Crowd-Sourcing

[JayB]

Wired Article

 

"Claudia Menashe needed pictures of sick people. A project director at the National Health Museum in Washington, DC, Menashe was putting together a series of interactive kiosks devoted to potential pandemics like the avian flu. An exhibition designer had created a plan for the kiosk itself, but now Menashe was looking for images to accompany the text. Rather than hire a photographer to take shots of people suffering from the flu, Menashe decided to use preexisting images – stock photography, as it’s known in the publishing industry.

 

In October 2004, she ran across a stock photo collection by Mark Harmel, a freelance photographer living in Manhattan Beach, California. Harmel, whose wife is a doctor, specializes in images related to the health care industry. “Claudia wanted people sneezing, getting immunized, that sort of thing,” recalls Harmel, a slight, soft-spoken 52-year-old.

 

The National Health Museum has grand plans to occupy a spot on the National Mall in Washington by 2012, but for now it’s a fledgling institution with little money. “They were on a tight budget, so I charged them my nonprofit rate,” says Harmel, who works out of a cozy but crowded office in the back of the house he shares with his wife and stepson. He offered the museum a generous discount: $100 to $150 per photograph. “That’s about half of what a corporate client would pay,” he says. Menashe was interested in about four shots, so for Harmel, this could be a sale worth $600.

 

After several weeks of back-and-forth, Menashe emailed Harmel to say that, regretfully, the deal was off. “I discovered a stock photo site called iStockphoto,” she wrote, “which has images at very affordable prices.” That was an understatement. The same day, Menashe licensed 56 pictures through iStockphoto – for about $1 each.

 

iStockphoto, which grew out of a free image-sharing exchange used by a group of graphic designers, had undercut Harmel by more than 99 percent. How? By creating a marketplace for the work of amateur photographers – homemakers, students, engineers, dancers. There are now about 22,000 contributors to the site, which charges between $1 and $5 per basic image. (Very large, high-resolution pictures can cost up to $40.) Unlike professionals, iStockers don’t need to clear $130,000 a year from their photos just to break even; an extra $130 does just fine. “I negotiate my rate all the time,” Harmel says. “But how can I compete with a dollar?”"

 

 

Anyone ever use one of the sites in the article to license their photos?

[layton]

fuck you. couldn't you have summed it up with a link and a question? jesus

[jordop]

Anybody with an 8 megapixel camera and a 2Gig card can take 2000 photos of the same thing with every single setting mode on the camera and one of them will by chance turn out really good

[JayB]

fuck you. couldn't you have summed it up with a link and a question? jesus

 

I live to cripple your mind with screens full of text.

 

The article is actually pretty interesting - you should read the whole thing.

 

I also thought that the hordes of decent amateur photographers who frequent this site might be interested in submitting some of their stuff to one of these sites. Even if you only make $5 a year, that's something. Better than languishing in the dark-recesses of your hard drive for all of eternity.

[cj001f]

Anybody with an 8 megapixel camera and a 2Gig card can take 2000 photos of the same thing with every single setting mode on the camera and one of them will by chance turn out really good

 

Do I sense a bitter professional? You are somewhat correct - and the cost of each image produced is ~$0, excluding labor.

 

Getty bought iStockphoto, they sense $$$

[J_Kirby]

Getty bought iStockphoto, they sense $$$

 

And why shouldn't they? It's the Wal-Mart of stock photography.

[foraker]

Photography is a fiendishly difficult arena to make money in, and this was true even before Internet stock photo sites. This is even more true in landscape/nature photography. I was talking to Joe FamousPhotographer once and he was detailing how difficult it was for him even having name recoginition and several books out. He said only about a handful of his colleagues were making decent money at it. This is why most photographers end up doing product photography or weddings. Yes, you could probably make some money at stock photography, but you need to have at least several thousand pictures out there, of good quality, to generate any decent income. Your average person isn't likely to see enough money out of it to make it worthwhile.

[JayB]

I thought one of the most interesting parts of the story was the one about the guy with the EE/particle physics background, who makes his living designing HVAC systems in Ontario, logging onto an istockphoto-esque site for technical problems, and getting $25K when he solved an applied chem problem that Proctor and Gamble's many thousands of R&D folks couldn't crack.

[foraker]

I liked how the InnoCentive site has a cross-link to 'buy lab equipment on e-Bay'....

[G-spotter]

how long till pr0n is all stock photos? or is it already? layton can you comment?