NPPA Independent Photographers Toolkit
Advertising Photographers of America Business Manual
Common Cents Column On The Cost of Doing Business
NPPA Online Discussion Group Instructions
Portions of this column were originally written for the March 2012 edition of News Photographer Magazine.
Mark Loundy is a media producer and consultant based in San Jose, California. Full bio.
The opinions in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Press Photographers Association.
By Mark Loundy
"It is fun to be in the same decade with you."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt (In a letter to Winston Churchill)
Ten years seems a long time from now. But the past ten years of writing Common Cents have, to me, lasted no longer than a Kim Kardashian marriage. When former News Photographer editor Jim Gordon emailed me on my birthday in March of 2002 about writing a business column for the magazine, the biggest topics of conversation among photographers were along the lines of "Nikon vs. Canon" or "Is it ethical to use Unsharp Mask on my images?" Very few people were talking about business issues.
But business has become a primary concern since then. John Harrington has written two editions of his Best Business Practices for Photographers. Business issues are all over the SportsShooter message board. The forums on the Editorial Photographer website are all about business. Most gratifying of all, students are learning that business courses are a vital part of their curriculum.
I'm proud to have helped bring business topics before photographers and I'm grateful to Jim Gordon for the opportunity and to current editor Don Winslow for his continuing support.
The University of Utah, for deciding not to impose a work-for-hire agreement on the freelance contributors to its campus newspaper.
The British judge who applied what I call the "hot potato" principle of copyright law in a case where a website owner used images that his design studio had told him were royalty free. The website owner tried to put the blame on the designer, but the judge ruled that that the infringement occurred on the website and awarded the photographer £10,0000 plus interest.
Santa Monica (Calif.) Mirror, for its unpaid internship.
mMetro, LLC (Thrillist.com,) for its Work For Hire contract.
American Media Distribution, for soliciting photographers to cover events in exchange for not being charged admission to the events being covered.
Late last year, Getty reduced the photographer's cut of their sales to 35%. Some of their contributors had been getting as much as 50% — the former industry standard.
Global Special Effects for trolling college photographers for images of their product to avoid paying stock licensing fees.
Please let me know of any particularly good, bad or ugly dealings that you have had with clients recently. I will use the client's name, but I won't use your name if you don't want me to. Anonymous submissions will not be considered. Please include contact information for yourself and for the client.
Leftovers"Our industry therefore adopts the stance that if a picture has no overwhelming artistic value and if there is no issue of exclusivity (i.e. it is already being published online or elsewhere) then no reasonable copyright owner will object to its being republished in exchange for a reasonable licence fee. The only alternative to such a stance is not to publish pictures at all unless they come from a commercial library, the available range of which will inevitably be inadequate."
The editor is right in one way: The alternative is to not publish the images at all.