Many Lives, Twin Peaks | San Francisco, CA | Jan 2009

Continuing the discussion on Flickr: A Wasted Opportunity for Innovation in Stock Photography, Getty Images recently started making offers to Flickr photographers, explaining more about the program in the process.

I’ll say it again:

Getty and Flickr decided to find the top PHOTOGRAPHERS rather than the top PHOTOS. Huge difference: vastly different business models, incentive structures and community involvement principles, and honestly it seems to fly in the face of the vaunted Flickr ethos.

Failing to involve the “non-professional” community … is a huge strategic mistake.

What percentage of the the Flickr photographers do you think Getty will select? What percentage of the photographs on Flickr do you think will be selected or are “commercially viable”?

Getty and Flickr took the easy operational route; selecting images instead of photographers would have broadened the base of photographers and forced Getty and Flickr to educate many photographers about stock pricing, royalty-free and rights-managed licensing schemes, model and property releases and many other nuances involved in stock imagery.

But that was the opportunity. Everyone is a photographer. Why not create the platform to allow everyone to be a “professional”?

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• Tongue firmly-in-cheek; I know that not many photographers really want to be or could be a “professional.” But the terms amateur and professional are so misused and burdened by their past that they have lost their commercial and artistic meanings. It’s time to re-think how we use those words.
• I originally heard about Getty’s updates on the program via Lee Torrens, a great source for news and analysis in microstock photography.
• More about the changing economics and strategies in the photography business.