a decade. Photo Business News asked Getty Images Returning to the Stock Market with an IPO? in May 2012 — three months before Carlyle bought it instead.

Then came the exit. In December 2021 Getty announced it would become publicly traded again through a combination with CC Neuberger Principal Holdings II. The SPAC merger completed in July 2022 and the new parent went public on the NYSE under the symbol GETY.

The valuation: 15.2 times an estimated $315 million of 2022 adjusted EBITDA, with CC Neuberger investing $600 million, proceeds going primarily toward reducing debt.

Note the two things that are true at once. Some debt genuinely was repaid. And roughly $1.4 billion of accumulated leverage went public along with the company, having been built up over fourteen years by three sponsors whom the new public shareholders had never met.

The share price peaked in August 2022 at over $30, falling to less than $5 by October 2022. The all-time closing high was $33.93 on 15 August 2022.

This is the other $33 in the story. It is not an IPO price. It is the high-water mark of a de-SPAC, reached three weeks after listing and never approached again.

One technical note for anyone pulling historical data: several market-data vendors list GETY's IPO date as September 2020, which is CC Neuberger's own shell IPO. If you are charting this company's history from a screener, you may be looking at a series that splices blank-check trading into Getty's record.

2022–2026: AI, a failed merger, and a halted ticker

Four years after listing, the NYSE has halted the stock at $0.12 and the company has told the market it may not survive.

The operating business held up better than the share price suggests. FY2025 revenue was $981.3 million, up 4.5%, with adjusted EBITDA of $320.9 million. Editorial revenue grew 6.9%. In Q2 2026, Editorial grew 9.2% while Creative fell 2.6%.

What went wrong was everything around the operating business.

The Shutterstock merger failed. Announced in January 2025 and intended to bolster liquidity, it was terminated over regulatory conditions — the UK competition authority required divestiture of Shutterstock's editorial arm, which Getty would not accept. The attempt itself consumed cash.

The warrant litigation landed. A court entered judgment in favor of warrant holders who had sought $92 million. Getty made a $4.15 million partial payment in late August 2026 in exchange for a 60-day standstill. Litigation reserves stood at $99.5 million.

Liquidity ran out. Getty ended June 2026 with $51.6 million of cash and drew the last $30 million of its revolver in July. Free cash flow for the first half was negative $98.6 million.

And the equity structure was already dead. In February 2026 Getty filed a tender offer to exchange employees' underwater stock options; at the time, the closing price was $0.78 and there were 417,214,604 shares outstanding. Whatever was repriced at $0.78 in March was underwater again by September.

On 1 September 2026 Getty elected the 30-day grace periods on interest due on its 9.750% notes due 2027 and 14.000% notes due 2028. Alvarez & Marsal, Guggenheim and Simpson Thacher advise the company; Houlihan Lokey and Gibson Dunn advise the lenders; Akin advises the unsecured noteholders. Getty is preparing a Chapter 11 filing as soon as month's end.

Then the exchange acted. On 29 September 2026 NYSE Regulation suspended trading immediately and began delisting proceedings under Section 802.01D of the Listed Company Manual, ruling that the shares had sunk to abnormally low selling price levels — a discretionary provision, separate from the $1.00 test Getty had already failed. The last NYSE print was $0.12 on 28 September, a market value of about $59 million; off-exchange quotes since the halt have been lower still. The stock had lost more than 99% since listing. A day earlier, Bloomberg had reported confidential talks with lenders over a debtor-in-possession loan and a restructuring in which creditors would take control, with the Getty family also weighing an investment.

One detail from the delisting week says a great deal. A Form 144 filed by Chinh Chu — a former director and founder of CC Capital, one of the SPAC's backers — covered up to 15,060,230 shares at an approximate sale date of 14 September, roughly 24 cents a share. The people who brought Getty back to market were selling into the last fortnight of its listing.

The stock will now move to over-the-counter trading under a ticker ending in Q, if it trades at all. The reverse split that shareholders were to vote on at the 8 October annual meeting is moot.

AI runs underneath all of it, in both directions. Generative image models attack the creative licensing business directly. At the same time Getty has signed AI licensing deals — with Nvidia, OpenAI and Perplexity — and is suing Stability AI over training on its imagery. The company is simultaneously the industry's most exposed victim of AI and one of its more aggressive litigants against it.

The percentage is only half of the squeeze. The other half is that the number it was a percentage of fell off a cliff at the same time.

A rights-managed license in the 1990s was priced against the client's actual use — Bettmann images went for $50 to $3,000 as far back as 1981. Fifty percent of a $500 license is $250.

Today: subscription downloads for non-exclusive images earn 10¢, and after the December 2016 change, as low as 2¢ per license. Contributors report seeing $0.01–$0.05 as royalties, and $0.02 even for video. One photographer's first four stock sales: three earned a quarter each, the fourth $1.88.

Photo Business News documented the same slide from the editorial side, where the numbers are worse because there is no volume to hide behind: Who Gets Paid What? Getty & Corbis Edition in 2010, Frank Micelotta on the red-carpet glut and the race to the bottom in 2009, and by 2015 the "$1.51 and $0.49 licensing fees" showing up on contributors' sales reports under all-you-can-use subscriptions.

Stack the two effects and the arithmetic is roughly this: a license that paid a photographer $250 in 1995 pays somewhere between two cents and a few dollars in 2026. Not a percentage decline. Three orders of magnitude.

The volume was supposed to compensate. For a small number of high-volume producers it did. For most, it did not, and the minimum payment threshold — earnings below roughly $50 are carried forward rather than paid — means a long tail of contributors have balances that have never once cleared the bar. Those balances are, in effect, an interest-free float that Getty has held for years. We will come back to them.

A note on how to read the chart. The 1985 figure is the traditional agency standard, not a Getty rate — Getty did not exist. The 2007 figure is Getty's own disclosed number for iStockphoto. The 2010, 2011 and 2026 figures are iStock non-exclusive photo rates. Exclusive contributors do better, between 25% and 45%, in exchange for giving up every other outlet.

The ledger: who profited and who lost

One sponsor made a fortune, one lost money, and the people who supplied the product were never in the capital structure at all.

Party	Years	Position	Outcome
Hellman & Friedman	2008–2012	Paid ~$2.4B including assumed debt	Won decisively. Took roughly $880M in debt-funded dividends, then sold at $3.3B
Blum Capital	2007–2008	5% activist stake, pushed for a transaction	Won. Stock rose on the stake, exited at $34.00
Getty family & Koch Equity	2018–2022	Bought from Carlyle below the $3.3B entry	Won on entry, lost on the way back down. Family held 36.7%; now positioned to inject rescue capital
CC Neuberger sponsors	2020–2022	SPAC shell, $600M invested	Won. Sponsor economics realized at closing, regardless of what followed
GYI holders who bought before 2005	1996–2008	Bought in the teens	Won. Cashed out at $34.00
Carlyle Group	2012–2018	$3.3B, $2.6B of it debt	Lost. Distressed debt exchange in 2015, exit below cost
GYI holders who bought the 2005 peak	2005–2008	Bought near $94.37	Lost ~64% at the buyout price
GETY holders since the de-SPAC	2022–2026	$33.93 high	Lost ~99.6%. Trading suspended by the NYSE on 29 September; equity likely cancelled in Chapter 11
Employees holding equity	2022–2026	ESPP, RSUs, options	Lost. Options repriced around $0.78 in early 2026 were underwater again by September
Unsecured bondholders	—	9.75% 2027s, 14% 2028s	Impaired. Trading around 47
Secured lenders	—	Term loans, 11.25% secured notes	Largely protected. Secured notes around 73.75
Warrant plaintiffs	2024–2026	Sought $92M, won judgment	Partially won, may be crammed. Collected $4.15M so far
Contributors and staff photographers	1995–2026	Supplied the product. Held no equity.	Lost throughout, in every ownership era

A few things stand out when you lay it out this way.

The sponsors' outcomes had almost nothing to do with the photographers' outcomes. H&F made its money by refinancing and selling, not by cutting royalties — its win was largely booked before the worst cuts happened. Carlyle made the harshest cuts and still lost. Royalty compression did not save the losing sponsor and was not what made the winning one rich. It was a side effect of the structure, taken because it could be.

Each transition reset everyone except the contributors. New owners, new bankers, new capital structure, fresh start. The rate card never reset upward. It has moved in one direction since 2006.

Nobody in the top eleven rows shot a photograph.

What happens now

Getty will not disappear. It will be handed to its creditors, deleveraged, and carry on licensing pictures.

A business generating roughly $300 million of EBITDA at 27%-plus margins does not liquidate — creditors reorganize it, because the going concern is worth far more than the parts. Expect a prepackaged or prearranged filing, secured lenders reinstated or converted at high recovery, unsecured notes taking most of the new equity, and possibly new money from the majority equity holders, who have formed a "group" including funds connected to Mark Getty.

Read that last clause carefully. The family that presided over three decades of leverage may end up owning a debt-free Getty Images at a fraction of the 2022 price. That is legal, common, and entirely available.

Two corrections to the received picture, from the filings. First, the unsecured debt is almost entirely one instrument: $264.7 million of 14% notes due 2028 and just $5.3 million of 9.75% notes due 2027. There is no 2027 maturity wall to speak of; the fight is over the 2028 paper and the $150 million revolver, which carries a 180-day springing maturity. Second, the warrant litigation is larger than the headline $92 million judgment already paid: a New York state court directed a further $67.8 million judgment on 27 July 2026 and a federal judgment adds $7.8 million, both under appeal. Chapter 11 converts every one of those into a claim to be negotiated rather than a check to be written, which is a large part of why the company is filing.

For contributors with money in the pipeline

This is the part with practical consequences.

Getty's payment cycle runs long by design: licenses granted in January are reported on 20 February and paid on 25 March. Every contributor therefore carries two to three months of earned-but-unpaid royalties at all times. Against the roughly $220 million Getty pays out annually, that implies $35–55 million of contributor money sitting in the pipeline on any given day.

Legally, those are general unsecured claims. They are not held in trust. The agreement is with Getty Images (US) Inc., a contractual payment obligation, ranking alongside the bondholders.

Practically, most contributors will probably be paid, for two reasons:

Critical vendor motion. Contributors are the textbook critical vendor — the business has no product without content supply, and contributors can walk because they hold the copyrights. Judges routinely grant these.
Contract assumption. Contributor agreements are executory contracts. Getty will assume the great majority, because the content is the business — and assumption requires curing all monetary defaults, meaning paying the back royalties in full.

Two groups are genuinely exposed.

Contributors below the payment threshold. Balances under roughly $50 are carried forward rather than paid, and thousands of accounts have balances that have accrued for years without ever clearing it. In bankruptcy those become unsecured claims too small to file and below any administration threshold. Nobody litigates a $31 claim. This is where real photographers lose real money with no recourse, and it is a direct consequence of a threshold policy that already functioned as a float.

And anyone relying on the AI compensation pledge. Contributors have raised concerns that iStock and Getty have not fulfilled an earlier pledge to compensate them for inclusion of their existing work in generative AI training datasets. Any claim on that theory is an unliquidated, disputed, pre-petition unsecured claim. The Nvidia, OpenAI and Perplexity licensing deals will survive the bankruptcy. The promise to share that revenue will not.

The practical move: watch the docket for the claims bar date and file a proof of claim even if a critical vendor motion appears to cover you. It costs nothing and preserves the position.

The library

The wholly-owned archive — over 150 million images, plus everything shot by staff photographers since 1995, for which Getty pays no third-party royalties — is fully encumbered collateral and transfers to the reorganized company.

But note a distinction in Getty's own language: it owns some archives and exclusively represents others. Those are different legal animals. And independent contributors retain copyright ownership of their content — contributors' copyrights are not Getty's to sell. What Getty holds is a distribution license. A buyer in any sale acquires the owned library plus whatever contracts get assumed, not the underlying copyrights of several hundred thousand contributors.

What to take from this

The lesson is structural, not moral, and it is more useful that way.

Nobody at Getty woke up wanting to pay photographers two cents. What happened is that a business whose only real input is other people's work was repeatedly bought with borrowed money, and in that structure the supplier's rate is the most compressible line on the page. Customers notice a price increase. Lenders enforce covenants. Employees quit. Non-exclusive contributors, spread across a hundred countries with no contract term protecting the rate and no collective body, notice nothing until the email arrives two days before Christmas.

A former Getty content manager, commenting on Photo Business News in 2015 after eleven years inside, put it more bluntly than I have: "the company was no longer being operated to generate profit through operating margin, but rather through a repeated sequence of leveraging deals... The people who run Getty are not photography professionals, they're not marketing or advertising professionals, they're not publishing/editorial professionals. They are bankers."

The vulnerability was never the percentage. It was the absence of anything that made the percentage hard to change.

Three things follow from that.

Ownership structure predicts rates better than company size or intentions. Stocksy pays 50% because photographers own it. Getty pays 15% because, at various points, Hellman & Friedman, Carlyle, Koch and a bond syndicate owned it. Same industry, same technology, same AI pressure, same decade. The difference is the cap table.

Exclusivity is a term of trade you are selling, and it has been systematically underpriced. Getty's exclusive rates run 25–45% against 15% non-exclusive. Consider what the company gets: a guaranteed supply it can promise enterprise clients, and the removal of your images from every competitor. That is worth a great deal to a licensor and it is priced at a spread of twenty to thirty points on a small base.

And there is one thing the reorganization might actually make possible. A Getty paying $150 million less a year in interest has, for the first time since 2008, genuine room to raise contributor rates and honor the AI revenue-sharing commitment. Whether creditor-owners would choose to is a real question, and I would bet against it absent organized pressure. But the money would exist, which it has not since Hellman & Friedman signed the first dividend recap.

The claims process is also the one moment in this company's thirty-year history when contributors have structural leverage rather than moral standing. A critical vendor motion requires the estate to argue, in writing, to a federal judge, that contributors are essential and can walk away. A coordinated bloc filing proofs of claim — including on the unfulfilled AI compensation pledge — would be the first time contributors appeared in this story as a party rather than as a cost line.

That window opens the day Getty files and closes at the claims bar date.

I would not expect it to be used. It is worth knowing it exists.

As of 30 September 2026. Not legal or investment advice. Contributors with meaningful balances in the pipeline should get a bankruptcy attorney's read on their specific agreement version, and in full disclosure, AI was used to research some historical portions of this article, and for visuals.

'No More Copyright Protection For Anyone': Author David Baldacci Rips Bi...

2025-07-17T07:36:00.001-04:00

Troubling Attitudes at Nikon Professional Services

2024-06-11T09:05:00.002-04:00

In years past, anyone considering employment at Nikon, and especially Nikon Professional Services, had to put down their cameras and agree not to take photo assignments or even get published, because, well, in doing so, you'd be competing against the professionals you are employed to help. You'd not only become their competition, but you'd take away their income from image licensing and assignments. It seems, this is no longer the case, but this isn't the first time that the Senior Manager of Pro Relations at NPS Mike Corrado, has decided the rules don't apply to him - at least not when he can take away an opportunity to work with Bloodhorse Magazine.

(Continued after the Jump)

In at least three cases so far, Corrado's photos suplanted opportunities for the pros he's supposed to be focused on helping and supporting, from making a living through image licensing, by having his photos in galleries and articles. In this article, it's Corrado's work that is being used in place of one of "his" professional photographers, to illustrate the article - taking a credential spot and income from those he's supposed to be helping. And in this photo gallery, his work also supplants those of "his" pros.

Maybe it's time he start following the policies espoused by NPS to actually SUPPORT photographers, instead of taking up a spot that should go to working photographers, and taking food from the mouths of those freelancers already struggling to earn a living and afford their expensive gear. Or, maybe this is just one more reason to switch from Nikon to anything other than Nikon.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

Sony FX6 Monitor Solution - Two Monitors Setup

2024-01-23T02:00:00.000-05:00

A dual monitor setup for the Sony FX6 using a combination of Tilta, Zacuto, and Bright Tangerine accessories optimized for rigidity and ease of portability. Equipment also used includes Neewer, Small Rig, Ulanzi, and Camvate. This setup also allows for the Sony wireless lavalier system to be used

(Continued after the Jump)

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Equipment Referenced:
🛒 - Zacuto Sony FX6 Z-Finder
🛒 - Bright Tangerine MINI AXL (SONY FX6)
🛒 - Bright Tangerine SONY FX6 TOP HANDLE BRACE
🛒 - Tilta Camera Cage for Sony FX6 Advanced Kit
🛒 - Tilta Camera Cage for Sony FX6 Advanced Kit (Tilta website)
🛒 - Front Monitor 90-degree mount
🛒 - Top handle small nato rail
🛒 - 150mm Nato rail extension arm
🛒 - 150mm Nato clamp add-on
🛒 - Rear Monitor tilt-swivel
🛒 - Front Monitor QR kit
🛒 - Rear monitor mount add-on
🛒 - 3/8ths to 1/4-20 reducer
🛒 - QR Extension screw through frame
🛒 - Sony Hotshoe Digital Adapter
🛒 - Sony Two Lavs Kit
🛒 - Sony One Lav one plug-on Kit
🛒 - PolarPro Full Base Camp Kit
🛒 - PolarPro Matte Box
🛒 - PolarPro Matte Box 15mm Rail Mount
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🛒 - My Book - Best Business Practices for Photographers
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Disclaimer I participate in the Amazon Services Associates Program, which earn fees by linking to Amazon.com without increasing what you would pay. No one requested I make this video, no money changed hands, no one reviewed it beforehand, and I bought all the gear myself.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

Tethering Your Sony a7 III (A73) - WHAT WE USE

2021-01-03T17:07:00.025-05:00

One of the challenges that we've faced many times when tethering our cameras has been the stability of the connection from camera to computer. This isn't brand specific, as past brands we've used have had the same problems. The company Tether Tools has made an entire business out of helping with these issues. One brief disconnect can shut down a transfer and cause corrupted files or a live connection shutdown, even if the wiring reconnects within milliseconds.

Here is how we figured out how to solve the problem, using a tweak to the cable lock Sony sells for less than $50.

(Commments, if any, after the Jump)

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

The FITT360 360° Wearable Virtual Reality Camera - Unboxing and Testing

2020-02-14T01:00:00.001-05:00

We recently received the FITT360 360° virtual reality camera which you wear around your neck. We purchased this from the company, and because we were unable to find many videos other than those put out by the company or which use the company-supplied footage, we put together an unboxing and testing set of videos.

(Continued with testing video after the Jump)

Here is a series of tests of the camera, stitching, and clarity in and outdoor, indoor, and low-light setting. (This is best watched full-screen where you can use YouTube's VR navigation).

NOTE: This is not a sponsored post, and Linkflow, the manufacturer of this product, did not provide this product to us with the knowledge that it would be reviewed and tested. It came from their standard production run, and was purchased at the Indiegogo backer price.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

US Copyright Office - Step-By-Step for a Group of Published Photographs

2020-02-13T00:30:00.000-05:00

The US Copyright Office has produced a video which is very helpful in giving you a step-by-step explanation of how to register a group of published photographs.

Back in January of 2018 Photo Business News reported Significant Changes at The US Copyright Office whereby in February of 2018 a new system as put in place to process your copyright registration. Thankfully, they saved us here at Photo Business News from having to spend the time updating our video that is 42 minutes long and has almost 7,000 views on YouTube alone.

Here is a step-by-step video produced by the US Copyright Office (best watched in full screen) -

(Continued after the Jump)

One of the ongoing challenges of the US copyright registration system is the upper limit of 750 images per registration. Prior to the February 2018 change, you could register a virtually unlimited number of images on a single registration. Hopefully, future changes to copyright registration policies and procedures will allow for more than 750 images per registration.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

US Copyright Office - Step-By-Step for a Group of Unpublished Photographs

2020-02-12T23:36:00.001-05:00

The US Copyright Office has produced a video which is very helpful in giving you a step-by-step explanation of how to register a group of Unpublished photographs.

Back in January of 2018 Photo Business News reported Significant Changes at The US Copyright Office whereby in February of 2018 a new system as put in place to process your copyright registration. Thankfully, they saved us here at Photo Business News from having to spend the time updating our video that is 42 minutes long and has almost 7,000 views on YouTube alone.

Here is a step-by-step video produced by the US Copyright Office (best watched in full screen) -

(Continued after the Jump)

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

Termination of ImageBrief Services

2018-03-01T12:13:00.002-05:00

Today, March 1st, 2018, ImageBrief announced the "Termination of ImageBrief Services", telling contributors "...that after six years of connecting agencies, brands and creators, we will be closing down ImageBrief's photographer marketing services."

Amen.

For years, PhotoBusinessNews has been critical of the damage that ImageBrief has been doing to the assignment sector of the photographic industry. Feburary 13, 2015 we wrote "ImageBrief: A scourge on the photographic industry", and last year,
on May 28th, 2016 we published "500px, ImageBrief - The Crowdsourcing Scoundrels of the Internet".

So, it came as no surprise, and is good news for photographers in general, that ImageBrief announced their own demise.

If you contributed to ImageBrief, you have 7 days to retrieve your images, licenses, and other documents from the ImageBrief servers.

Here is the entire text of their email:

Dear {Contributor},

Today, we're announcing that after six years of connecting agencies, brands and creators, we will be closing down ImageBrief's photographer marketing services.
We're proud of the products and apps we built, but even more so, we're grateful for the community that enabled them to grow. More than 70,000 creators earned millions of dollars collaborating with 12,500+ global agencies and brands in 169 countries.

There has never been a better time for creators to thrive. Demand for content has increased, and the tools to create world-class creative are more accessible than ever.
Our talented team of engineers, designers, developers, and curators have worked tirelessly to make ImageBrief a success in a competitive and rapidly evolving landscape, and our immediate priority is to help you transition to other services to support your business.

In the coming days, our team will be in contact with you directly with detailed information about your specific account, license history, and services. Over the next week, we recommend logging into ImageBrief to download and retain your license history and related assets. Further details can be found in the FAQ's below.
We want to thank you for your participation and loyalty, and look forward to working with you in the coming weeks to ensure a smooth transition.

Sincerely,
Team ImageBrief

FAQ'SWhat will happen to images I have uploaded?ImageBrief does not distribute your images through third parties. All photos you have submitted to the site will be permanently removed from our servers within the next seven days.

How do I get copies of my licenses?For the next seven days, you will be able to login to www.imagebrief.com if you require additional copies of your licenses. Download your license and associated schedules. You are legally obliged to continue to adhere to all terms and agreements of your licensed images.

What will happen to my personal and credit card Information?We will permanently remove your personal information where it is no longer required, protecting your personal information from unauthorized access, disclosure, loss, misuse, and alteration. ImageBrief uses Stripe and does not store private credit card information.

What will happen to payments due to me?Over the next 90 days, our finance team will continue to manage accounts on behalf of contributors for images recently licensed. You will be contacted directly regarding the specific status of outstanding payments and paid within 30 days of receipt of the client's payment.

ImageRights ServicesIf you activated ImageRights and via the ImageBrief platform, images you have synced to ImageRights will remain in your ImageRights account.
You can use the email you used to signup with ImageBrief, but you'll need to reset your password to be able to login to ImageRights directly. Head to the login page at www.imagerights.com/login and select the 'Forgot Password' link. Cases will continue to be pursued while your account remains open. You can submit an account cancellation to ImageRights by emailing support@imagebrief.com.

(Comments, if any, after the Jump)

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Significant Changes at The US Copyright Office

2018-01-22T23:05:00.000-05:00

The US Copyright Office for months have been working behind the scenes to codify new rules for group registrations of photographs, and they were released last week. In short, they are bad news for photographers, with very little good news.

For almost a decade, we have been registering, monthly, several thousand of our images in a single registration, for one registration fee. Some times, these were less than a thousand, and sometimes they were more than 5,000 images.

Here is the video that details how we have been doing them:

In less than a month, the limit is going to be 750 images, TOTAL, on a single registration. This means that a group registration of 5,500 images that I could previously register for $55 using the online eCO, will now cost me $520, or almost a ten-fold increase. (Source: Library of Congress fees).

It is disturbing that there is little extra cost (that is, a few additional sheets of certificate paper) for a 5,500 image registration than for a 750 image registration, so it makes no sense as to why this change has occurred.

While the new rules are the same for both a group registration of published photographs (GRPPH) and a group of unpublished photographs (GRUPH), this doesn't alleviate how much more work it is going to be for photographers, and how much more expensive it is.

Here are the new requirements:

Every image must be in a separate document in list form, and this list is not created until you have submitted your registration, and receive a case number from the eCO
Photos can only be JPEG, TIF, and GIF, and all should be in a .ZIP file, and the total size of the file must be 500MB or less
You'll still page the $55 fee, but the link above lists a $65 fee now as well
You can no longer use a paper registration, it's online only
The registration requires that you're the only author
Every image must have it's own title, as we recommend in the video above, not just a single title
the entire group must also have a title, also as we recommend in the above video

The document has to list in a very specific manner, the title of the work, the filename of the work as stored in the ZIP file, and the date of first publication. So, a work I created today at the US Capitol covering the reopening of the government would be:

TITLE: 20180122_CongressPressConf0987 FILE: 20180122_CongressPressConf0987.JPG DATE: 01/22/2018

While this is easily automatable, it is an additional steps that adds to the hassle.

Then, the required attached document, in list form, using Excel, would something be named something like:

A group of published photographs by John Harrington CaseNo000000.xls

Then title of the work would be:

"A group of published photographs by John Harrington"

On the plus side, the Copyright Office has specified that now it is no longer a question as to whether or not the individual images registered as a part of a group registration are covered individually or not, they are now. So if someone were to say you were entitled to only a single statutory award of up to $150,000 if someone infringes on 5 images that all were in a single registration, your maximum statutory award would be $150k x 5, or $750,000. Whereas now, That argument now is supposedly laid to rest. That is, until a court case challenges it.

Another significant improvement to the regulations is that the photographers who use assistants or other photographers to work under them on a work-made-for-hire basis can now register multiple photographers all on the same registration for one fee, provided that the legal author of all the photographs is the same, as it is when second shooters work on a work-made-for-hire basis (with the necessary contract signed beforehand). Previously one would have to file a separate registration for photographs made by each additional photographer even if they were working on a WMFH basis.

Here is the final rule (LINK):

After soliciting comments in late 2016, the U.S. Copyright Office adopted a final rule, effective February 20, 2018, governing group registration of photographs. The final rule modifies the procedure for registering groups of published photographs (GRPPH), and establishes a similar procedure for registering groups of unpublished photographs (GRUPH). The final rule adopts a new requirement that applicants seeking copyright registrations for groups of photographs—both published and unpublished—must generally submit applications through the Office’s electronic registration system, and can include up to 750 photographs in each claim. The final rule also modifies the deposit requirement by requiring applicants to submit their contributions in a digital format and to upload those files through the electronic system; clarifies the eligibility requirements; and confirms that a group registration issued under GRPHH or GRUPH covers each photograph in the group, each photograph is registered as a separate work, and the group as a whole is not considered a compilation or a collective work.

For all the details, visit this link here at the eCO. So if you're behind on your registrations, be sure to get them all done before 2/19/2018, as these changes go into effect on February 20th, 2018.

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Take Action Now – Copyright Simplified

2018-01-18T07:19:00.002-05:00

One of the many reservations photographers have to putting up any sort of official objection – that is, to file a lawsuit in court – is the cost and time associated with doing so. Further, their objections include the cost of hiring an attorney, and then paying them again, and again, and again. Then, there’s the reservation because, well, they didn’t register the copyright before the infringement. This all leads up to the idea that copyright protections don’t really help the individual photographer, they’re designed to protect corporate interests, so why bother doing anything at all?

This apathy has caused a downward spiral in copyright registrations, and the inverse is the case for infringements. Photographers feel helpless, and some fear sharing their work in any capacity online will result in large-scale theft of their work, so they don’t.

Enter small claims court. In civil proceedings, if you have a disagreement that is minor (some jurisdictions cap it at $10k - $30k), you can come before a judge, present your case and evidence, and the judge will decide. It’s Judge Judy without the cameras and studio lighting. No jury, and, no expensive attorneys if you’re an individual. It’s quick, and usually painless. In the world of copyright, to date, you have had to file a federal lawsuit and jump through a lot of hoops and hire a seasoned lawyer to help you through the process. If the The “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2017” or the “CASE Act of 2017” becomes law, that won’t be your only option.

(Bill link here)

This solution - the Copyright Small Claims Board, proposes a small claims procedure would allow for an individual copyright holder to bring a claim where the cap on the award is $30,000, and does not require you to hire an attorney to represent you. While I would recommend you hire an attorney in matters such as this, in some instances, an attorney is not necessary. And, as far as how much it would cost you to file a copyright claim? The act stipulated “a filing fee in such amount as may be prescribed in regulations established by the Register of Copyrights, which amount shall be at least $100, shall not exceed the cost of filing an action in a United States district court.” So, for $100 or a bit more, and without an attorney, you can get the ball rolling where someone has infringed your work.

This looks to be an amazing solution where a website or t-shirt vendor or even a magazine has stolen your work. Has someone stolen your work and posted it on their instagram account? Here’s your solution, provided it becomes law. The Copyright Alliance has more information here - - and visit this link – a streamlined way for you to contact your member of congress.

(Continued after the Jump)

David Trust, CEO of the Professional Photographers of America explains it thusly:

Tom Kennedy, Executive Director of ASMP stated that “the introduction of the CASE Act is a critical step in the several years-long effort by ASMP and its colleagues in the creative community to correct an historic inequity in the copyright law: the failure of the law to provide individual creators with an effective and affordable means to combat infringements of their creative works—an especially vexing problem in a digital environment where piracy occurs at the click of a mouse.”

The NPPA, back in 2012, pointed out that “While much of the advocacy by NPPA deals with access issues and the right to photograph and record in public; it cannot be understated that without the ability to affordably protect one’s copyright visual journalists will soon be out of business,” Mickey Osterreicher, NPPA general counsel said. “That is why it is so important that the Copyright Office support a new initiative that will address this critical issue,” he added. The NPPA went on to note that "As many photojournalists face situations involving copyright claims that amount to a limited amount of damages, the NPPA strongly supports the creation of a copyright small claims court system by the Copyright Office that would permit photojournalists to resolve such claims in an expedited and cost effective manner."

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PPA and Copyright - Trust a Champion

2017-09-15T23:57:00.000-04:00

For many a professional photographer, the Professional Photographers of America is a trusted resource for education, support, and representation on all matters that matter to photographers. There are several trade associations, among them the NPPA, ASMP, and APA, and the PP of A stands shoulder to shoulder with them in working hard to affect change around the country and within the industry. Each tends to focus on one area where photographers need help, but all are working hard when it comes to protecting copyright for professional photographers.

A few weeks ago, the CEO of the PP of A, David Trust, wrote a great piece on "Why Congress Needs to Focus on Photographers", (Medium, 8/10/17) and it is a well reasoned presentation of the importance as to why photographers need help with protecting their intellectual property.

Trust notes that "...over 70% of photographers and visual artists will lose a month’s worth of income, or more, during their careers to copyright infringement..." and he highlights several examples of where photographers were the victims of the theft of their work or slandered and libeled, through no fault of their own. The article is very much worth a read.

With over 30,000 members of the PP of A, they represent a broad cross-section of members, and when people are wondering whether or not to re-up their membership in their various organizations, this article is a reminder that, while photographers are working hard at making great images and telling stories, whether it be the marriage of a bride and groom, a feature on a notable person, or the news of the day, leaders like David Trust are championing you and your business every day, often behind-the-scenes.

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Binded - Unwanted S&M For Artists & Creatives

2017-05-29T11:46:00.000-04:00

There are plenty of ways to gag and bind your time, creativity, and intellectual property. The latest one, Binded (a rebranding of a company called Blockai) is a startup offering up worthless "certificates" - selling snake oil to the creative masses.

On their website they proffer "we give you a copyright certificate as proof which can help protect you against copyright infringement." Unfortunately, they should be saying "might" or "may", and even then, that's not true. In a March 14, 2016 TechCrunch interview (here), when the CEO is asked if there is any legal benefit to their "Blockai Certificate", the CEO responds “we believe that a record created on the blockchain using Blockai would serve as sufficient evidence in a court of law.”

Wrong.

U.S. Copyright is governed by federal law, and the only "copyright certificate" that has any standing in a U.S. court is one from the United States Copyright Office. These "Blockai certificate" offerings are as worthless as the myth of the "poor mans copyright", whereby you mail yourself a copy of your work, trying to use the postal cancellation date as proof of the date created and that you own it - the theory being that you open the envelope in court for the first time. This myth has been busted by so many reputable publications and entities, that the copyright office even addresses it here, writing "There is no provision in the copyright law regarding any such type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration."

During their launch last year, Fstoppers ran an article (here), where the author offered false hope, writing "it adds another layer of protection for the creator". Let's be crystal clear here, Blockai offers no additional protections for the creator. A creator would have more protection wearing a torn prophylactic.

The snake oil being sold on their website is described as "copyright made simple" then "the easy way to protect your images, free forever."

While this video, a pitch to TechCrunch from a year ago, reveals something very different. They are charging between $0.25 and $0.50 per image you want to register. And, you can't make this stuff up - their still frame for the video pitch is rainbows and a unicorn - as mythical as the protections they are saying they give you. Consider that a $65 official registration with the U.S. Copyright Office allows you to register an unlimited number of images in one single registration, whereas $65 will get you just 260 images registered with Blockai.

Their Terms of Service state they are "A web application that allows a user to claim copyright ownership of an image they created." What they are doing does not protect your images, let alone, forever. In fact, what it does, is create a false sense of hope that the creator is doing something that does protect them. The Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein is quoted on their website as saying "finally, copyrighting is simple and fair." A photographer is quoted as saying "Binded makes it simple to manage my copyrights." These are quoted, obviously, as the opinions of these people, so they can say whatever they want, even when it's blatantly inaccurate. The Vimeo co-founder suggests Binded is "copyrighting", which it is not.

Further, it should be noted that this isn't the first time Klein has been criticized for being a part of a "scam", Gawker wrote here in 2013 about him pitching, in Tom Sawyer-esque fashion, for people to pay to help make him a bathhouse in the woods of upstate New York. With Klein having been named to the advisors board for one of the founder's other ventures, Quickcoin, I'm not sure I'd consider his endorsement exactly unbiased. It certainly is not accurate.

This isn't the first foray into delusion for the mouthpiece of Blockai. The founder of Blockai and Binded, Nathan Lands co-founded a service in 2014 when he was 29 called Quickcoin, billed in this article as "Bitcoin so simple, even Mom can use it", and was conceived "over noodles at Ramen Underground". In this Recode article about it, he throws a Bitcoin fair wearing "a lush gray velvet smoking jacket" with Lands quoted as saying "we’re trying to make bitcoin available to the average consumer" and then "Listen, I’m a capitalist. I like money a lot. And bitcoin means different things to everyone, but you can still derive a lot of value from bitcoin, a lot of value." Yet, some two years later, they've not raised more than their original $50k, and their website is down. To use industry-speak, it seems they burned through their funding and ran out of runway.

So, what do you do when you've burned through your funding? Move on to another ill-conceived idea, this time, trying to dupe artists and creators. After getting just over $500k a year ago, 5 days ago on May 24th they received just under $1M, for a total of $1.5M in funding, according to Crunchbase here.

The most telling and accurate statement on the entire Binded website is in their TOS, where they write "3.2. Website Accuracy. Although we intend to provide accurate and timely information on the Binded Site, the Binded Site (including, without limitation, the Content) may not always be entirely accurate, complete or current...Accordingly, you should verify all information before relying on it, and all decisions based on information contained on the Binded Site are your sole responsibility and we shall have no liability for such decisions."

And there you have it. They can sell whatever scam they want dressed up with rainbows and unicorns, but you're on your own when that scam screws you over and you're left gagged and "binded" to your bedposts by their false promises. What they should be collecting when you register for their services is your safeword.

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$1.2M Copyright Claim Awarded for Infringement of Photos

2017-05-16T07:23:00.001-04:00

A common refrain by photographers who make excuses for not registering their work with the copyright office is that they’re not that valuable, or that no one would want to steal them.

On May 11th, in Baltimore Maryland, a jury awarded the copyright owner $900,000 in actual damages and $300,000 in statutory damages for 133 total infringements of 24 different images, of plants, in Under A Food Plant Company v. Exterior Design Inc. The case is BPG-15-871, before the US District Court for the District of Maryland.

At issue was a a series of photographs of a product line that were stolen and used to market and sell a competing product line by a competing nursery. While to the un-trained eye the products may have appeared similar, however according to the press release, “Professor Jeffrey Sedlik, a leading expert on visual arts and photography licensing, was called as an expert witness at trial…He confirmed the infringement using a fingerprint-like “feature point analysis” of the photographs and then researched the fair market value for licensing similar images in similar marketing materials. Professor Sedlik noted that the use of these photographs in competing marketing materials increased the likely cost of a license drastically, thus increasing the damages sustained by Under A Foot Plant, Co. The size of the jury award suggests that Professor Sedlik’s testimony was critical in demonstrating Under A Foot Plant, Co.’s damages to the jury.”

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Letting Freelancers Screw Themselves: CONDÉ NAST(Y) Edition

2017-04-04T03:33:00.000-04:00

Conde Nast has taken a page out of the Time Magazine playbook and their new contract outlines that you can pay a fee to be paid faster, according to the Fashionista blog here, who reports they have a copy of the latest contract.

In 2009, Photo Business News reported here about how Time Warner was doing the same thing. What is not clear, is what the Conde Nast payment schedule is like.

It is a common accounting concept whereby you bill, say, $1,000 for an assignment, and offer the following terms: "2/10 Net 30", which means that the party receiving the invoice may take a 2% discount if they pay in 10 days, otherwise the full amount is due after that, and late after 30 days. A good outline of the concept is available here, and sometimes, it's "1/10 Net 30" too.

One of the challenges is when that 30 days begins. Is it 30 days from invoice date? Is it 30 days from when the manuscript is accepted by the editor? Or is it 30 days following the date of publication (usually listed as the date on the front of the magazine). With magazines often having a multi-month lead time for articles, it could well be that you don't get paid for many months.

On many occasions, we've had clients hold onto invoices, or even lose them and ask that they be resent, which delays payment, because the accounting department doesn't start the "30 days" clock, until they receive it.

As Fashionista notes, in the state of New York, where Conde Nast is headquartered, a law passed in October of 2016 (here) requires timely payment or financial penalties or even a lawsuit could result. Clearly, this new contract begins to factor that in, plus payment terms.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, so they say. So, the contract could, or should include interest or penalty charges when an invoice is paid after a set date, no?

(Comments and a note, after the Jump)

Editors note: Yes, we repurposed the same "Time Warner screws freelancer graphic here, because, well, they still are skewing freelancers

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NYT's Leslye Davis And Her Alternative Facts about Photojournalism's Future

2017-02-19T16:31:00.001-05:00

One of the problems with the internet is that a Ph.D. in science can post a researched report online, only to be critisized in the comments section of that same online posting by anyone with a different opinion or an agenda, or a lack of experience. This is why so many online outlets have either ended comments, or moderated them. I too believe like John Oliver does (here regarding climate change) that it is inheritantly misleading to afford an expert on the subject of the future of photojournalism the same platform as an arguably newly minted photojournalist who, by her own statements, is a product of the company she is employed by, and not fully experienced or having had witnessed the full breadth of the industry she's supposedly equally capable of commenting on. John Oliver posits "you don't need peoples opinions on a fact. You might as well as a poll that asks 'which number is bigger, 15 or 5?'" Oliver then goes on to point out that people are still depating an issue because, on TV, they pit one person in favor of an issue position, and one person against it, as if there is equal value to each position, or equal stature for both people delivering the opinions. This, as Oliver points out on Climate Change, is inheritantly misleading.

Donald Winslow was interviewed by the New York Times for an article titled "The Uncertain Future of Photojournalism" on February 15th. The article should be read here, but I will boil it down to several bullet points:

a lot has changed
the internet affords editors the ability to source local talent, saving money by settling on whomever was atop Google search results
there's less money because of the state of media
photography has been devalued
global communications expanded the knowledge of resource pools
the photography industry was gutted by the greed of bottom-line watchers
fewer staff photographer jobs, and all photographers required to do more (video, audio, etc)
fewer assignments due to stock agencies
"only the rich kids get to play at photojournalism."
the opportunities are greater but there are no patrons to support photojournalists as in the Renaissance
only a few can afford to do photojournalism and earn a living at it until the business model changes
Stock sales are 1/100th what they used to be
Things must change for photojournalism to survive, and few people who are in the profession earn a living from it

In a follow up article, equal weight was given to someone with a small fraction of experience and perspective on the industry. The author of the piece called the Winslow article "pessimistic", and I had to revisit the definition for that word, which is defined as "tending to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen." The points above are accurate and depressing facts, but they're not debatable, they're facts, with, perhaps, the editorialization of #9.

The article was in question, on the same NYT LENS blog platform "Photojournalism’s Uncertain Future? She Begs to Differ", which you should read here is filled with ill-conceived opinion by Ms. Leslye Davis, an employee on staff who shoots video and still photography.

(Continued after the Jump)

Following the publication of the Winslow interview, the questioner describes someone who "came into the Lens office" - and that's where it starts. Described as "a young video journalist and photographer for The New York Times", means Ms. Davis first has a paycheck from one of the highest paying newspapers in the country. For reference, according to the New York Newspaper Guild's 2003 contract (here ), which was effective through 2011, a photographer with 2 or more years of experience would earn a minimum of $1,777.83 every two weeks up to $1,955.54 for a Bureau Photographer. That's a salary, before benefits, of $46,223, to start - she's likely paid much more. That's an awfully enriched position from which, as the title of the article suggests "Photojournalism’s Uncertain Future? She Begs to Differ" - "beg" to differ. She stated she started as an intern at the age of 21, and then was hired on full time. And here, she's going to opine on the state of an industry she has experienced only a sliver of, from the position of staff photographer who doesn't rely on the dwindling rates paid to non-staff photographers? So, let's walk through everything that's been written, with the understanding that, as the author, James Estrin notes "Her conversation with James Estrin has been edited for clarity and brevity." What it clearly was not edited for, was accuracy, Leslye Davis is operating from, as our current administration has coined the phrase, a set of alternative facts.

Below is the Q&A exchange, interspersed with commentary and criticisms, and on a rare occasion, an agreement or two.

ESTRIN: What brought you into the Lens office a few minutes ago?
DAVIS: I got an email from a Western Kentucky University photojournalism student.

COMMENTARY: Davis, who grew up mostly in Kentucky, the daughter of a school teacher, is a WKU alumni, one of the most difficult and prestigious schools for photojournalists.

DAVIS: She wrote: “I just read this article from The NY Times. It’s about the unstable career of photojournalism. After reading it my fears resurfaced of not feeling confident in the career I’m investing a lot of time and money into, especially if it means being able to barely provide my daily needs with the pay.

COMMENTARY: This students fears should have never left, they should have always been front of mind. The student is right that they are "investing a lot of ...money" and she's right to fear being "able to barely provide my daily needs with the pay." Winslow did not dance around this point, he made it clearly.

DAVIS: What is your opinion on the future of photojournalism? Did you have the same fear when you were a student?”

COMMENTARY: I hardly think that Davis is of the position that she has more insights into the future of photojournalism than Winslow. Winslow has been photographer, editor, served on a national board of the NPPA, and otherwise been in the trenches for decades. Why would Davis have a more informed or insightful opinion or even more facts than Winslow?

ESTRIN: So what are you going to tell her?
DAVIS: I’m going to tell her she has a bright future ahead of her ...

COMMENTARY: So, from an email inquiry, she's just going to offer the blanket statement that her future is bright? Why is she making this promise? Allaying very real fears with a platitude?

DAVIS: … that there are more opportunities than ever before, especially for women, especially for minorities. She is both.

COMMENTARY: There are NOT more opportunities that meet the test this student was asking for to " provide my daily needs". The opportunities largely exist to work for free, or for "photo credit", not that will provide for her daily needs for revenue. Further, to the question about the financial viability of the profession, the question about opportunities for women and minorities, while true, is irrelevant to the question, but again, it's a platitudinal sentiment at best.

DAVIS: Some of the points in the article were right, but the overall message about the uncertain future of photojournalism was wrong and it spoke more to what photojournalism used to be than of what it’s becoming.

COMMENTARY: Incorrect. There wasn't a single fact in the article that was wrong. In fact the premise - that it's "uncertain" is accurate. Further, the message and points too was painfully accurate. It offered a history lesson and facts about the state of the industry today. Facts cannot be wrong. 15 is still bigger than 5.

What's troubling, (and Davis ignored Estrin's question about fear) is that, in an interview here Davis expresses her own fears on this same topic of money, writing "I’ve always had an intense irrational fear of student loan debt" yet she's allaying these same fears in a fellow WKU student. That's just plain irresponsible. Especially so when she's making upwards of $50k in salary, and is provided with all the equipment she needs to do her job. Estrin notes in his interview with Winslow "The difficulty of making a living has skewed the profession away from people who are working-class or poor" to which Winslow affirms that and responds "That hurts diversity and hinders coverage..." and notes that a "bag of gear today would probably cost you $25,000".

ESTRIN: What is so exciting about her future?

COMMENTARY: I'd like to think that Estrin, a self-avowed optimist, here is asking a question, if he's being honest with himself, he knows should be answered more along the lines of Winslow's answers, "the bottom line is, can you pay your bills at the end of the month?...Are you going to pin your mortgage payment on getting an Alicia Patterson grant? Or a Robert F. Kennedy Award?"

DAVIS: Newspapers and journalism in general are excited about visuals.

COMMENTARY: Yes, they are excited about visuals. This is a superfluous and pandering comment. Even before cameras existed, newspapers used visuals and were excited about them. Here's a visual in the New York Herald from 1836, the year before the camera was invented.

DAVIS: If you look at The New York Times 2020 report, the first point is that the report needs to be more visual.

COMMENTARY: Yes, and within that same point, it affirms the importance - primarily so in some cases, "We also need to become more comfortable with our photographers, videographers and graphics editors playing the primary role covering some stories, rather than a secondary role." Yet, step outside of the staff offices of the NYT, and the reporters in many cases think they can take the photos, and the reporters in most cases, are paid more. From a database of rates, here a reporter in 2014 is paid $700 flat, for "1,000 words. It required plenty of quotes from different sources. The photographs were taken by a professional. They purchased first global rights but the contract included a 1-month exclusivity period in which I could not re-sell the article. I didn't think one month was that big a deal when I submitted the contract, but lord was I wrong. Through the NYT syndicate, the article was re-sold practically everywhere in that time." That professional photographer was paid about half of what that writer was paid, according to standard NYT freelance rates, and while that $700 rate surely varies, not so much for the "day rate" the NYT pays freelancers.

DAVIS: The gear necessary to shoot well and the platforms on which to distribute the content you’re creating are more accessible by the day. At bare minimum, we’re all carrying hi-res recording and viewing devices around in our pockets.

COMMENTARY: The "gear necessary to shoot well" is not "more accessible by the day", because it's getting more expensive as pay for the same workload increases. Winslow noted "Now they’re being asked to produce video, audio and slide shows, too, while being paid the same amount." Colleagues who previously could capture "wild sound" are being asked to capture audio like NPR. And as to platforms, Ms. Davis has given a great deal of interviews on varying platforms and news outlets about her experiences, but she's distributing on one - the NYT platform. And platforms like YouTube are beginning to charge (for example, YouTube Red) and other platforms are moving away from free offerings towards ones that, ahem, charge to use. Again, accessible is not just the existence of a platform, but also the ability for the photojournalist to be able to use it and that gets incrementally harder as they charge more when pay is stagnant, or, factoring in inflation, buying power is declining.

DAVIS: Now we can be the authors and tell our stories.

COMMENTARY: In a 2014 interview here, some 3 years ago, Ms. Davis opined when asked about her typical day at the NYT, she says she gets pitched from a journalist, "do a lot of research...Then I’ll do more research, I’ll map out the logistics, get a budget ready, and say, “Here’s what it’s going to cost, here’s how long I’m going to be there,” and ask if that sounds okay. I’ll hop on a plane or I’ll rent a car, and go."

She's therefore telling the stories of other journalists, on the budget of the NYT, without worrying about how her rent is going to be paid for however long she's "going to be there" on assignment.

ESTRIN: That was my issue as a newspaper photographer until at least 2004: I didn’t get to be the storyteller. Even if it was my idea, I was illustrating someone else’s words. As we got audio, and video, and it became accepted that a photographer could write, then I could be the author.

DAVIS: Exactly. We have voices. We can dig up the story, weave the narrative and make it beautiful.

COMMENTARY: No, not "exactly". The voice is that of the NYT, and to the extent that the voice of the reporter serves the financial interests (page views, video plays, etc) and the goals of the NYT, the voice of the reporter can be amplified by the NYT.

So Davis, as the author now, it seems, comes up with an idea, researches it as she did when she was getting pitched from other journalists, and then now pitches it herself and so it seems that this workflow still applies - "I’ll map out the logistics, get a budget ready, and say, “Here’s what it’s going to cost, here’s how long I’m going to be there,” and ask if that sounds okay. I’ll hop on a plane or I’ll rent a car, and go."

Again, when she returns from having "hop[ped] on a plane" her heat will still be on, no eviction notices under her door alongside paltry checks from editorial clients who pay in 60, 90, or 120 days that won't cover the rent and are late, alongside of credit card bills which accrued interest after 30 days because the client hasn't paid yet.

ESTRIN: I remember you telling me that when you went to Western Kentucky as a student you thought you were the worst photographer in the class.

COMMENTARY: It seems this question is designed to illustrate to other people who think they are poor photographers, that they too, with enough hard work, is sure to also land a job at the NYT.

DAVIS: I was terrible. Some other students were inherently talented when it came to composing a well-framed photo or understanding light. It was only through sheer force of will that I got any better. I really had to put in the hours to understand and learn.

COMMENTARY: There were 2,078 graduates in Spring of 2012, the year Ms. Davis graduated, 410 within the same "Bachelor of Arts" degree category as hers. In looking at their 2014 ciricculum (here) there's not a single course required on how to manage a freelance photography business. Remarkably, according to US News, the 4-year graduation rate (here) at WKU is just 27%, and according to a 2015 report (here) they graduated just 35 students in the WJU photojournalism program.

DAVIS: But the reason I was drawn to the field wasn’t because I wanted to be the best photographer in the world — I do want to be good because light and composition and moments are what move people in an image — but I don’t think those elements are more important than the story itself. And I was always drawn to the stories.

COMMENTARY: These are all wonderful sentiments where Ms. Davis opines about Davis, her motivations and what she's drawn to, but they are irrelevant to the state of photojournalism. They are biased anecdotal insights at best.

DAVIS: There are so many great examples of people who have crossed that threshold and been successful. They are making beautiful images, but they’ll also make video, make podcasts, write, whatever it takes to get the message across.

COMMENTARY: How do you define "so many"? It relative? Is 1% of a population "so many?" As a noun it's defined (here) as "the majority of", whereas as a determiner, pronoun, or adjetive, it's "a large number of". The US population is 309 million people. Of that population 124,900 are photographers, according to the US Department of Labor (here) who, by the way, make a median income of $31,710 a year, and which the US Department of Labor notes about job prospects "Salaried jobs may be more difficult to find as more companies contract with freelancers rather than hire their own photographers." Within her industry, there are only 3,150 jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are 138,000,000 jobs seasonally adjusted in the US, which is 2.3-thousandths of a percent of jobs that are for photographers in her industry. So, it's not clear what data Ms. Davis was relying on to advise her fellow WKU photojournalism colleague that her future was "bright."

How do you define "successful?" it could be (according to Google) "accomplishing an aim or purpose", or, more likely in this story, since we are not talking about whether or not photojournalism can accomplish something, but rather, the state of the industry as viable, "having achieved popularity, profit, or distinction". Again, the article she was responding to was discussing whether or not the field is one where the participants can pay their bills, so let's focus on the second word, "profit."

ESTRIN: Like who?
DAVIS: To name a few: Maisie Crow, an incredibly talented still photographer who has been working on a documentary about the only remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi for years now.

COMMENTARY: How is this relevant to whether or not the profession is viable? She's an anecdotal reference to the point, and lives in NYC.

DAVIS: Marcus Yam, who apparently just won Newspaper Photographer of the Year in POYi — he was also awarded a World Press Multimedia Award and an Emmy in 2011 for a short doc that was a combination of stills, audio and video. And for that he was working on a team. That’s important. That very independent approach that we’re taught in photojournalism school can be the best (and only) way in some situations. But I mostly find that working alone is to the detriment of the project.

COMMENTARY: Again, Yam is a fine photographer who interned at the Washington Post and the year prior to Ms. Davis at the NYT, and, currently, is on staff for the Los Angeles Times, but his list of accolades isn't going to pay his bills.

DAVIS: Also look at Liz Baylen, Malin Fezehai, Tim Hussin, Erin Brethauer, Zana Briski, Chad Stevens, Bayeté Ross Smith … I could make you a list that’s pages long.

COMMENTARY: A "list that's pages long" of photographers "who have crossed that threshold and been successful"? No, that list, at that length, does not and cannot exist.

ESTRIN: What have photographers lost and what have we gained during this period of change in the media?
DAVIS: The fact of the matter is 20 years ago our field was largely inaccessible to minorities, women and foreigners.

COMMENTARY: Irrelevant to whether or not the industry is failing or not.

However, let's look at some statistics, In 2016 47.7% of photographers were women The 2007 Women in the Labor Force report (here - https://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-databook-2008.pdf ) shows the percentage of women in the field of photography at 47.5. So we're not looking at a a field "inaccessible" at all, it's consistent over the last 20 years.

With the 2007 report, the earlest data readily available on demographics, showed 5.7% black, 1.9% asian, and 10.3% hispanic or latino in the field of photography. whereas in 2017 there were 5.7 black, 8.4 asian, 8.4 hispanic or latino in the workforce. Relative to the population as a whole, 13.2% are black, 17% latino. At best, the asian population showed the greatest increase. Asians currently make up 5.6% of the population, while in 2007 there were 1.9% that were photographers, and now there are 8.4% asian.

In 1997, 20 years ago, the Department of Labor reported 139,000 jobs, so to start, there are about 15,000 fewer jobs available, overall. That same 1997 Jobs Outlook report notes "is a highly competative field because there are more people who want to be photographers than there is employment to support them." This was true then, and remains a fact today. Going back 10 years, the 2007 report suggests that, with employment in 2006 of 122,000 they projected 135,000 for 2016, yet this was not accurate, it only increased by 2,000.

As to the inclusion of "foreigners" in this list? That's another addition that is irrelevant. It's like piling on whatever seemingly disadvantaged group to try to make a point. Foreigners have their own photojournalism segments of the industry in their own countries, it's unclear why they're included here.

DAVIS: Shooting high-quality video was an expensive, niche market.

COMMENTARY: This is probably one of the few accurate statements Ms. Davis makes.

DAVIS: Finding inspiration in our field required a trip to the library, a newspaper subscription....

COMMENTARY: "Required?" Walk down the street, take a second or third look at things that look obvious. So many people mis-percieve that in order to be inspired you have to leave your geographic region.

DAVIS: .... and frankly, special admission to the (mostly) boys club.

COMMENTARY: Statistics suggest that this isn't the case in the last 20 years, as was earlier suggested. Generally speaking, the profession has undergone a change from the 1940's, 50's, 60's, and 70's, from a male dominated field, to, within the 80's and 90's, atleast according to government reports and analysis, and equal presence in the field. However, this correlates to a largely to the growth of women in the workforce overall. Few argue against diversity in the workforce, whether it be women in photojournalism, or men as nurses. Yet to suggest this is a triumph that overcame "special admission" is just pandering.

DAVIS: Now when you open your phone, you have access to recording tools, online connections, and a constant stream of inspiration and information that would have been unimaginable a few generations ago.

COMMENTARY: None of which goes to the original point - the ability her WKU connection was worried about being able to do - pay her bills within the profession of photojournalism.

DAVIS: Do people have to make compromises? Absolutely.

COMMENTARY: Another of the few accurate statements Ms. Davis makes, again, a platitude.

DAVIS: Does it mean you’re selling out if you have to learn to use a tripod or how to record audio without peeking? No way. It’s just a skill, like your camera is just a tool. Our mission should be to connect people and tell their stories and you’re in a better position to do that now than ever before.

COMMENTARY: Again, irrelevant anecdotal experiences and not relevant to the state of the profession.

DAVIS: If there’s something I worry about losing, it’s a commitment from some news outlets to ensure that the images they publish are coming from reliable sources.

COMMENTARY: Ms. Davis is joining the chorus worried about 'fake news". Photographs that come from unreliable sources include those that are trying to spoof the news, or whom offer photographs with an agenda behind them. Whereas a car company or a theater troupe might offer a "handout photograph" as a visual press release, their agenda is simply free publicity for product, service, or event, whereas the rise of freelancers has caused storied news services like Reuters and others, to publish photoshopped images, for which, when they were caught, they had to retract and apologize for.

This isn't new - the NYT itself was the victim of a number of spoofs - including this one (here https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/pranksters-spoof-the-times/?apage=1 ) where reportedly 80,000 print copies of the paper were distributed nationwide along with a companion website. But this isn't really a new concern either, and the NYT just a bout a month prior ran this article (here - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/learning/lesson-plans/evaluating-sources-in-a-post-truth-world-ideas-for-teaching-and-learning-about-fake-news.html ) "Evaluating Sources in a ‘Post-Truth’ World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News".

DAVIS: Also, it’s true that the inundation of visuals that we all come across daily makes us prone to desensitization. But I don’t foresee that changing, so why waste time lamenting it? The caliber of work required to capture and maintain someone’s attention is at a higher standard, but that just means the stakes have been raised.

COMMENTARY: Ms. Davis is suggesting that lamenting a desensitization by a daily inundation of visuals is a waste of time? Perhaps the National Institutes of Health should tell all the PHd's and doctors who investigated (here - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4522002/ ) this "Desensitization to Media Violence: Links With Habitual Media Violence Exposure, Aggressive Cognitions, and Aggressive Behavior" should just delete the article and work on something more important? The findings are somewhat alarming, but, well, Ms. Davis suggests we should not "waste time lamenting it."

DAVIS: What we’ve gained is personal insight into communities from insiders. In the past people might not have been connected enough to tell their own stories. Now they can.

COMMENTARY: Ms. Davis believes that personal insight from insiders is a gain? Perhaps, but not always - often the neutral perspective of an outsider coming in garners a more objective perspective on the story. Ms. Davis certainly isn't an insider in the field of freelance photojournalism nor the state of the field of photojournalism as a whole. She was able to be "connected enough to tell their own stor[y]" to Mr. Estrin by walking into his office in the same building she works in. Now she has, and it's done a serious disservice to her WKU colleague, and the industry as a whole.

DAVIS: The Internet makes sharing and receiving stories all the easier.

COMMENTARY: True, but not every story is worth sharing. We need look no further than people sharing photos of what they ate for dinner, or, ahem, even photographs of their bowel movements, on blog posts and social media. People post their personal diaries of life, work, and even sexual exploits. Just because sharing is easier, doesn't make it better.

DAVIS: Some people see it as a detriment that we’re not sending journalists all over the world, but to me, that’s a positive sign about the opportunities that have been made available to journalists within their own communities. Locals are connected to their community, they know what they’re doing there, and they speak the language.

COMMENTARY: There are some times when there's no need to send a journalist somewhere, but many times when there's value. Sending a photographer from LA to NYC to do a photo shoot seems unnecessary, until you realize you're trying to have a similar style and look to the images for a story with subjects in disparate locations. So too, you send a seasoned conflict photographer into a country because they not only have the skills to stay safe, but also, to tell the story in the context of other conflicts. A biased visual often comes from photographers within the area of a conflict, and moreover, there are many stories about unexperienced photographers getting killed because they didn't know what they were doing. Why did the NYT send Ms. Davis to photograph photographer Sally Mann in Virginia? They wanted her to approach it a certain way. There are dozens of photographers within an hour of Ms. Mann who could have done the assignment. So too, when Ms. Davis went to Rio there were hundreds of photographers already there, and in Paris for her team nomination to the Pulitzer, many many photographers there. For someone who's been sent a few places fully funded with a NYT expense account, she's really not in a place to criticize this point.

ESTRIN: So you are going to get more and different voices?
DAVIS: More different voices and it’s just financially smarter. It would be ridiculous for newspapers to regularly send a photographer across the world, hire a fixer to help translate for them, pay all their expenses. And this goes for video too. It’s a much smarter strategy to employ people who are closer to the places they work.

COMMENTARY: See above. And Ms. Davis would do well to not delve into what is, and what is not, financially smarter.

DAVIS: Also, when it comes to understanding deep-rooted issues like conflict, poverty, inequality, we often have people who’ve never personally experienced any of that strife documenting this stuff from a hundred feet away. This field tends to weed out the poor students because of their need for stability and that’s so unfortunate. It’s valuable to promote the people who understand the struggles they’re documenting.

COMMENTARY: Well, this goes to Mr. Winslow's editorialized point about "rich kids" in the field of freelance photojournalism, and she seems to agree with him. Yet, while she sees that " It’s valuable to promote the people who understand the struggles they’re documenting" it's not worthwhile enough to pay them a living wage? Is she suggesting that the only way to understand being poor is if you too are currently poor too? One can only cover a terror attack in Paris if you've been the victim yourself of a terror attack? Where does the poor analogies by Ms. Davis end?

ESTRIN: There are old ways in photography that have died. And it’s very hard to make a living.

COMMENTARY: This is a pandering question - just like there are no more chimney sweeps, as Winslow pointed out in his interview.

DAVIS: In some sense, you’re choosing to be a journalist and/or an artist. And it’s true that those are not necessarily well-paid fields. If you feel drawn to telling stories, in my eyes it’s a worthy trade.

COMMENTARY: There is no honor in living the "starving artist" creedo. In 2007 I wrote (here - http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/2007/01/ready-proud-starving-artist.html ) The Proud Starving Artist. It's not a worthy trade, yet, from all accounts, Ms. Davis has little personal experience in less than well-paid fields, her income is protected (rightly so) by the NY Newspaper Guild.

DAVIS: That said, I’m a single person who’s not trying to raise a family.

COMMENTARY: Yes, the revelation of a severe bias on this entire topic, and one that illustrates she's not able to fully recognize the full state of the field.

DAVIS: I do find the rates that some freelancers have to work for very low and especially for my friends who are committed to working exclusively in journalism and not taking advertising jobs for ethical reasons.

COMMENTARY: Yes, very very low rates. Even the most legendary of photojournalists cannot, and do not, work exclusively in journalism, because it's, to Winslow's point, financially unworkable. Any photojournalist who believes they can afford to turn down an advertising job "for ethical reasons", I believe, either has no bills or is living with a trust fund, and hasn't woken up to the reality of being a photographer, with all the financial challenges Winslow outlined.

DAVIS: I came of age after the so-called golden age of photojournalism. I have a question: What, to you, is the difference between now and then?

ESTRIN: There are fewer editorial assignments, there are far fewer — mostly poor paying — newspaper jobs. It was never an easy field. And documentarians never made money — they’re probably better off now.

COMMENTARY: Estrin gets it right, up to the point where he then says this -

ESTRIN: But, I think in many ways it’s a golden era for photographers now. There used to be a few dozen gatekeepers, editors or curators who decided whether you succeeded or not. Today you can bypass the gatekeepers and publish directly to your own audience. There were a few hundred people, mostly white men, who could make a good living internationally by parachuting into other countries. It wasn’t a very diverse bunch.

COMMENTARY: Yes, lots of photographs, for, as Winslow noted, 1/100th of the price. "Golden" is not a word I would use to describe the state of the field of photojournalism. The average stock photo price back 15 years ago or so was $980, now it's about $1. The rate that a news wire paid for an assignment in 1980 was about $150, now, adjusted for inflation, it's $74.

DAVIS: Yeah, all I can say is let that die. When I was in photojournalism school I had an identity crisis because almost every photographer I admired or we talked about in class was a white man with a head of white hair and a great big beard.

COMMENTARY: Ms. Davis was in photojournalism school 2008 - 2012 or so. If she was only being taught about white men with white hair and beards that were photojournalists, then she can fault her professors for that. The winningist Pulitzer photographer, who won more than anyone else, is a woman, covering conflicts. Sure, she referred to:

DAVIS: Occasionally there was a Caroline Cole or Barbara Davidson but typically women we discussed covered conflicts. It seemed the only way to carve out a path for yourself, as a woman in this field, was to go out into the war zones as if to say, ‘I can do anything a man can do.’ But you should be able to be a woman in photojournalism and tell stories from your unique perspective. You should be published, and you should also be able to do that if you’re black and you live in sub-Saharan Africa. Or if you’re Indian, or if you’re Japanese— your unique perspective is valuable, and it’s to the benefit of us all that it be shared.

COMMENTARY: Off the top of my head there's Guzy, Adarrio, Bruce, Restek, and then there's LePage, who gave her life doing so in 2014, among many others. I'm guessing there are few in sub-Saharan Africa who an afford the $25k in gear Winslow referenced in order to do this job, when the median income there is $742 to $762 per year (measured in 2005 purchasing-power parity-adjusted dollars) according to the Economist (here).

ESTRIN: When I was your age I walked door to door with my portfolio and I was lucky if maybe the secretary would take it, you know, because I didn’t have the connections. And if this small group of people didn’t say, “yes, you can come in,” then you couldn’t come in.
DAVIS: This is why I love the Internet, Jim. The door’s wide open. Lots of people are rushing through, though, so you better be good.

COMMENTARY: This was true for females, males, and minorities, but there are a number of photographers without connections that made it. Quality can win out over connections. Quality, consistency, and dependability are what will give a photographer a good reputation in the industry, you don't need a connection to have these qualifications.

ESTRIN: How old are you now?
DAVIS: Twenty-six.
ESTRIN: I’ve known you for five years.
DAVIS: I know. I’ve been here since I was 21. I’m a product of this newspaper.

COMMENTARY: This, more than anything, illustrates Ms. Davis' lack of standing to comment on the state of the industry of photojournalism.

DAVIS: When I was accepted for the New York Times internship, I was thrilled but I did not expect to get hired here full time. I started here as an intern on the multimedia team which we no longer have. I think “multimedia” is a culture that’s seeped into The New York Times visually across the board. But when I started, there were only a few of us that did photos and videos. And then I was hired into photo. After a year I was moved to video.

COMMENTARY: Malcom Gladwell, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, talks about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs being born and in the right place at the right time (reference - http://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2015/11/09/right-place-right-time/ ) . Davis esentially acknowledges this occurred to her - she was in the right place at the right time and was one of a few people who were doing photos and videos. Kudos to her, but this does not give her perspective the same standing as Mr. Winslows.

ESTRIN:. You can write, you can photograph, you can do video, You can do VR. It’s a little hard though, in truth, to do many things at the same time.
DAVIS: Right, I know what you mean. It’s very hard. This job is supposed to be hard though. The thing I always consider is that I never want the gear or the shooting to get in the way of connecting with that person and thinking through the story. And that’s why it’s good to work on teams. If I had my way I would work with a cinematographer all the time.

COMMENTARY: Estrin is right, you can't "click the shutter" while you are trying to catch good audio, nor can you capture a critical moment with both a still camera and a video camera in each hand.

DAVIS: It’s hard for small newspapers that have photographers go out and shoot and edit a video story and do stills in one day. That’s just too much. And you’re going to get mediocre product across the board.

COMMENTARY: Yet that is often what Ms. Davis' paper asks of so many of it's photographers who freelance for them.

DAVIS: We’re a newspaper with more resources than most people have. And we get more time on stories than most journalists. I realize we are lucky here.

COMMENTARY: this is probably the biggest understatement of this article.

ESTRIN: What do you think are the effects of photography becoming so widespread?
DAVIS: Before pens and paper were accessible people were carving their ideas into stone tablets. I bet when pen and paper came along the writers were skulking around grumpy like, “now everybody thinks they’re a writer.” Well, everybody is a writer. And everybody is a photographer. And there should be no ill will on that matter. If there’s a story that’s happening in the middle of nowhere North Dakota and there’s nobody there to cover it except for John Doe with his iPhone, then thank God for John Doe with his iPhone. In terms of being able to share information and stories, we’re in a great position right now.

COMMENTARY: NO, not everyone is a "writer" or a "photographer". Just because you can write, doesn't make you a writer worthy of the NYT. Ask your editors. And just because you can take a photo doesn't mean the NYT will publish them. There are countless people who fancy themselves writers online, who's only readers are their family members and close friends.

ESTRIN: It’s the democratization of photography.
DAVIS: I do believe all these changes will continue to promote people who traditionally have not been empowered. And I hope that editors will hire with intentionality.

COMMENTARY: The "democratization of photography" isn't necessarily good. While some might suggest that a democratization of an industry (whether it be writing, or photography) is the commonization of that industry away from academics or the priviledged, that is not necessarily good. An academic will distill disparate insights and apply history to their output. And, well, I can't see far enough back in time to a point where "the priviledged" are the journalists and photographers. Yet, as Winslow suggests, that era may be soon arriving.

DAVIS: The best advice I can give to young visual journalists is that things are always going to be changing. Change with them. People are always going to get discouraged. Encourage them. Maybe one day they’ll do the same for you. There are always going to be stories to tell. Maybe right now more than ever before.

COMMENTARY: I've spent the better part of my 28 year career encouraging people to survive and thrive in this industry. I always encourage those I help to "pay it forward." This Q&A, if not unanswered and allowed to stand unchallenged, will do such a great disservice this this industry.

* Correction: A previous version of this article referenced an outdated job position for Marcus Yam, as a freelancer for the New York Times. He currently is on staff at the Los Angeles Times. The post has been updated to reflect this updated position. We can only hope he remains on staff.

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No So Fast. VHT v. Zillow Group Bodes Poorly for Rights Holders

2017-02-14T11:23:00.001-05:00

While some are celebrating an $8.3 million dollar judgement against Zillow affirming they infringed on the copyrights of VHT, this really isn't all that good for rights holders, nor the photographers that produced the images - they will not see a dime.

There were a total of 28,125 images that were alleged to have been infringed, and of those, 19,312 were registered. The defendant even went so far at one point to admit they infringed upwards of 5,000 images, yet the court found that of the 28,125 image that were infringed, 3,373 were willfully infringed, and awarded $1,500 per image (instead of what could or should have been as much as $150,000 per image had it not been a database registration) and of the 15,939 other images that were infringed, the court awarded $200 per infringement, and the actual damages awarded was $2.84 per image. (Yes, two dollars and 84 cents). That equates to $79,875 as the actual damages that Zillow has to pay for what VHT claimed was 28,125 images infringed.

Of the $8.3 million dollars, all the work produced was done as a work-made-for-hire, where the photographers were paid $60.00 to photograph AND MEASURE each home. So, in addition to taking the photographs, they had to do the manual labor of measuring each room of the house as well, all for $60, and they will receive $0.00 because they did not own the copyright nor any rights to the photos.

VHT's actual damages award	28,125	Rate: $2.84	79,875.00
Total actual damages from infringement eligible for statutory damages			54,846.08


Number of Image Infringed Willfully	3,373	Rate: $1,500	5,059,500.00
Number of Image Infringed Innocently	15,939	Rate: $200	3,187,800.00
Number of Images Infringed Neither Willfully nor Innnocently	0

Both sides are expected to appeal this ruling. As an interesting sidebar, this case was heard and decided by the same judge that issued a temporary restraining order halting President Trump's Executive Order on immigration.

(Comments, if any, after the Jump)

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"One Shot" - Behind The Scenes at the Olympics

2017-01-02T08:47:00.003-05:00

In 10 minutes, you get a remarkable insight into all the hard work that goes into covering the Olympics as a professional photographer. Produced by the International Olympic Committee, this video reveals just what goes into covering the Olympics - all the advance work, multiple cameras both hand-held and remotes, and logistics. The video is very matter-of-fact, not really glamorizing the still photographers' job, but also not revealing the back-breaking efforts, long hours, access changes, and commutes to and from the venues.

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Nikon KeyMission 360 - Teardown For Door Removal

2017-01-01T11:01:00.002-05:00

The Nikon KeyMission 360 holds great promise as a tool to create immersive visual experiences. In putting the camera through its' paces, I found that the limitation of the battery, at 1 hour and 10 minutes, created limitations when I needed to place the camera in a remote location where I could not trigger it from afar, or when I wanted to capture longer than the internal battery would allow. In order to capture a longer video, an external battery connected to the camera was needed.

The challenge occurs, when the door of the KeyMission 360 is opened, as it then intrudes into the final stitched video/photo, which is distracting. The solution is to remove the door of the camera.

The tools necessary to accomplish this were fairly simple - a Torx T5 was used for the screws on the protective plastic covers on both sides, and a Phillips #000 was used for the rest of the screws. A Smudger - which is essentially a dull-tipped knife tip that allows you to get in between seams, and fine-tipped tweezers were useful as two of the side covers had plastic click-notches. The tweezer tip got the plastic up over the notch tab, and the smudger helped hold it and lift it smoothly. Here is the partial tear-down of the KeyMission 360 to the point where the door could be easily removed:

Click here to see the full-sized image of the partial tear-down in a new window.

Here is a close-up of the hinge area once the door was removed:

Once the camera is re-assembled without the hinge, a 90-degree left-angled MicroUSB cord allows you to power the camera externally, running the camera while the battery is charging, and lowering the profile and visual interference on longer-duration captures. It goes without saying, that with this door removed, the camera is no-longer waterproof.

(Comments, if any, after the Jump)

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The Failure of Visual China Group

2016-12-14T11:31:00.000-05:00

VCG (blue line) 11/15/16 through 12/14/16, compared to the market composite index (orange line). Source: Bloomberg: VCG

Visual China Group (SHE:VCG), has seen a significant loss in the last month losing far more market value then the general malaise of the Shenzhen overall composite index. This is important because, as VCG goes, so goes Getty Images. The highly regarded Selling Stock report on the turnaround potential of Getty Images concludes "There is almost no chance that Getty will regain any market share in the Midstock or Premium space. I expect revenue overall will continue to decline. The only question is how much, how fast." (link here, 3/26/15.)

"How fast" is becoming more clear now. Visual China Group's opening price on the Chinese stock market at ¥9.00 ($1.30USD) on February 3rd 2013 was met with a one-third loss by the close of trading that same day to ¥6.00 ($0.87USD) (Historical: SHE:000681, 2/8/2013) . On June 5, 2015 it enjoyed it's peak valuation at ¥65.87 ($9.54USD) and then plummeted along with the rest of the Shenzhen Stock Market, with CNN reporting (here) that the bubble burst with a 13% plunge in recent days, and by July 2015 the market had slightly stabilized (CNN here) , but VCG had dropped to just ¥25.00 ($3.62USD) or roughly a two-thirds loss since it's peak a month prior.

vCG's last peak of ¥40.69 was on December 31st of 2015, just a year ago, but as investors digested the January 22, 2016 news of VCG acquiring Corbis, the stock had dropped to ¥23.50 by late January, peaking briefly in late february to ¥31.28, and it's been downhill ever since then, just 6 days later it dropped back down to ¥24.18 on 2/29/16. In the last month, VCG has dropped to a low of ¥19.13 as of the market close today, 12/14/16, over a 50% loss of value since December 2015, where the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Composite Index has shown a loss of approximately 12%. (Bloomberg - here ), so while the overall market recovered from the June 2015 bubble bursting somewhat, VCG has continued to falter, and falter significantly, further, and faster.

The Selling Stock analysis continued "While the demand for photography may be growing (Getty’s numbers certainly don’t show it) prices customers are willing to pay for photos and illustrations are declining more rapidly. The net result is that gross revenue generated by the industry is probably growing at a rate no greater then 5%. "

VCG acquired Corbis from Bill Gates in January 2016, and announced a $100 million USD investment in Getty Images in February, amidst it's February 2016 peak, and then plummet. In February, VCG had a market value of $2.5 billion, this in contrast to the August 15, 2012 report in Fortune Magazine (here) which reported that The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ:CG) had acquired Getty Images for $3.3 billion). Clearly, VCG is seeing it's own valuation plummet as many of it's properties are failing. Certainly The Carlyle Group, which was around $25USD at the acquisition in 2012, is hovering around $15USD today, or a 40% decline since then.

Just 10 months ago, we opined here "For those in the financial services sector, it's just one more business to watch the numbers on. For those in the trenches of the industry Getty serves, Getty Images is dying a slow and agonizingly painful self-inflicted death. It's like the shrewd investor analyst who actually goes to the farms in Kansas and sees first-hand the crops with lower yields, and gets out while they still can." Since then, VCG has dropped approximately 61%. As we further opined, "Getty Images is near that point where the ships' hull is about to break apart, just like the Titanic. Many with knowledge of this industry know just how low the metaphorical visual "crop yields" are...". To quote the old Verizon commercial, "Can you hear me now?"

(Comments, if any, after the Jump)

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The Farce of Creative Commons

2016-09-20T10:19:00.004-04:00

Creative Commons is a well intentioned idea gone bad, and finally their existence will be put to the test, in a lawsuit brought that challenges the notion of what is "commercial" versus "noncommercial" use of an image.

Ars Technica reports, in "Creative Commons licenses under scrutiny—what does “noncommercial” mean?" (here, 9/18/16) that an educational company, Great Minds, is suing FedEx because their company (in the form of the former Kinkos that makes photo copies) is charging money for photocopies of this material. The basics are that "print shops, like FedEx, negotiate a license and pay a royalty to Great Minds if they wish to reproduce the Materials for commercial purposes—i.e., their own profit—at the request of their customers."

Now, it would be one thing if FedEx had binders of the material in one corner of their stores and that if a customer took the binder to the front desk and paid just for the photocopies, you might be able to skirt the issue here, but that doesn't seem to be the issue. FedEx needs to be paid for things to be photocopied, so why not have things worth printing/photocopying available for free? but the question becomes one of defining "commercial" versus non-commercial.

(Continued after the Jump)

Commercial use is not easily defined. Selling a t-shirt with an image/graphic on it. Making a print and selling the print. Using the photograph in an ad for an organization.But what about Using an image in a blog? Using an image in social media?

Frankly, all of the above could be argued either way by a skilled attorney.

The Creative Commons wiki notes (here) NonCommercial turns on the use, not the identity of the re-user. So a high school student and a multi-national corporation like Nike are equal. The definition of NonCommercial depends on the primary purpose for which the work is used, not on the category or class of reuser. So if Nike was printing t-shirts with a CC-licensed image/graphic on it, provided they were not charging a fee for the t-shirt and giving it away for free , it could be considered non-commercial. But there would be significant value in Nike doing this - they give away t-shirts all the time because people become walking billboards for their brand, so there is a commercial value to them doing so, even if the shirt is given away for free.

What about a cc-licensed photo of a skateboarder doing a trick? It could be printed and handed out for free at skate parks as the skateboarder, sponsored by Nike, goes on a tour promoting Nike as cool and hip. It's a free print, but there is value to the skateboarder and Nike in doing this. How about a frame shop giving away free prints to people who pay the frame shop to frame the photograph? It's clear the print is free, but the frame shop makes a good profit from all the framing they sell.

In the above examples, the CC element notes "“NonCommercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation.”"

Here the "commercial advantage" element could easily apply. Consider this case - using photos on a blog - but does the blog sell ad space? Even so, does the blog owner earn money from writing the blog post that the photo is used in, or gain notoriety they exploit elsewhere for compensation? In these cases, the "primarily" applies, but still, it's a commercial use.

Even if the blog post were for a non-profit dedicated to eradicating a disease or the suffering of others, it's still possibly commercial. Someone is going to monetarily benefit. Consider the charity that promotes the inclusion of cancer medications for children in various insurance plans - seems like an altruistic thing to do, as many children are dying from cancers because medication can't be prescribed to them like they are for adults. Yet, when you find out that the organization funding the efforts to make this happen are the pharmaceutical companies that stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars because now insurance must cover their brands of medication, is it commercial now?

What about social media? If a brand is instagramming images out and the feed is free, is there commercial advantage? Sure - the person doing the posting/curating of the images being posted is getting paid and doesn't have to commission artists to create content nor to license them from rights-managed libraries, and instead can just mine the millions of CC images from Flickr. They are getting paid to curate, and the Instagram feed is benefiting from being a cool/cutting-edge organization that then can intersperse advertising in other posts adjacent to that, or after building a critical mass of followers from CC content, switch to paid content/advertising.

I think most people would agree that non-commercial comes into play when a high school or college student does a paper with a photo in it that is CC, but beyond that, most any argument could be made that a use is commercial.

It will only take a few litigation cases and after a few years insurers who underwrite liability will begin excluding copyright claims on creative commons licensing protections, and this will shut down corporate use of creative commons materials across the board. When edicts come down from the legal department that no departments can use creative commons material, companies will stop relying on them in place of material the company pays to produce.

Creative Commons had the chance to define non-commercial use when they first started out. They surveyed stakeholders around the country over a period of months. The decided against defining that term.

So beware, photographers who use a creative commons non-commercial license are placing their copyright and their work at risk, and are devaluing their work by forfeiting the right to ever issue an exclusive license to any client.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

Getty Images v. Walter A. Kowalczuk

2016-06-10T17:04:00.000-04:00

Getty Images today notified contributors that on June 8th, 2016 it filed a lawsuit against Walter A. Kowalczuk because they allege he "downloaded thousands of images without authorization from Getty Images and profited from those downloads. In addition, Getty Images believes that Mr. Kowalczuk was not acting alone, and the company is actively pursuing other possible infringers."

Getty Images has been the subject of many criticisms online for their aggressive handling of copyright infringement claims, and just two days ago Geekwire published "Getty Images rights claim against Seattle startup raises ‘phishing scam’ concerns", however, the article notes that the infringer (Aaron Bird) in this case "...will end up paying the settlement fee..."because, well, he infringed. Bird's concern centered around the question of a phishing scam and not whether or not he actually infringed on the work.

It is obvious that, with a reported 80,000,000 images in their archives, even a one-tenth-of-one-percent (.01%) number of infringements in a year that's still 8,000 copyright infringement cases. As such there has to be a system to handle that many infringements. In 2013, in an effort to resolve what was likely massive infringement issues with Pinterest, Getty entered a deal with Pinterest, which PBN reported on here - Deception? Getty Images & The Pinterest Deal (12/13/13) and again PBN reported here - Monetizing Getty's 35M Image Archive via FREE Editorial Uses - about Getty offering a solution to reduce infringements through free use of the work they represent. While PBN wrote critically about both undertakings, and questions remain about the success of each, the question remains as to whether or not Getty Images contributors are receiving a portion of the revenue from these efforts, however, Getty is trying to find ways to reduce infringement and monetize the content they represent.

Getty Images should continue to aggressively pursue any theft of the intellectual property that they own wholly, or which they are charged with protecting on behalf of their contributors.

The Getty 2011 Contributor Agreement specifies:

1.11 Right to Control Claims. Getty Images shall have the right to determine, using its best commercial judgment, whether and to what extent to proceed against any third party for any unauthorized use of Accepted Content. You authorize Getty Images and Distributors at their expense the exclusive right to make, control, settle and defend any claims related to infringement of copyright in the Accepted Content and any associated intellectual property rights (“Claims”). You agree to provide reasonable cooperation to Getty Images and Distributors and not to unreasonably withhold or delay your cooperation in these Claims. Getty Images will not enter into any settlement that will compromise your ownership of the copyright in Accepted Content or that prohibits your future conduct with respect to Accepted Content without your prior written consent. Getty Images will pay you Royalties on any settlements it receives from Claims. If Getty Images elects not to pursue a Claim, you will have the right to pursue it.

Infringers don't like getting caught stealing, and so many claim innocence or ignorance, or attempt to fall back on a faulty fair-use claim. When those don't work, they begin to try to characterize Getty's efforts - wrongfully - as "extortion". "The Art Law Journal" is a blog that is masquerading as a storied institution of art law journalism, but is nothing more than a facade - a week attempt by it's parent company, Orangenius, to appear to be supportive of creators and their rights. Their article "How to Respond to a Getty Images Extortion Letter" includes the characterization that Getty "has created an entire business around sending letters to suspected copyright infringers and demanding exorbitant payments in return for not being dues [sic]." What Getty's business is built around, is the lawful licensing of intellectual property, so the author is flawed in his characterization of Getty's "entire business". The author offers the defense of his writings by noting of his tips on how to respond to Getty "This response letter is not designed to alleviate anyone’s responsibility if they are infringing on Getty Images copyrights." It's pretty clear, if you downloaded an image and did not obtain permission to use the image in a non-fair-use situation and you did not pay a fee for said use, you're infringing.

In August of 2009, PBN published a post titled Obama Image Copyright Infringement Issues where Getty was also pursing the infringer of works Getty was representing.

The case is not currently listed in the online records database, which can sometimes take several days to update. When it does, we will update the story with the case number and formal "plaintiff v. defendant" title.

(entire statement after the jump)

Statement from Getty Images regarding the Kowalczuk case

As you know, we take copyright infringement and the protection of your rights very seriously and work hard to ensure that your work is properly licensed. Getty Images is continually pursuing a high number of copyright infringements, usually with the aim of turning individual infringers into customers.

However, we want to let you know about an unusually serious and organized infringement case which you may see reported by the press [as it is in the public domain].

Getty Images has taken action against a serious copyright infringer who was discovered to have improperly accessed, downloaded and distributed Getty Images content through social media.

In early March 2016, Getty Images received a report from one of its customers alerting us to suspected copyright infringements that were taking place via a private group hosted on Facebook.

The ensuing investigation revealed the Facebook group was being used by some members as a forum for unlawfully trading and/or selling sports photographic imagery owned by or exclusively licensed to Getty Images. As alleged in the lawsuit filed on June 8th 2016, defendant Walter A. Kowalczuk was an active member of this forum and used it to offer for sale, high resolution Getty Images images, and images belonging to other photo companies, for as little as $0.75 per image, using code names to hide the true source of content and to conceal his unauthorized sales.

While Getty Images’ investigation thus far has revealed significant infringement, it believes that further investigation will reveal that Mr. Kowalczuk downloaded thousands of images without authorization from Getty Images and profited from those downloads. In addition, Getty Images believes that Mr. Kowalczuk was not acting alone, and the company is actively pursuing other possible infringers. Getty Images filed a complaint against Mr. Kowalczuk for copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and other claims. That complaint was filed in the United States District Court in Cleveland, Ohio.

Getty Images strongly supports a robust and fair industry that recognizes and remunerates our contributors whose expertise, time and livelihood is adversely affected by copyright infringements such as those incurred by Mr. Kowalczuk.

We intend to hold Mr. Kowalczuk and any others involved in this illegal marketplace accountable for their infringements.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

500px, ImageBrief - The Crowdsourcing Scoundrels of The Internet

2016-05-28T14:42:00.002-04:00

What camera slinging aspiring pro photographer wouldn't want to be a part of a "Photo Quest" these days? A "quest" conjures up Indiana Jones-esque expeditions for the perfect picture - explorers searching for just the right photo to satisfy the "photo gods of exposure." Who could be so ignorant or desperate? Apparently quite a few, like the natives worshipping a false sun god because of a solar eclipse. Some 840 clueless photographers submitted 6,000 images for the chance at winning the "great honor" of having their creative work product commercially exploited along with 50 others whose work was selected for a FOR PROFIT Lonely Planet book, according to MobileMarketingDaily - "500px Launches Photo Quests, Allows Brands To Crowdsource Original Content" (5/23/16).

We've written extensively here at Photo Business News about the seriously flawed "SPEC" business model, yet, these models continue to proliferate, counting on photographers (pro and amateur alike) to line up like lemmings and mindlessly follow each other over the cliff of unsustainability. In February of 2015 we wrote "ImageBrief: A scourge on the photographic industry" yet photographers continue to ask questions in various photography forums. Advertising agencies and design firms are using predatory content resellers like Image Brief to source free ideas and content for their pitches, before they even are awarded the projects. One photographer on the STOCKPHOTO listserv reported watching 50 different briefs and none of them were awarded. According to that same poster, Image Brief is now charging photographers to make a submission for the "privilege" of consideration.

Photographers following these models are destined for failure or otherwise are ignorant to the realities of being in business. According to the MobileMarketDaily article, "...it allows photographers a chance to have exposure on a much larger scale than they may readily have access to." What is especially troubling is that the article cites Canon as one of the brands that has run a "Photo Quest", and had thousands of submissions.

(Continued after the Jump)

Jim Pickerell, over at Selling Stock (subscription required) reported back in April "Drastic Royalty Cuts Change Photogs View Of 500px" reports that photographers are now only getting a 30% royalty on licensing of non-exclusive images. Consider the concept of "agents" in other businesses, like actors, book agents, and musicians, for example. Their commissions hover around 20%. The idea that organizations like these can take 70% (or more) and leave the creating artist with a pittance, is just abhorrent. Especially when you're one of several participating in the "quest" and standing a one-in-many chance of winning the gross, and then having to take a pittance of income as your paltry percentage.

Less than a year ago, Visual China Group led a $13,000,000 round of funding (source) and Visual China Group is most recently known for acquiring the assets of Corbis Images and then folding them into their other investment - Getty Images, as we reported here (Corbis Sale to Unity Glory (and Getty)). This money must be being used to buy servers and hard drives for all the hopeful photographers, as well as the overpaid sales agents - Glassdoor reports (here) that a Product Marketing Manager earns over $80,000. How is that reasonable at a company which has, according to LinkedIn "51-200" employees and Glassdoor currently has 18 job openings? It seems everybody is earning a very nice living on the backs of the starving-artist photographer.

These organizations will eventually find that the crowdsourcing/"Photo Quest"/ImageBrief model is not a viable solution, but by then the hopes and dreams of photographers will have even been further dashed, and content consumers like ad agencies and design firms will be further down the line of devaluing photography.

500px is apparently intent upon flushing the photography business down the toilet while reaping profits from their deals with large corporations seeking content and ideas for pennies on the dollar, if not free.

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

Getty Images Gets Infusion of Cash from China

2016-02-18T10:59:00.002-05:00

Getty images is getting "up to $100 million" according to Reuters (here) from Visual China Group, which might seem like a lot, but, in review, is really not. In 2015, Bloomberg Business reported on Getty's cash situation, in "Getty Images is Running Tight on Cash" (2/25/15).

What was reported was that, in the last quarter of 2014, Getty "depleted a third of its cash during the last three months of 2014, leaving it with $27 million...". That meant that Getty had $41M, or is burning through about $4.5Million a month. This may well not include payment in a $2.6 billion debt service. However, a $100 million investment amounts to just 3.8% of the $2.6 billion that Getty is in debt, and there is no sign that the blood-letting is coagulating. Getty already received $100 million in November 2015 ("Distressed-Debt Lenders Aid Getty Images in Battle Against Shutterstock", 11/5/15) from distressed debt lenders known to prey on troubled companies.

Carlyle Group LP (NASDAQ: CG) previously used a leveraged buyout scheme to acquire Getty, so when Carlyle bought Getty for $3.3 billion in October of 2012, they saddled Getty Images with $2.8 billion of that debt, making Carlyle's actual disbursement at most just $500 million. Even so, With Visual China making this investment, it seems it is doing so to further their past investments in Getty after their Corbis acquisition. Carlyle is down in early trading 1.44%, with a loss of 42.41% on a single-year return and an 8.26% YTD return. Surely, Carlyle would like nothing more than to cut their underperforming assets, but with an albatross like Getty Images on it's books, it's no wonder The Street is reporting (here):

"TheStreet Ratings rates Carlyle Group L P as a sell. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, disappointing return on equity, generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself and feeble growth in its earnings per share."

For those in the financial services sector, it's just one more business to watch the numbers on. For those in the trenches of the industry Getty serves, Getty Images is dying a slow and agonizingly painful self-inflicted death. It's like the shrewd investor analyst who actually goes to the farms in Kansas and sees first-hand the crops with lower yields, and gets out while they still can. Getty Images is near that point where the ships' hull is about to break apart, just like the Titanic. Many with knowledge of this industry know just how low the metaphorical visual "crop yields" are, and just how underperforming Getty Images is to the Carlyle portfolio.

(Comments, if any, after the Jump)

Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.

Photo Business News & Forum

Three Classes of Photographer: What Getty's Bankruptcy Means for Staff, Assignment Shooters and Contributors

Class one: the staff

Class two: the assignment freelancer

Class three: the contributor

Who gets the better deal, and who gets the shaft

Two classes of photographer. Really, four.

What to do, by class, in the next sixty days

The Long Squeeze: Getty Images (NYSE: GETY), 1991–2026

How three decades of leverage turned the world's largest picture library into a bankruptcy case — and what it cost the people holding the cameras

(Continued after the Jump)Please post your comments by clicking the link below.

Before Getty: the fifty-fifty era

1991–1997: two companies with opposite theories

1996–1998: the public company is born in the teens

1998–2005: the run to $94.37

2006: buying the thing that was killing you

2005–2008: the first collapse and the $34 exit

2008–2012: Hellman & Friedman, and the dividend machine starts

2012–2018: Carlyle loses, and photographers pay for it

2021–2022: Unsplash, the SPAC, and $33.93

2022–2026: AI, a failed merger, and a halted ticker

The ledger: who profited and who lost

What happens now

For contributors with money in the pipeline

The library

What to take from this

'No More Copyright Protection For Anyone': Author David Baldacci Rips Bi...

Troubling Attitudes at Nikon Professional Services

Sony FX6 Monitor Solution - Two Monitors Setup

Tethering Your Sony a7 III (A73) - WHAT WE USE

The FITT360 360° Wearable Virtual Reality Camera - Unboxing and Testing

US Copyright Office - Step-By-Step for a Group of Published Photographs

US Copyright Office - Step-By-Step for a Group of Unpublished Photographs

Termination of ImageBrief Services

Significant Changes at The US Copyright Office

Take Action Now – Copyright Simplified

PPA and Copyright - Trust a Champion

Binded - Unwanted S&M For Artists & Creatives

$1.2M Copyright Claim Awarded for Infringement of Photos

Letting Freelancers Screw Themselves: CONDÉ NAST(Y) Edition

NYT's Leslye Davis And Her Alternative Facts about Photojournalism's Future

No So Fast. VHT v. Zillow Group Bodes Poorly for Rights Holders

"One Shot" - Behind The Scenes at the Olympics

Nikon KeyMission 360 - Teardown For Door Removal

The Failure of Visual China Group

The Farce of Creative Commons

Getty Images v. Walter A. Kowalczuk

500px, ImageBrief - The Crowdsourcing Scoundrels of The Internet

Getty Images Gets Infusion of Cash from China

(Continued after the Jump)

Please post your comments by clicking the link below.