Getty Images

[cikaziva]

I have just be invited by flicker editor to join getty www.gettyimages.com registration was relatively easy aside a lot of Tax questions... long story short there is a real pain with model and property releases. they dont accept personal forms so i need to chase all the people and get them to sign form that Getty prefers. on top of that i need to obtain one release for every image by the same model so lets say i have a model that i have in more of 30 shots, well i need 30 different papers... now going back several years its a lot of paper work! also it will be additional cost to me because i will have to pay lunches and spend a lot of time meeting models that i didnt see in years. my question is is it worth? did anyone dealts wit GettyImages before? what i cant find some sort of tariff, some price range to see if its worth of trouble or not. i have several friends who are making good money on similar sites like iStock and Stocksy but most of them are shooting things not people and no one can give me advice about this guys.
any help would be much appreciated
thanks

[ScottPhotoCo]

Dakotah speaks truth.

Tim
www.ScottPhoto.co

[vinny]

Avoid getty.

[Robert Skeoch]

I shot for Getty for years. First when Major League Baseball rolled into digital and Getty picked up the rights to the files. Then the same thing happened with NFL Images (first they went to Wireimage and then Getty). So my images are specific people, in uniform, in game action. I make about $100 a year off the images now. It was good for a few years, 10 years ago but stock is over. I shot for Major League Baseball for 17 years.
You'll get your statements and you'll see sales for $3-4 sometimes less. Sometimes I keep my statements to show people when I do talks.

Eventually I switched my more current work to the Canadian Press, which is connected with the AP stock files. Again it is specific people, mostly NHL images. I did $100ish a month with them when the files were current but since I haven't shot NHL for three years the sales have dropped down to about $10-$12 a month.

Both groups asked me if I would digitalize the NFL/MLB/NHL files I have that are still Kodachrome. I figured it would take 6-8 months to do all the files and result in a few hundred dollars worth of sale lifetime. So I passed.

Your mileage my differ.

-Rob Skeoch

[Kirk Gittings]

The evil empire.....

[Kodachrome25]

i have several friends who are making good money on similar sites like iStock and Stocksy but most of them are shooting things not people and no one can give me advice about this guys.

I rep my own stock and have for years. I was approached by Getty over 12 years ago three times in two years to join because frankly I had stuff they needed and I was taking a lot of high dollar local sales away from them. I declined.

I *highly* doubt your friends are really making any money off of these so called agencies and iStock is owned by Getty by the way, Flickr by Yahoo who is also big on seeing copyright go away.

The more images that crooks like Getty lock up in their collections, the less competition from innovative self repping individuals they have to deal with.....seriously. They do NOT in any way care about you or your work, they only care about amassing content in order to both broker huge deals with entities like Google and to lock up bodies of work that will be potential competition for what stock sales there are left to be had.

The Getty / Flickr deal came about to prevent another stock start up from coming in and creating a stock business model. It was also implemented to prevent the photographers themselves ( photo enthusiasts really ) from selling stock on their own, either case creating more competition for Getty.

This is the reality of it, Getty is simply bad business for creative people.

[QT Luong]

I entirely agree with Kodachrome25. I have no personal experience with Getty (like most savvy professionals these days, I prefer to license directly), however a friend of mine indicated that his returns from Getty have declined steadily and reached the point where it's not worth it.

[cikaziva]

Hey Folks, thanks for your input. i did my research also and everyone is saying a same thing: they are bold suckers and its not worth. if it walks like a duck and it talks lime a duck... now is Stocksy any better? thanks for your input i really appreciate this

[Ari]

Any photo agency is on a par, ethically speaking, with used carpet salesmen; both are to be avoided at all costs.

Even in the "good old days" I was getting ripped off left and right by some very "prestigious" agencies, who at least had the sense to send me a decent cheque every few months.

These days, it's just disrespectful bottom-feeding.

A photo agency is part of the problem, not the solution.

[tgtaylor]

Any port in a storm...just saying.

Thomas

[cikaziva]

in the "good old days" I was getting ripped off left and right

speaking of all days! yes i remember! and remember when we ware ripped off by Charles :) (Ari and me we go way back )
getting ripped of, humiliated and looked down at is part of working photographers life. all jokes aside i never looked at this huge website as real agencies, Ari pointed it out its bottom feeding. but again am looking at some young kinds shooting like crazy and selling photos for 25c it its just wrong, how can you pay for your traveling, gear, how can they build something if this is general trend. bottom line is that its best to same one thing for 100$ then be in this penny game.

my wife sent me this yesterday and she really made my day

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/4238275259.html

[Lenny Eiger]

I'll add 2 more issues. I visited the Getty and saw a nice show of Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Not my favorite, but he's pretty terrific. I asked the person at the desk where the rest of it was - was there a "permanent" room with a smattering from their collection. She looked at me like I was crazy. I mean, they have a huge collection and they dole it out one person at a time, every couple of months. I don't live in LA, I hate going there, and I can't go to each one of the shows for the rest of my life to see a few different things. It's horrible! Such hoarding.

The other thing is this. I am tired of seeing web sites that list a bunch of images they think are cool, without even so much as a mention of a photographer, and I can't stand seeing Getty images, Bettman Archive, or any of the other archives listed as the photographer on an image - in books, magazines, websites, you name it. I think all photographers should boycott these places until this changes. I think we need a photographer's union just like the musicians' have. Do you know there are laws on the books that say that if you sell one of your images to someone and they sell it to someone else, you are entitled to a percentage of the sale? Has it ever happened? I think not.

Just my 2 cents.

Lenny

[Bill Burk]

A friend of ours' daughter had some photos taken of her at a retreat/spa by a Getty photographer. I thought it would be a nice gesture to get the necessary license for this mom to get a few prints of her daughter, for her own wall. When the shopping cart got up around $300 I decided not to go through with it.

[r_a_feldman]

Getty Images has just announced that they will allow free non-commercial use of about 35 million of their images (story at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/06/getty_image_embed_opens_up_35m_for_bloggers/). The article I read notes that the photos will be hosted by Getty and displayed through an embedding tool that will allow Getty to track the use of the image and display advertisements, allowing Getty to make money off other people's creativity without having to pay them.

Bob

[Andrew O'Neill]

And this is why I make pictures for myself. So infuriating, agencies like this and many others... AND they get away with it.

[jnantz]

ad agencies, getty and others have been scouring flickr for a long time
lowballing photo enthusiasts for usage
people are just happy to get
their photographs used in a ad campaign nevermind the
payment is like 50 or 100$ ... and " clients" ( like mcDo, and cocacolla ) suggest they only
have a limited budget so it makes it alright ..

kind of a different world compared to only a decade ago
when a stock agency asked for 300 chromes, then another 500
before they even thought of anything else ...

[photonsoup]

my wife sent me this yesterday and she really made my day

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/4238275259.html

I love this!!!!! This is exactly why I am still a plumber who enjoys photography for my own sake. Trying to make a few bucks from it nearly destroyed my love of the medium.

[Cheffalo]

I've been trying to leave Getty for quite some time now, it's impossible to get in touch with them. It was a great mistake to join them (via flickr, which I wish I will leave too, soon)