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photos for sale no camera required!
Sam
Registered Users Posts: 7,419 Major grins
Costco members can now buy fine art prints for just the printing cost and use them for anything they want including resale.
Read: http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/201012#pg95
Want a 24 X 32 canvas print? No need to spend $400.00 to $1200.00. You don't even need to spend an extra $0.50 for the microstock image. Just select your image from the Costco image data base and order it for $79.99!!
Sam
Read: http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/201012#pg95
Want a 24 X 32 canvas print? No need to spend $400.00 to $1200.00. You don't even need to spend an extra $0.50 for the microstock image. Just select your image from the Costco image data base and order it for $79.99!!
Sam
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why do you say that?
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Moderator of: Location, Location, Location , Mind Your Own Business & Other Cool Shots
I agree with Angelo, why scary? As per the article in the latest Costco Connection magazine, it is all licensed from Corbis. Costco probably negotiated a very good buck rate from Corbis. I don't plan on using it, but seems like a pretty good idea to me.
http://jziegler.smugmug.com
This is another nail in the coffin. This will add to the devaluing of photography. :bash
Jim,
I see you don't offer your images for sale, but many do. Now as an example lets say you have spent thousands of dollars for camera gear. Invested years to learn how to use this equipment. Now you go ahead and spend hundreds to thousands more on a photo trip. You get up at 3:00 am hike to the location scouted yesterday, set up and there it is!!!! The most magnificent sunrise you have ever captured. An amazing photograph.
You carefully prepare the image file, make test prints, and print the final image and offer it for sale. Your price is $ 150.00 for a 24 X 36 print on fine art paper. (CHEAP!)
Potential client comes by and comments: WOW! That's a great picture!
I really like your photo and would like to have it, but hey I can buy something similar from Costco for $5.99. Why is yours so much? I would be willing to pay you three times $5.99 because I like yours so much, but I'm not going to let you rip me off for an outrageous $150.00!
It's not the one lost sale but the growing over all perception that photography is near worthless.
Seriously, now you don't even need to buy a micro stock image for pennies. You just order the print.
Overall competition is good and artificial protectionism doesn't improve the industry ether, but when your potential clients can buy "good enough" for Cheap cheap less 25% you is outa business, and mediocrity rains supreme.
I can see people using the word "scary" in response to this news.
I can also see how non photographers would think this is a good idea, but how anyone in a photography forum thinks this is a good thing is beyond me.
Sam
No, I don't offer anything for sale. I don't have a smugmug pro account, I did my first year, and am not at a point where selling online is of value to me, so I'm not as invested in this as many on here will be.
Of course, as for the pricing, there were already other places that you can get cheap posters. Postcards have always been cheap. I doubt that Corbis is offering their best images through this. I looked at a few galleries, and most is similar to what you would see as postcards and posters in a tourist shop, or as posters in a poster shop. I suspect that most of the people that buy from this would not have been likely to buy a fine art print in the first place.
You got me to think about this some more, I see and understand your point. It is another step making it more difficult to make a living as a photographer, which has never been an easy path.
http://jziegler.smugmug.com
I know of one Corbis photographer who was not made aware that several of his images would be offered through Costco and when he asked to have them removed Corbis refused. He hasn't stated what compensation he will receive for this program but apparently he didn't feel that it was sufficient to have his images basically given away for free. I suppose if he was offering his images through Corbis as RF he doesn't have much room to complain, but I believe his images were all RM because his personal site is RM-only.
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Oh, I didn't notice that they allow reselling, that does make me look at it is a much more negative light. I was figuring that it was personal use only.
http://jziegler.smugmug.com
Check out the "Automated Cameras" link from there (sorry about the flash video, mute your computer's audio).
Really? 100% of the working professional photographers that I personally know make their living (myself and those working with me included) doing the job, not on their print sales.
I have heard a thousand times how amateurs or those giving away their work is hurting the world of photography, yet I don't see the proof.
People looking for quality aren't shopping at Costco or Walmart or any of the other box stores. For photographers who do want to compete with them, maybe they should reconsider their business model. You don't see Ferrari trying to compete with Toyota, yet somehow they have managed to survive for 113 years.
It seems to me that the majority of those complaining about how others are earning their money aren't out here in the real world doing it.
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I just completed a shoot (as CD); photography cost us $22,000 for one day (photog, 2 assistants, in studio) day was 6 hours and another client was waiting in the wings to shoot after my team.
end result? 6 images licensed to my client for two years, web use only
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Moderator of: Location, Location, Location , Mind Your Own Business & Other Cool Shots