Photography: Entrer dans le rêves

If you’ve ever felt that Flickr’s Explore page has been ignoring you, that your images deserve the attention the page brings and that Yahoo’s site just isn’t fair… you’re right. Flickr’s Explore page is neither fair nor intended to be fair. As Serguei Mourachov, an engineer responsible for the page’s algorithm, explained to us in 2008:

“The algorithm that populates Explore pages is not fair by definition. It’s not created to judge, but to find something that could be interesting.”

The probability of reaching the explore page, referred to as “PEP” by Flickr’s engineers, is based on the numbers of views, comments, and favorites an image has generated. Of those three, favorites are the most important, followed by comments, with views carrying the least weight. The relationship between the three elements though is changed several times each year to adjust to the “current climate of the Flickrverse.”

Photos also need to meet a number of conditions: they have to be public, safe and contain EXIF data. And they need to have passed a threshold, such as picking up at least two favorites, in order to be eligible for assessment by an algorithm which can be so important for any photographer looking to market their images on the Web’s most important photo-sharing site.

Crowdsourcing Isn’t Fair

The premise of the algorithm then is inherently unfair. Flickr doesn’t employ reviewers to assess each uploaded image, judge its quality and decide whether it deserves an airing on the site’s most important platform. Instead, it uses crowdsourcing, working on the assumption that images that the community has deemed popular are those that must be the most interesting.

Crowdsourcing though ignores the different ability of individuals to move crowds. When an image depends on the actions of others to push it through the Explore page’s algorithm, contributors who are as good at networking as they are at photographing are going to have a distinct advantage. Great photographers who prefer to shoot, then sit quietly while admirers tell their friends about their fantastic imagery will struggle to achieve results.

That might not be fair but it’s also the way the world works. Despite the importance of online portfolios and marketing, it’s still word-of-mouth and personal connections that bring in the jobs for most professional photographers. The same is true of attention on Flickr, a site that’s been known to bring in licensing sales, print purchases and even commissions.

Other apparently unfair conditions are worked into the algorithm too. The aim of the Explore page isn’t to show the best images submitted over a particular period but to show the most “interesting” images. If the algorithm were left entirely to itself, some photographers, particularly those who both shoot well and are well-connected, would inevitably dominate. Their images would be shown again and again at the expense of other photographers with equally good images but with perhaps less developed online social skills. A photographer like Rebekka Gudsleifdottir, who has been on the site since 2005 and whose images pick up thousands of views and hundreds of favorites within days, would be on the Explore page with every upload.

The algorithm then uses a number of calculations intended to reduce the benefits of either deliberate marketing or the massive popularity of some photographers. Submitting images to more than 15-20 groups reduces the PEP score, as does entering them in groups set up specifically to bring in comments and awards. Groups that have a high number of unsafe submissions are also treated with suspicion.

Photographers Are Excluded at Random

To maintain variety and ensure that newer photographers have a chance of being profiled, the algorithm introduces a random element each time the PEP is calculated. It might exclude a particular picture that would otherwise qualify, or it can even choose to ignore all of the photos of a particular user.

Most importantly, Flickr also limits the appearance of photos shot by the same photographer so that they’re are only shown at intervals of several days.

“The problem we try to avoid is typical for our Last 7 Days page,” Serguei told us, “where sometimes you can see the same photos after page reload.”

There is then an element of unfairness built into Flickr’s Explore algorithm. Using a system that looks only at the numbers generated by an image rather than the image itself gives an unfair advantage to photographers who are good with people rather than — or as well as — skillful with their cameras. Good images can also be ignored because the photographer has been successful in the recent past — or for no reason that has anything to do with the image at all.

But those quirks in the system are there for a reason. Excluding photographers at random allows other photographers with lower PEP scores but equally interesting images an increased chance of hitting the Explore page. Reducing the scores of photographers who submit to lots of groups means that popularity has to be gained over time and with a portfolio of images rather than with a big push on one photo. Most importantly, both those conditions help to ensure that the Explore page is genuinely interesting and varied.

For photographers looking to pick up the benefits of the massive exposure that a hit on the Explore page can bring, the strategies are clear enough:

1. Make friends. Comment on people’s photos, take part in group discussions and use the site for networking as well as photo-sharing. Those friends will look at your pictures in return, boosting your PEP score.
2. Upload at intervals. You should only be uploading your best pictures to Flickr but if you can’t hit the Explore two days in a row, it might be worth waiting before you share your next Explore-worthy image if you’ve just been successful.
3. Shoot great pictures. It doesn’t matter how good your networking skills, the currency on Flickr is good photography. Without good images, you’re not going to win the favorites and comments you need to boost your PEP score.
4. Don’t take it personally. Hitting the Explore page is not a judgment on your abilities as a photographer. It’s the result of an algorithmic calculation based on the reactions to your image.

“Explore pages are for viewers and not a photography popularity contest,” says Serguei. “Many great photos of excellent photographers never made Explore because of various reasons. And it does not mean they are bad.”

Learn more about Flickr and its ability to generate sales for photographer in our book The Successful Flickr Photographer, available from Amazon.

When stock photography company Getty Images announced its agreement with Flickr to broker photo sales on behalf of the site’s members, one of the attractions of the Yahoo property was its size. According to the press release issued at the time, Flickr was then attracting 54 million visitors every month and its 27 million members had uploaded more than two billion photos. That was in July 2008. By April the following year, the number of photos on the site had grown to 3.4 billion, and Flickr was continuing to grow at a rate of 90 million new photos and videos a month. Today, Flickr has about 5 billion images. That’s an impressive growth rate until you realize it only makes Flickr the fourth largest image store on the Web — and that according to Pixable, a photo management service, Facebook  now receives 6 billion photos each month, more than Flickr’s entire inventory. The social media site is on track to hit 100 billion images by the summer of this year. So has Flickr had its day? Is Facebook now the Web’s most important photo-sharing site?

Judging by the features Facebook has been adding to its photo-sharing services, Marc Zuckerberg’s company certainly seems to think so. In February of this year, Facebook rolled out its new Photo Viewer, a slideshow that lets its 500 million active users “browse more photos faster without having to lose your place.” Its image tags already do more than help the site deliver search results, the only function Flickr’s tags offer. They identify faces automatically, allow multiple images to be tagged en masse and, most importantly, they push images into the timelines of the people who appear in the photos, giving them instant viral power.

Success on Flickr still relies on steady networking, and participation in groups and discussions. On Facebook, it’s enough to have lots of friends and the time to tag them in photos to get your images seen.

Facebook for Wedding Photographers

The advantages haven’t been lost on wedding photographers. They advertise on Facebook using demographic data to target engaged women in their market area. And they upload tagged images to their business pages to push their photos in front of potential new customers on the guest list. Inviting viewers to add their own tags helps them to reach people they couldn’t identify themselves.

But while Facebook is now an enormous image depository and has the kind of social connections that Flickr lacks, its benefits seem to stop with event photographers — the people who can get the most from  those social connections. Landscape photographers can’t tag the mountains in their images, and stock photographers can do little on Facebook with the pictures in their portfolios. Getty Images’ page is a public relations channel rather than a commercial site that makes sales. Fotolia’s page tries to draw in potential buyers with free images, and iStockphoto doesn’t appear to be on Facebook at all.

Top microstock photographer Yuri Arcurs is one of the few non-event photographers to make good use of the social media site. His page has more than 26,000 “likes” and offers updates about his business and his latest shoots.  Even Arcurs though doesn’t attempt to sell through Facebook — at least not photos. His photo gallery contains fewer than 30 images, mostly shot behind the scenes. The only items he promotes on his Facebook page are branded tools, such as his SteadyPod, which are aimed at other photographers. For Arcurs then, Facebook can be a branding tool but not a photography-selling service.

That isn’t true of Flickr. Getty, which now sells “thousands” of images on the Yahoo property, has brought a level of professionalism to a service which photo buyers had already been using to source original imagery. You don’t have to look to hard to find examples of photographers who have sold images they placed on Flickr, even for sums large enough to buy themselves new cameras.

And while Flickr can’t automatically push tagged images to potential new clients it can push photos onto the pages of other photographers. The contacts you make on Flickr get to see your latest uploads when they log in; upload frequently enough and you can ensure that a steady stream of your images are passing across screens around the world. The number of those screens will depend on the number of contacts you’re able to generate on the site, and the proportion of image buyers they include may be no different to the proportion of potential clients among the group of guests who see a wedding photographer’s images on Facebook.

No less importantly, those Flickr viewers who aren’t buyers — and they’ll always be the bulk of the people seeing your images — can still deliver valuable rewards. They’ll add comments, ask questions, point you in the direction of similar images and offer critiques that will help to improve your photography.

Facebook is the Old Flickr

When Flickr started, it was often portrayed as a site for vacation snappers and a place where people shared images of lolcats. That it could also be a place where photography enthusiasts swapped ideas and experiences, critiqued each other’s work and laid down challenges tended to be hidden beneath the piles of casual users. That it was a place where usage licenses were bought and sold was one of photography’s best-kept secrets until Getty made everything official, first with a collection and then with a complete licensing plan.

The rise of Facebook as a photography platform hasn’t changed those benefits. If anything it’s made them easier to acquire. As casual users upload their photos of friends, family and felines to Facebook, the social media site may grow in size but it leaves Flickr to grow in quality. Wedding photographers can still win new sales and clients by using a service that’s relies on personal connections rather than images themselves, but other kinds of photographers — especially stock and art photographers — would do better by sticking with Flickr, a site more often used by image buyers.

After all, while size was important to Getty when it teamed  up with Flickr, it was mostly the quality of the original, creative and unusual images on the site that the stock company really wanted — and which it now sells.

You can learn how to use Flickr to make photography sales in our book The Successful Flickr Photographer.

Photography: The U.S. Army

If you have a Flickr stream you’re now in the best company. Even if you never get invited to a garden party, never feel the tap of a sword on your shoulder, never have to make small talk with the Prince of Wales, you can at least console yourself by remembering that you are at least sharing a patch of cyberspace with the British monarchy. The Windsors have launched their own Flickr stream.

They’re not the only official body to share their images with the hoi polloi though. Here’s a list of some of the biggest governments, departments and international organizations who have chosen to put their pictures on Flickr, what you can find on their streams — and what their decision means for photographers and image users.

The British Monarchy

A quick glance at the images on the opening page of the British royal family’s Flickr stream is likely to have you clicking away quickly. Most of the shots appear to be dull wire photos of various Royal engagements, from a visit to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine to a shot of the Duchess of Cornwall sounding the noon whistle on the Queen Victoria. Take a look at the sets though and you can browse a number of far more interesting vintage pictures, including one collection of fascinating pictures by Marcus Adams. Sometimes, dull pictures can become a lot more interesting when they’re old.

The UK Prime Minister’s Office

Judging by the lack of any contacts on their profile, the British Royals do seem to be a fairly unpopular bunch. The Prime Minister however has lots of friends — at least official ones. While his images tend to be the usual PR-style official snaps, helpfully released under creative commons licenses (the Royals are holding on to their pictures), his contacts include a number of UK government departments, including the Cabinet Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It’s nice to see that the new PM has friends — and that his staff understand the social aspect of social media.

Barack Obama

That the candidate who did the most to change the way politicians think about social media should have such an impressive Flickr stream is hardly surprising. President Obama’s Flickr stream started during the presidential election, now has 2,690 sets, and includes some amazing shots taken of the family as they waited for the results on election night. It represents the difference between an official body that knows social media exists and a body that knows what users of social media want.

The White House

The White House’s Flickr stream takes up where the more political Barack Obama stream leaves off. It might be official and it might be governmental but it contains some fascinating pictures. The series showing the first 100 days in office is as historical as the Queen’s old shots — but displays history in the making. (They’re also available for people to make of them whatever they want).

The US Army

The US Army’s Flickr stream contains a real mixture of images, from battlefield visits from leading politicians to the battles themselves. The “year in photos” sets make for the easiest browsing but don’t miss the guidelines on the profile page. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to bellowed at by a drill sergeant, here’s your chance.

You can also take a look at the contacts page. The US Army is apparently friends with lots of people, including soldiers, their families, admirers around the world, and individual divisions.

The United Nations

Whatever the US Army can do, the United Nations can do just as well — at least when it comes to photography. The UN’s stream contains a number of moving pictures showing the work of the community around the world. Forget the PR shots of the conferences and meetings, and take a look at the Haiti Earthquake set or the images of children. Then browse UNICEF’s own stream as well as the work of the UNHCR.

Save the Children

And if looking at pictures of people helping children can make you a little happier then Save the Children’s stream is worth a visit too. The sets show images from different places but expect to have your heartstrings tugged (and your wallet pressed) by shots of kids enjoying soccer balls, healthy snacks and bednets — and the amount that you can pay to make your own contribution. This is Flickr for fundraising, and it’s hard to fault.

AusAid

AusAid is the Australian governments overseas aid program and what makes its Flickr stream so special isn’t just the quality of its images — or their subjects — but the way the pictures are described. Each caption tells a story so that viewers can see how a piece of Indonesian batik is created, for example. It’s a great showcase for the importance of informative image descriptions.

The International Monetary Fund

Not only does the IMF not bother to give its photos titles but you have to wonder why anyone would bother to look at them. The fund missed an opportunity to show what its work actually does, choosing instead to show pictures of meetings and handshakes. It’s dull stuff but if you get really bored, you can always look through the set of archives… where you can see people shaking hands half a century ago.

The World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum’s images are hardly better. The account even has a set called “Historic Handshakes, Hugs & Kisses.” This really isn’t Hollywood though. Unless you’re into seeing people you’ve never heard of making nice to other people you’ve never heard of, give it a skip and take a look at what was happening outside. It’s much more interesting.

There are plenty more official accounts on Flickr, including the European Parliament, the Irish government, and, if you’re really into peace and love, Yoko Ono. You can use the contacts list to see who’s being friendly and who those officials consider friends, but some accounts are certainly more interesting than others — and some have better pictures than others too.

Flickr’s deal with GettyImages is good news for buyers. Designers and other image users can now easily pick up the kind of creative, original photos that are more likely to be found on photo-sharing sites than in traditional stock inventories. It’s also good news for photographers. If buyers know that they can deal with a professional agency instead of negotiating with amateur photographers, and that the images they buy will have model releases and not breach copyright rules, then more of them will have the confidence to come to the site and browse. But making your images available through Getty is an expensive choice. The company might set the sales price but it then takes an industry standard commission of 70 percent. If you’re supplying the buyer as well as the photo then that’s a high price to pay for a middle-man to pass over the pictures. Handle the deal yourself and you can still land sales, even as an enthusiast, but you’ll be keeping all of the revenue. That means understanding what professional buyers need when they want to buy one of your images and where other amateur sellers are going wrong.

Most of the problems come down to communication — or rather, the lack of it.

“I have never had such a horrible time trying to acquire rights than when a client wants something off Flickr, DeviantArt or Twitpics, or similar,” one designer told us. “I’ve had several instances where people on those sites were hiding behind aliases and either don’t check their comments, PMs or email, or they just don’t believe we are offering them money to use their photos or they may think we are scamming them somehow.”

Those delays and doubts are problems that are always possible when a supplier who regards their work primarily as something they do for fun meets a buyer with a budget and a deadline. Designers will often have a certain amount of time to find a number of suitable photographs, and if they don’t believe that they can close a deal quickly with a photographer they’ll quickly move on to a different source.

Shoot Amateur, Behave Professional

The solution though is relatively simple: act like a professional, at least as far as communication is concerned. Make yourself easy to find and respond promptly. Check your FlickrMail at least once a day, and if you do receive an image request, answer immediately so that the buyer isn’t left wondering whether he stands a chance of landing the image.

It’s also a good idea to provide an alternative contact method. Use the profile on the photo-sharing site not just to describe who you are and the kind of photography you want to shoot, but also to link to your portfolio site and supply an email address. Just showing that you’re easily available can increase buyers’ confidence in your ability to handle a sale, as well as providing them with a way to see more of your images.

The same is true though of images posted on websites. Flickr might be particularly well-known for the flakiness (as well as the creativity) of its members, but website owners can deliver some strange responses too. The same buyer who described the difficulty of buying images on photosharing sites reported that photographers who post images on their own sites tend to respond in one of three ways:

“a) They reply immediately; b) They don’t reply at all or not in a timely fashion: or c) the image and sometimes the entire site will vanish off the web. That last is especially frustrating, and sad, and a little bit funny all at the same time.”

Even if the seller does respond promptly though, buyers are often faced with another problem: an amateur photographer might not have the answers to the questions they need to ask, especially when it comes to pricing. If the buyer deals with Getty, he knows exactly how much Getty is going to charge, and he understands that the company will be setting the market rate. Buyers might not need to see rates posted on your website or listed under each entry on Flickr, but they do expect the seller to have a realistic idea of the amount they need to charge.

Know the Market Rates

That isn’t easy. Rates for image usage very considerably, but the simplest solution is to look for images on similar topics on GettyImages’s Flickr Collection, or on other stock sites, and see how much they’d charge for a similar use. That is, after all, what the buyer will do if you charge an excessive amount.

A professional response to an image enquiry then won’t just be fast, it will also contain questions about how the image is going to be used, whether the buyer needs exclusivity (and if so, for how long), and the size of the image they’ll want to use. In short, you’ll need to ask the same questions that GettyImages asks before a buyer reaches the checkout.

And to keep the communication shorter, it’s also a good idea to supply information about the images you’re offering for sale. Buyers will want to know whether the image is digital or was originally shot on film (and if so, the film format) as well as the image sizes that are available. Enlarging small images to make them more attractive to buyers is a big no-no.

“I’ve seen attempts to make images larger by adding noise, blurs, motion effects and other crap that does not hide the fact that the image started small,” we were told. “And I’ve returned them for refund when I’ve gotten them in hand if they don’t work.

So good selling — the kind that attracts buyers to stock companies rather than independent individuals — is largely about fast communication and an awareness of market requirements. But it’s still mostly about great pictures, the kinds that are dynamic, focused, clear and usable. Combine those professional-quality images with a professional attitude to talking to buyers and there’s no reason that you have to hand over 70 percent of your sales revenues to a professional stock agency.

Photography: Vanessa Dualib

Food photography is usually a difficult niche for a photographer. Getting the lighting right is only part of the challenge. You also need to know how to pose the food, prevent it from drying out under lights and make it look appealing and appetizing. Many specialist photographers work with professional food designers whose job is to prepare the plate while the photographer sets up the shoot. Sometimes though, it can pay for a photographer just to pull out her camera, open the fridge and play with her food.

Vanessa Dualib, an artist from Sao Paolo, Brazil, has three loves: photography, food and humor. She now combines all of those passions in a series of images that turn vegetables into animals, and the serious business of eating into the not-quite-serious business of funny food photography.

The photographs themselves are made up of food items carefully arranged into a humorous composition: baby carrots ice skate on a slice of pumpkin; fruit becomes a pair of amorous lovebirds; a sweet potato is transformed into the little-known dinosaur Potatosaurus Dulcis which became extinct during the “Plantzoic Period”.

The series began in 2008 when an illness confined Vanessa to her house, restricting her ability to photograph. Instead of shooting what she saw on the streets and in the parks, she began posing and shooting what she could find in her kitchen.

“It all started as a joke to keep me from getting too bored in my house,” she explains. “I love photography and not being able to photograph anything was driving me crazy…. Putting together the three things I love the most in my life was the way I found to express my artistic ideas while basically just trying to have fun and surprise people.”

Why I Turned Down Getty

It’s all fun stuff but it has developed a serious side. After Vanessa uploaded the images to Flickr, they began to attract the attention and comments of other photographers. That was rewarding enough but Getty had just started building its Flickr collection and was on the lookout for creative images to add to its inventory. The stock agency approached Vanessa and offered to license 26 images, including eighteen of her food photos – about 60 percent of her collection at the time.

Surprisingly, Vanessa turned Getty down, agreeing to license only four of her food photographs.

“I declined because of the two-year contract to manage all the rights that they impose,” she told us. “I actually ended up with some other plans for this project and I want to make sure I will have all the liberty to do as I please once I finally make up my mind.”

Photography: Vanessa Dualib

The four images she did supply have managed to sell “a few” licenses in the four months that they’ve been available through the agency, so it’s possible that had Vanessa agreed to offer more works, she would have made more money. But her decision does raise the question of whether Getty’s license requirements are too strict for non-professional photographers, like Vanessa, who are more interested in developing their photography than profiting from it.

It Takes Two Years to Test an Image

According to the Artists Relations team at Getty, the two-year exclusivity requirement is actually shorter than the three-year commitment usually demanded from the agency’s photographers. It’s also necessary as clients can take several months to approve an image chosen by a buyer at a design or advertising firm and presented in a pitch for a campaign, Getty argues: allowing photographers to remove their images at will might mean that an image approved by a client is no longer available. Relevance matters too. The image has to match market demand, something that can’t be assessed in less than two years.

“Leaving an image up for anything less than two years does not allow for the photographer to learn about the image’s relevance to customers,” Getty told us. “Most Flickr artists who participate understand that our investment requires at least this much time to see a return.”

For photographers who have created the images specifically as a long-term investment that will bring returns through stock sales, that commitment is a necessary part of doing business. While it’s possible for photographers to create their own stock sites — and some do — independent photographers will always struggle against the marketing power of a company like Getty whose subscription model, in particular, helps to lock buyers in. Many Flickr photographers too will find an offer of representation by Getty both flattering and potentially remunerative enough to be willing to close up their images for a couple of years, especially if they don’t have any other plans for them anyway. In practice, says Getty, the exclusivity agreement is not an issue that Flickr contributors raise very often.

One of the things that Vanessa wanted to do, however, was to bring her series of food photos together in book form. Friends had asked her to create a Blurb book and while Blurb sales can be relatively low, the results, she says, have been surprising.

“The response and interest to it once the book was ready was bigger than I actually expected,” she said. “I’m sure it could be doing better, since the books there can be quite expensive (even with a very low profit margin). But still it was an amazing surprise!”

Marketing for the book is currently limited to a mention on her Flickr page and website. Two international magazines have also been in touch and produced articles about Vanessa’s work, which should help to increase sales too. Whether the profits from the book outweigh the value of the sales the images would have brought on Getty is debatable but it is a debate that other photography enthusiasts with unique images and interest from large stock agencies will have to consider. Vanessa herself has no regrets.

“I actually still have a lot of ideas to explore on my Playing with Food series, and also different techniques I want to explore. We will see where this will end up.”

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Update
Getty has asked to point out that “we do allow contributors to create/publish and sell their own books, including Blurb books, as they are considered self promotion… [B]ooks of the individual’s work, limited edition signed and/or numbered prints sold as fine art and photo sharing is all fine from our point of view.” We’re happy to do so.
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85111840. Photograph © Eke Miedaner/Flickr/Getty Images

Back in July 2008, Getty Images threw open its doors. Or at least, it pushed them open a crack. The exclusive stock agency wasn’t adopting microstock’s open source policy but it had forged a partnership with Flickr, adding selected images from the  photo-sharing site to its commercial inventory. Things went a little quiet for a while but in March 2009, Getty debuted its Flickr Collection, a selection of photos sourced from Flickr’s contributors and available for licensing both on a royalty-free and rights-managed basis. Getty hasn’t released precise statistics to describe how many images have sold, but the company has told us that Flickr images licensed to customers already number in the “thousands” and have been used in creative campaigns in more than 65 countries.

According to Claudia Micare,  Manager, Contributor Relations for Getty Images, the collection now includes more than 60,000 images provided by more than 6,000 photographers in more than 100 countries. To Getty’s own customers, those images show up in search results in the same way as other photos in the inventory. Editors browsing Flickr can also buy the images they see by clicking a licensing button above an available photo. They’ll then be taken to the image on Getty’s website where they can make their purchase.

Rates vary, of course, but even royalty-free images start at $5 for a 170 x 113 image suitable for Web use and rise to $300 for 3008 x 2000 pixels.

“Several photographers have had multiple sales on their imagery, some generating five-figure licenses or hundreds of dollars in royalties for the photographer,” said Claudia.

Joining those 6,000 contributors has become a little easier recently too. In September 2009, Getty created its Call for Artists group, inviting anyone on Flickr to submit a portfolio of ten images for review by Getty’s editors. Almost 11,000 Flickr members have joined, offering more than 50,000 photos to the group. In addition, the editors will continue to browse the site, offering licensing contracts for images that catch their eye.

Sell Your Flickr Cat Photo

The subjects that Getty is choosing vary tremendously too. Claudia Micare noted that Getty is interested in “all subject areas,” including conceptual pictures in all categories, as well as hobbies, travel, nature and pets. Even Flickr members’ famous love of cats has been respected. Getty offers 940 of them.

Some of those pictures appear to be typically stocky but the real draw for Getty, says Claudia, is the “authenticity” of the images on Flickr. That’s certainly how the stock agency is selling the collection to buyers, placing the images in contrast to the “posed,” “model-y” and “fake” images that turn up again and again in stock collections.

“When we launched the Flickr Collection, it was our goal to choose photos that created a commercially viable collection, while preserving the inspiration and unexpected nature of the images that are so prevalent on Flickr,” she told  us. “The images that have been selected offer unique, fresh, high quality, individualistic perspective and vision that our global customers value and desire for their communications.”

The choice of image may affect how the image is sold. In general, photos with “simple and clear” messages tend to be offered on a royalty-free basis while more “complex or subtle” photos often end up with rights-managed prices. It’s Getty’s editors, however, that choose the pricing model, not the photographer.

The emphasis on authenticity recalls Photoshelter’s attempts in 2008 to create a stock inventory of natural images to supply a demand identified in the company’s survey of buyers. Their attempt failed, leading some to comment that what buyers say they want and what they actually buy are two different things. Others though pointed out that as long as buyers have subscriptions at major stock agencies like Getty, it will always be hard for smaller agencies to make sales. With thousands of Flickr images already sold, it does appear that Photoshelter’s problem wasn’t the commercial weakness of the photos, but the strength of the competition.

Exclusivity is Strict but Not an Issue for Enthusiasts

And Getty has also been reactive. The company’s willingness to accept images from the enthusiasts on Flickr only came after it noticed that the site was offering products that it couldn’t supply itself.

“As Flickr members created more images, our customers were looking to sites like Flickr for inspiration and fresh images, and would often try to license images,” says Claudia.

While being on Getty allows photographers to reach large buyers and receive the full value for their work, there are challenges. Few the images containing people that are uploaded to Flickr come with model releases, making sales challenging, and Getty’s exclusivity terms are strict. Images are placed exclusively with the company for two years and can’t be removed without terminating the agreement. The contract continues to renew annually.

That might be an issue for professionals who have already placed their images elsewhere or who are uncertain that Getty’s Flickr collection would be the best place for them. For enthusiasts though, who don’t expect to sell the images elsewhere anyway and who are still allowed to use the photos for self-promotion, limited edition fine prints and Blurb, the exclusivity isn’t really an obstacle. Spanish enthusiast Manuel Navarro, for example, is happy with both the exclusivity arrangements and the service he’s receiving from Getty.

“I’m not a professional photographer, so I never thought to make commercial use of my photos,” he said. “I know that these requirements may be restrictive, but I think this might be a good opportunity to show my photos out of my Flickr page, and get some small profit.”

The seven urban and landscape scenes that Manuel offers through Getty are fairly traditional but many of the images in the collection are as quirky and unusual as you might expect from Flickr. The company has only accepted a tiny proportion of the images submitted through its Call for Artists group (it wouldn’t reveal the exact proportion, but in a group discussion, Tom W. at Getty Images, likened the process to sifting for gold) but it’s just possible that Flickr’s contributors are bringing a valuable, fresh addition to stock photography and Getty is providing a useful, if small, channel to bring them to buyers.

The two most inspiring people on Flickr are really Matt Smillie and Cherry Vega. During a trip to Japan in 2004, Matt shot this picture of a tattooed woman taking a picture of some dancers and uploaded it to Flickr. A friend of the woman in the photo, Cherry Vega, recognized the tattoo and told her about the photo. Cherry left a comment on the image, the photographer got in touch, traveled the length of Britain to meet and — as far as we know – they’ve been together ever since.

They’re unusual. Flickr doesn’t usually inspire people to go out and fall in love — although it would be nice if it did. It’s much better at inspiring us to go out and become better photographers.

Or rather, the people on Flickr inspire us to become better photographers because that’s what Flickr’s really all about: looking at great images, chatting to fantastic photographers and using their examples and their advice to get better and better every day.

Here are five of the most inspiring people on Flickr.

Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir

Photography: Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir

Icelandic photographer Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir is, of course, a Flickr icon. Her self-portraits have won her stacks of fans who follow her website and her blog. Her photos have grabbed the attention of picture thieves who swiped her images and sold them for profit. But most inspiringly, her images have also landed her a prestigious shoot for Toyota (who thought her “multiplicity” series matched the twin power sources of the Hybrid) and the chance of a whole new career as a professional photographer.

Not bad for someone who is still an art student and originally used Flickr as a place to show her sketches.

Rebekka’s pictures are an inspiration for anyone who wants to take beautiful, unique and creative images, but also for anyone who hopes to find success through Flickr.

So who inspires Rebekka?

“Three people come to mind right away,” Rebekka told us. “Dr Joanne was the first self-portrait artist that seriously inspired me to work harder and put more effort and thought into my self-portraiture… I had of course previously been inspired by a number of well-known artists, Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman for instance,  but I remember seeing Joanne’s work inspired me all over again.

“Notraces’ long exposure photography inspired me to try my hand at that,
and continue to work on it until I started getting more than just
mediocre results.

“

And last but not least, Antimethod (Cole Rise) was probably the first person on Flickr whose work left me speechless. Opened my eyes to a lot of things, and I admire him greatly.”

David Hobby

Photography: David Hobby

David Hobby is better known by his online moniker, Strobist. His blog is one of the most popular — and for anyone using artificial lighting, one of the most useful — photography sites on the Web. His Flickr group though, has almost 20,000 members, helping both pros and amateurs get to grips with innovative lighting techniques.

As for the people David has inspired, here are the words of just one photographer who responded to a researcher’s question about the effect of Strobist:

“I never used a flash until January of this year (2007) when I discovered Strobist. In march I quit my job as a car designer and went freelance. I just did a job yesterday for $2,500 with only two SB600′s. That’s more than my monthly living expenses. In a day!”

David Bean

Photography: David Bean

David Hobby is an inspiration because he is able to take the advice he turns out on his blog and turn it into the sort of collaborative affair that can only happen on a Flickr group. David Bean, the founder of Pro Corner, runs a Flickr group that’s a lot smaller but just as important at handing out advice, helping amateurs step up and professionals stride ahead.

“Pro Corner takes up a few hours a month,” David told us. “I would dedicate more but as a full-time photographer who shoots and travels all the time, it’s hard to keep up. I made two people moderators so they could help police the group. They’ve done a great job with it.”

John Watson

Photography: John Watson

All of the people we’ve mentioned so far are known for their photography or for the advice they give about photography — or both. John Watson, who uses the name FD on Flickr, is famous for his huge range of Flickr tools. From magazine covers and galleries to jigsaws and a Warholizer, John has almost 40 ways to help people enhance their photos… and according to his site, they can be used on almost 1.5 million photos a month.

“It started out very small,” John explained. “Folks wanted to create badges but most of them didn’t have Photoshop or know how to use it well enough to make one. So I created the Badge maker toy. It turned out to be a huge success and the rest is history.
The bottom line is that it’s a project that is a great deal of fun to work on and I’m immensely grateful that I can make something that brings a little happiness to so many people.”

Julie Kertesz

Photography: Julie Kertesz

French photographer Julie Kertesz might not be as well known as Rebekka or Strobist, but it’s her attitude that we like. Julie was already over 70 when she discovered blogging and Flickr which was then still in Beta. In addition to her blog called  “Il ya de la vie après 70 ans” (“There is life after 70”), she also created groups called
“Never too old (to enjoy life),” “Strangers no more” and “People Reading.” It’s her Afterclass learning group though that takes up most of her time.

“[W]e learn every month another theme about photography, created [and] organized by me,” Julie said. “[It’s] now in its nineteenth month and [has] about 2,100 members… some contributing to the discussions, every month [with] another leader.”

Who inspired your photography? Tell us here.

Photography: juliebee

What do Flickr members want?

To chat to other photographers and swap stories and tips about where and what to shoot, maybe. To make the odd print sale or win a new client, perhaps. To improve their photography, often.

It’s all of those things, of course, but mostly Flickr membership tends to be about showing your photos to as many people as possible. That’s why members join lots of groups and network like crazy. They want to increase their contact list, gain views and win approval from adoring fans – or at least large numbers of people who have seen their pictures.

What does Flickr want?

Once, it might merely have wanted to provide a platform for enthusiasts to share their images, but now that Flickr is part of Yahoo!, there’s a good chance the site’s owners want it to make money too.

Ooh… Free Photos

Those two desires – an urge to be seen; and a need to please shareholders — seem to be coming together in Flickr’s sponsored groups. These are groups created in conjunction with Flickr, sometimes by marketing firms, to collect large numbers of images from large numbers of people and use them in ad campaigns… without the client having to pay for them.

Wunderman, for example, an ad firm, has created a group on behalf of Ford called “This is Now” to promote the revamped Fiesta. The group is looking for photos that “sum up the essence of ‘now’” and plans to use them on a special portal that will be launched in mid-October. Ford isn’t planning to pay the contributors, and the group rules make very clear that contributors must agree to grant Ford a non-exclusive, royalty-free license until December 31, 2009. In return, photographers get to see their images used in an ad campaign.

“We think this is such a lovely, transparent way for the general public to participate in a communications campaign,” explained Glenn Sturgess of Wunderman to us in an email. “In the past, advertisers have blasted the public relentlessly with their message. It’s an old way of doing things and not particularly nice.

“We want to move away from that model and have a two way conversation. This approach lets people who choose to participate, who want to make a comment, who want to show the world how they see ‘now,’ be involved. It also provides up and coming artists the opportunity to expose their work to many, many people.”

Of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that drives professional photographers nuts. They create works that have value. When companies can pick photographs up for free, the price is driven down for everyone and another source of demand dries up. A corporate client used to paying top-dollar for top images is now able to cut out the professionals and get what it needs from people who measure the value of their work only by the number of eyeballs it receives.

Wunderman clearly doesn’t see it that way.

“[W]e want to point out that there’s no desire to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. We’re not a big nasty corporate trying to hoodwink the little guy. On the contrary, both Ford and Wunderman believe in playing fair, giving people the opportunity to be part of defining the ‘now’ and being honest about what we plan to do.”

It’s the People, Not (Just) the Pictures

And perhaps Glenn’s right. Wunderman is certainly being straightforward about its intention not to pay anyone and advises people who don’t agree with the terms not to join the group. Over 1,100 members have ignored that message and submitted around 1,500 photos. As one contributor put it on the group’s discussion board in response to a complaint about a major company benefitting from free images: “people seeing and enjoying my view of the world is good enough for me ”

More importantly, it might not be the photos themselves that are the point of the group. Another company looking to use free images is Nivea, which has just launched its “Kiss & Be Kissed” group to find pictures of kisses to show on its website. Photographers who submit their images are in with a chance of winning a trip to New York to attend a “VIP event on New Year’s Eve.” Everyone else, apparently, gets nothing.

A glance at the company’s website though reveals how images like these are likely to be used. The images submitted so far certainly aren’t professional, and at least as important as the shots themselves are the references to Flickr and Facebook. This isn’t just about photography; it’s also about an ad campaign trying to reach as wide a number of people as possible, showing that the company is in touch with the street and motivating people to look at their products by rewarding them with free publicity for their images.

Flickr members might want to show off their photos to lots of people, and Flickr itself might want to make money. But ad companies want reach lots of people and they’re doing that by paying Flickr for them. It just might be nice if they paid Flickr members for their images too.

Flickr made the announcement with pride.

“Video! Video! Video! The rumours are true and ‘soon’ is now. We’re thrilled to introduce video on Flickr…”

And apparently the thrill hasn’t gone away. Flickr’s home page is still screaming this message to its users a month-and-a-half after the original announcement, as though the rest of us will be as excited about the rise of video as the site itself.

In fact, Flickr’s videos are pretty restrictive. Calling them “long photos,” the site restricts videos to 90 seconds and only lets pro members upload them. (If you’re wondering what you can shoot in 90 seconds, you’re not alone.) In the meantime, users looking for images have to be careful to click the “photos only” tickbox when searching for stills.

For Flickr, the decision to allow videos is unlikely to have been a hard one. While photographers are making money on the site, Flickr is really meant for sharing, not selling. Videos are just another way of letting others in on an experience. Instead of capturing a moment, they capture a moment-and-a-half.

Nor was Flickr the first to try to bridge the gap between photographers and videographers. The New York Times, no less, instructs its photographers to shoot video for its website, a demand that has sparked some discussion among photojournalists.

But what about people who love photography — and would like to earn from it? Does the rise of video, whether on websites, news sites, Flickr or YouTube mean that we should be playing more with our cameras’ video feature… or even shooting movies and pulling stills from the footage?

Photography Looks Safe… for Now
A look at the market seem to suggest that still photography, while perhaps feeling a touch squeezed, is in little danger — at least for now. An increasing number of sites might be hosting videos but the clips seems to take the place of content rather than the images that accompany that content. While it’s true that a blog that uses a two-minute video to communicate a message is unlikely to demand an image as well, there’s also little chance that it will make much of a demand from a videographer either. The sort of videos found on most vlogs — and even on video-sharing sites — still seem to consist of one man or woman, a web cam and a book to rest it on. Even The New York Times, for all its interest in Web-based video news, still has some outstanding photographic slideshows with a range you’re unlikely to find even in the Sunday print edition.

Some stock sites though do see an opportunity. In addition to offering still images, iStock, Stockxpert and Shutterstock all offer video clips, usually at prices that begin at around $10 — a significant increase on the standard $1 starting price for stills. But even here there’s little evidence that the sites see this market as a replacement for their usual buyers — designers looking for images for the Web, for ads and for the sort of print demands that video just can’t meet.

It’s safer to say that stock sites are hedging their bets.

After all, the infrastructure for hosting and offering video is largely the same as that needed to sell images, so there’s little cost and some potential benefit to be gained for stock sites should video truly take off.

And that’s the attitude that photographers might want to take too.

What Will Video Be When it Grows up?
Video as a commodity is still in its infancy. Even Google appears to be struggling to earn decent returns on the ads embedded in its YouTube content and only distributes them to publishers who can win more than a million viewers a month. Those ads also currently take the form of text at the bottom of the screen rather than the sort of video commercials you can find interrupting your television viewing.

But video does seem to be growing more popular and for people interested in earning from imagery, the market might be worth testing. Some of the stock footage on Shutterstock, for example, is very similar to that offered by still photographers, and can include landscape and road scenes as well as people and objects. Once you’ve shot your still images then, it might not take a great deal of extra effort to shoot a few minutes of video and offer it to that market too.

Videographers, of course, would probably disagree. They would likely point out that while there is some overlap in the skills and knowledge needed to shoot video and stills, the two do demand different talents. A photographer has to know how to freeze a moment; a videographer has to depict movement.

But one of the biggest benefits of the new photography era is that there are few penalties for trying and failing, and plenty of fun to be had in the process. It’s still likely that for the foreseeable future at least you’ll find it easier to earn with stills than with video but if you’re a photographer who finds both enjoyable, it should be worth keeping an eye on the opportunities on the other side too.

Photography: Giant Gingko

Join Flickr and even before you get down to selecting images, organizing sets and adding tags, you’ll be asked to choose a username. It shouldn’t be a task that demands too much effort. After all, image-lovers are coming to see your photos, not look at the label you’ve chosen for your Flickr stream.

And yet it matters. Not because people might be put off by a bad username or dismiss your images because you’ve called yourself a string of numbers instead of something identifiable.

It matters because when publishers use your Creative Commons-licensed images, they have to put a credit on them.

As we’ve mentioned before on this blog, we’re not giant fans of Creative Commons — we want you to make money for your pictures not let other people make money from them for nothing. Used carefully though, sharing your images for free can have a valuable marketing role… provided you get something in return.

Your Name is Worth Something
That something shouldn’t just be the pleasure that comes when you discover that someone else likes your photos enough to use them. It should be the attribution: advertising that tells people that you did this, not someone else. That helps to spread your name, build a brand and let potential buyers know that you can do even more when you get paid for it.

The whole idea of a credit is that anyone who likes your pictures knows immediately who you are and can find you to commission or buy more of your images for themselves.

That’s not likely to happen if the name under the photo is “3459ght_boy” and there’s no link to more of your work.

Your credit then needs to be a name that people can remember and find on Google when they want to see more of your pictures. Yes, it might be the norm that people who use CC-licensed images on the Web link back to the photographer’s Flickr stream, but it’s not a rule, not everyone does it and you can’t rely on it, especially when it’s the only benefit you’re getting.

Finding a good name isn’t always easy, of course. Some Flickr members seem to deliberately choose names that provide a certain amount of anonymity. They’ll pick a pseudonym like “Delboy63” or “MadH@tter” that might look cool or have some sort of connection to who they are. Unless you already know who that is though, names like these are completely unhelpful to everyone else.

That’s a deliberate choice and if you’re looking to hide, it’s a fair one.

User your Middle Name
Others though might want to show who they are but find that names like “John Smith” and “Paula Jones” are long gone, and that they have to be more creative. The usual choice is to add the year of birth. So if you can’t have “John Smith” maybe you can have “JohnSmith73.”

It’s a popular way of doing things but not necessarily a smart one. A number in a name screams “Internet!” It suggests that your images haven’t been published anywhere else and that you’re not known outside the world of photo sites and online exhibitions.

That might be true but when you’re advertising yourself, you don’t have to broadcast it.

If you have a middle name, then this is the time to use it — or at least an initial. There were probably lots of John Smiths born in 1973. There are likely to be fewer John Denzil Smiths, John D. Smiths or even J. D. Smiths. All of those options look more professional than the sort of tag that indicates your fame has yet to spread beyond a computer monitor.

One-word names have the same effect. They can work for artistic images but they don’t necessarily inspire confidence in a buyer looking for someone to create photos that are commercial rather than creative. Banksy can get away with it because he stencils on walls. If you want to get paid to take portraits rather than make art, it might not work for you.

If you still struggle to create a name that reflects who you are and which hasn’t been snapped up already, there is an insurance policy you can take out. Make sure that your profile states clearly that you expect any CC-licensed images to include a link back to your Flickr stream… and put your full name at the top of the page as well.

We’re always impressed when we hear about people who have sold images through Flickr. It happens so often that we really shouldn’t be, but because the site wasn’t designed for commercial use it’s always remarkable to find that buyers and sellers have come together without either side taking any great efforts to make it happen. That’s especially true when the buyers are big and the companies are willing to take a risk by commissioning amateurs.

But while sales are taking place on Flickr, the photo-sharing site isn’t good for every commercial venture. There are times when you’ll need to give it a miss if you want to land a job.

Here are some of the most important:

When you’re Pitching to Pros
Flickr is primarily used by photography enthusiasts. While there are plenty of professional photographers using the site, the majority of people on Flickr really join up to share their photos and learn from other hobbyists. They don’t treat their stream as a commercial showcase so they don’t take the sort of care with it that photographers who shoot for a living take with their portfolios.

That means that Flickr isn’t really seen as a professional tool, especially by professional buyers.

On the one hand, that’s Flickr’s strength. Buyers come to Flickr looking for something that goes beyond the usual stock images (or which falls short of professional prices). They’re hoping to make a discovery, and often they do.

But it does mean that if you tell a magazine’s photo editor, for example, that he can find your images on Flickr, you may as well tell him that you’ve never done this before and that if he hands you a suitcase full of cash for a shoot, there is a possibility he’ll later need to give another one to someone with real experience.

When you’re pitching your photography to professional buyers, whether they’re photo editors, stock sites or anyone else, be sure to follow the company’s directions for contributors. That can vary from firm to firm but it’s unlikely to include a Flickr stream.

When you’re not Sure What you’re Selling
Selling images isn’t quite like selling soap. You’re not selling the photo itself; rather, you could be selling permission to use it, or you could be offering a copy of the original.

Failing to understand the difference between selling a creative work — one over which you own the copyright — and any other product gives unscrupulous buyers a huge advantage.

It’s bad enough that some Flickr members are willing to let businesses use their images commercially for nothing; it’s far worse when a photography signs away his or her rights to a photo for few bucks because the buyer took advantage.

That doesn’t happen often, but the only way to be sure it doesn’t happen to you is not to start marketing your photos on Flickr until you understand exactly what you should be selling.

When your Stream isn’t Organized
One of the disadvantages for buyers browsing Flickr is that it’s so hard to find good images. Although the site contains millions of photos, only a tiny fraction of them are worth anything.

And when a buyer does find a talented photographer, the images are rarely organized well enough to help him track down similar works that are of equally high quality. Instead of being able to browse a stream easily, buyers are often faced with a bewildering list of random images on topics that range from iguanas in Istanbul to children playing in the park.

There’s no excuse for not organizing your photos by sets and collection, writing good captions and tagging carefully — although laziness is a pretty good reason.

While a buyer on Flickr will always be willing to buy a license for a good image, you’ll create a much better impression if your photos are arranged in a way that shows you believe they’re valuable.

When you haven’t Edited your Images
One of the best pieces of advice we heard about Flickr came from Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir who received a commission from Toyota on the strength of the images in her Flickr stream.

“The most important tip for becoming recognized on Flickr is only to upload the very highest quality materials,” she told us. “There are so many people who upload ten pictures of the same subject. And the next day, ten more pictures of the same subject.

“You really want to be sure that you’re showing what you want to show, that you’re not just throwing everything up there.”

Taking pictures might be cheap these days, but quality still beats quantity. Your Flickr stream is a type of portfolio, and like any portfolio as much effort has to go into the selection as went into creating the images themselves. A stream that contains every photograph you’ve ever taken tells buyers that you don’t know the difference between a good image and a mediocre one, and that your best shots were a result of luck rather than judgment.

Keep your average images on your hard drive and only make your best shots public.

Flickr has become a commercial space for photographers and is packed with opportunities. You should know how to get the most out of it. That starts by understanding when not to use it.