Getty strike again...

The British Journal of Photography has just run a very interesting story

Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringement » British...

bjp-online.com

The controversial move is set to draw professional photographers’ ire at a time when the stock photography market is marred by low prices and under...

I have to say that I certainly had not seen this coming. The difficulty for everyone else (photographers that is) who are not the corporate Getty (and I include their editorial supplier photographers) is it will have an almost immediate effect on every other supplier of editorial ‘smudgery’ (Smudger - Fleet Street slang for Photographer). Not so much a race to the bottom, but the floor simply vanishing under our feet...

The effect of this move by Getty could be to remove an entire market (editorial stock photography). One understands the basics of taking over a market by reducing the cost – indeed there have been many famous exponents, but even ‘Walmart’ don’t actually give it all away.

The consequence may well be that theft of images by companies will actually increase even though there is now a vast source of free imagery available legitimately.  Many ' bloggers' and other users of the internet have been working on the basis that everything is free on the Internet, something that up until now Getty appear to have been agreement with professional creators; that 'free' is an incorrect interpretation of what the Internet really is. Now Getty have given into this abandonment of the International Copyright law, and sanction wholesale use of their work. Good for Getty – in that this is a data mining exercise, but no so good for those individual creators relying on the Getty payments every month; payments that most if not all Getty freelance photographers have seen decrease by a huge percentage in recent years.  

For everyone else (photo creators, suppliers and aggregators)  this is going to have an (adverse)effect. Will internet content users recognise that this is simply a Getty initiative or that this move simply vindicate what they have wanted to believe all along (everything on the net is free); with the consequence that other creators will find that their work is further stolen and used without permission, infringers pointing to Getty as their motivation. Will would-be infringers realise that the copyright laws have not actually changed?

Getty has believed in its market domination for many years, and we have seen them buy-out many of the agencies (inc Tony Stone, Allsport and many more), that were of very high quality, and had become household names. This latest move simply builds upon this, and is a calculated  to undermine the smaller creators and suppliers for whom the Getty buy-out is not an option.

It will potentially make it more difficult for creators who must sell licences. This is a deliberate attempt to annihilate the current market, and create a new Getty centric one.

But, there could be a positive effect. This move *should* make specialist creator controlled collections even more valuable, and therefore more important that each of us (individual creators) chase up every theft. Copyright law is on our side thankfully. It is going to be difficult, but we have to stand firm against Getty queering our pitch.

Interesting that fellow creators in the music industry whilst they have found sales of discs and CDs etc. fall, they have managed to take control of the copyright situation on the internet and with on-line sales through access ports such as 'I-tunes'. Instead of giving up and letting the theft of music tracks on-line go unchecked they have come up with new revenue streams that make theft less attractive and on-line paid access actually desirable for the consumer and user. If only we could do this in the image industry instead of the big aggregators constantly undercutting each other to the advantage of no one and at the direct cost to the creator. 

It is of course a carefully planned move by the image giant. From its very inception the Getty Juggernaut has been all about domination of the image market. This latest move is all about data mining.

By supplying markets which are not great revenue generators  (for Getty) with freebies they will be ensuring that each image leads directly back to Getty.

"......since all the images are served by Getty Images, we’ll have access to the information on who and how that image is being used and viewed, and we’ll reserve the right to utilise that data to the benefit of our business.”

So these free pictures will put Getty all over the Internet. Very clever for the company that can afford to do it, and do it at the expense of all other suppliers in the photo marketplace.

The flip side of this for independent photographic creators could be that independent specialist collection *should* become more valuable if managed properly. The issue now is how the other agencies will respond.

  Getty is looking for comprehensive data mining and data utilisation. If other agencies simply follow Getty in a knee-jerk like manner without the accompanying data analysis approach then they and their suppliers (us) will lose out big time. Geek led Alamy and Corbis will be ones to watch...

Jessops what are you doing?

When I was a wee bairn still at school and first getting the photography bug, there were three Photographic dealers that I used, and gave all my pennies to. There was a local dealer in Ruislip where I lived with my parents, Euro Foto Centre a large warehouse type concern in Cowley/Uxbridge, North West London, and Jessops of Leicester.

The local dealer, like most others, has gone to the wall, Euro Foto Centre, has metamorphosed into a carpet warehouse (apparently), of the three, only Jessops still exists, but for how much longer?

Ever since the private equity firm ABN Amro Capital bought Jessops for £116m in 2002, the camera superstore chain seems to have lost its way. And if the reports from the British Journal of photography and Amateur Photographer are to be believed, has become totally baffled in the process.

81 shops were closed (out of 315) in 2007, after the business declared a thumping loss of £8.5 Million. The big flagship Leicester store closed last year, much to everyone’s surprise, and since then things just haven’t improved, with the announcement recently that sales for the 14 weeks to 5 January were down 5.6%. Not just that but as Retail Week published on Feb 6th, the losses were up to £19.1 Million from £9.3 Million the previous year.

Jessops is now on a thinly disguised dash to get cash.

So what went wrong?

Whilst Jessops were a family firm, (from 1935 –1996), the business was always getting better and held in high regard. It was a business run by people who believed in what they did and the staff had a passion for their work. After the management buyout in 1996 with more stores being bought, it might be felt by many that the firm started to lose its focus.

After the ABN buyout, all pretence that Jessops was your local camera store, or the experts in Leicester ceased. The focus on the business stopped being service, but became just about the money.

For more than fifty years, Jessops provided a service for the amateur photographer, and indeed 'Amateur Photographer' readers were the company's natural clients. In the 21st Century the business seems to have lost sight of its natural client base – keen amateur photographers. Like many involved in photography, Jessops seem to have been put well off their stride by the digital age. Let’s face it, it didn’t just happen overnight, it crept up stealthily upon us all during the nineties, and by 2002 digital was just here. But what has digital changed? Well to be honest not a lot. The cameras all function much the same way – an EOS 5MKII is very similar to an EOS 1 of 1990 vintage. The lenses too – much the same. We have professional kit, and serious amateur kit, high functioning compacts, and happy snaps – much the same as Frank Jessops dealt with back in 1935.

The only change is in the processing. The mystique of the darkroom has changed for the joy of the computer :-)

Had the business evolved along with the equipment it was trying to sell, one can only imagine that Jessops would have at least maintained its strong easily identifiable client base. As the equipment changed, as the processing changed, the amateur photographer, keen, as ever to keep up with the latest piece of kit, needed new toys. Along with new paraphernalia the amateur photographic spender also needed advice, help and tuition (and still does). Jessops simply failed to fill this gap.

With Jessops failing to provide expertise, and instead concentrating on making price its unique selling point, even with the 315 shops acquired by 2007, the business did not have the buying power to be able to compete with the likes of Boots, Tesco, Sainsburys, all of whom had identified the gains to be made in the low end of the digital photographic market. Clearly, none of these outlets had the digital expertise either, but with this missing from Jessops, there was no longer any attraction in the ailing giant. If you need a cheap camera and just want it cheap, why go to Jessops?

With the business obviously being in trouble for more then two years, (presumably the signs have been there longer if one had been a Jessops Director), it is surprising that the business seems to have been doing nothing to recapture its natural client base.

Jessops sends me e-mails every week, as I am sure it does to hundreds of thousands of potential clients, but with the same lame offers. A SanDisc Ultra II SDHC card, at a cut price, wonderful, until you check the details and find that everyone else is selling SanDisc III units much faster, much better, and much the same price. Canon 450D camera and 18-55 lens for £529 - £468 from Warehouse Express, £469 from Argos, so not even the cheapest then.

So why should an amateur photographer buy from Jessops?

Nope, I can’t think of a reason either…

Now, if I wanted to run a successful camera store, I would find out what the chaps (and Chapettes) at local camera clubs were doing. What Amateur Photographer readers are interested in? I would be catering for their needs. Putting on seminars, going to the clubs, providing education in digital imaging (by experts not shop assistants). Having camera club nights where local clubs could come in (on an invite only basis) and get advice and kit (how about a 10% discount on club nights), have some professional photographers on hand to answer questions.

Printing experts who can talk knowledgeably, but not ‘down’ to the customer. Staff whose motivation is not just making the sale but making the customer happy. Happy customers come back, and keen amateur photographers generally buy a lot of kit, and with digital imaging, that gives a dealership a lot of scope.

What is the point of selling a keen photographer a decent camera and telling him/her to go elsewhere to buy his/her computer, and his/her software, and to find out how to use his/her new toys? It isn’t rocket science, and it will work, but to succeed it will require a lot of effort and a huge change in the company’s way of dealing with photographers.

© 2009 Pete Jenkins

Alamy warn contributors!

The Alamy portal, means by which some 15, 000 or so photographers make available their work to potential clients, has finally put its foot down on contributors who continually fail to meet the specifications Alamy has set.

Some contributors don’t have the equipment, or the knowledge or the ability to pass QC, or simply do not understand the requirements.

Other contributors are frustrated because Alamy's standards appear arbitrary and seem to have no relationship with actual picture quality or the production of a saleable image.

Many photographers who have spent their careers producing images to be used by the national or regional press are simply lost when instead of basic news pictures they are being asked to produce images that will fulfil the requirements of a glossy magazine double page spread, and then see their images being used by newspapers, often at less than a ¼ page and for agency rates anyway.

Some photographers have lost sight of the fact that Alamy is a successful business, and despite the contrariness of their requirements, and the refusal to accept clearly saleable images, because they do not reach an arbitrary ideal, Alamy does work. It makes many photographers who play the Alamy game a significant contribution to their income. Nobody forces photographers to contribute. No one has a gun to his or her head. It’s Alamy’s rules, Alamys pitch, Alamy’s ball, and Alamy’s game. Photographers either play the game and take a slice of the pie, or they don’t!

Serious Professionals will use Alamy for some of their editorial work, and (probably) put their specialist work with more appropriate agencies, whether they are news, music, gardening or whatever.

I asked Alan Capel, Alamy’s Head of Content how bad it was and he said:


“It's not an epidemic and we genuinely want people to get it right but some are just wasting everyone's' time including their own.”


And how many rejections Alamy were getting:


“Rejection rate wise. It fluctuates around the 20 - 25% of images level, so we do pass more than we fail. Number of submissions again fluctuates between 400-600 a day”





© 2009 Pete Jenkins