I got a photo published in a TIME article...for free thanks to Getty's new "embed"

Thankfully I don't do photography for anything more than beer money, but it is slightly bothersome to think that at some point in history I would have been paid something reasonable for a photo to be used by a major news/editorial publishing company like TIME.

Here's the article:

http://time.com …ghanistan-troops-leaving/

The most disturbing thing is that these new free "embedded" photos Getty hands out are crappily resized, pixelated, and too small for any useful viewing.

Honestly if TIME would have emailed me and said "hey getty will give us this crappy looking file for free one way or the other, will you just give us a good one for free?" .... I would have said yes so people don't see my name under a pixelated abstract smudge.


Here is the original photo:

Taken in Kandahar Afghanistan in the fall of 2010. Canon 5DmkII, 70-200 f4L IS

Great image. And for what it's worth, congrats on being published in Time Magazine.

Is the photo going to be published in their magazine? Maybe it will be a little better.

I see what you mean. The image was degraded severely. But their ads are nice and clean.

Well it's a great photo, too bad you didn't get paid for it.

CameraMan wrote in post #16937336
Great image. And for what it's worth, congrats on being published in Time Magazine.

Is the photo going to be published in their magazine? Maybe it will be a little better.

I see what you mean. The image was degraded severely. But their ads are nice and clean.

Not sure if it will end up in a magazine. I only found out because I have an alert that goes to my phone if my name is catalogued on a new website by google haha.

I would like it if it did though because it's way cooler to save a page out of a magazine than a screenshot of a blog

True the image was degraded, but probably only photographers notice. The average reader on the web thinks it looks better than their phone will do.

I think anyone that would actually buy this from Getty would know that this small sample is not indicative of what a larger file they license will look like.

It will be interesting to see if this photo generates you anymore income now from Getty than before they allowed the embed.

Update: Now you can say you were published in Time.

Can someone give me the run down on how times ended up with a legal right to use this photo? I don't use Getty, so I don't know what their t/c are.

vengence wrote in post #16937391
Can someone give me the run down on how times ended up with a legal right to use this photo? I don't use Getty, so I don't know what their t/c are.

Getty has a new program where they will let people get a low res version of an image for free from their catalog; this image is supposed to link back to the photographers Getty portfolio IIRC.

vengence wrote in post #16937391
Can someone give me the run down on how times ended up with a legal right to use this photo? I don't use Getty, so I don't know what their t/c are.

Getty has a new program whereby photos licensed under the "moment" collection, formerly the flickr collection, can be embedded in non-commercial blog type pages for free at a low resolution.

If you had photos in the flickr collection they were automatically migrated to moment. The flickr contract terms gives the rights to manage the specific collection assignment and marketing to getty. Photographers can only choose to either never submit a photo, or remove a photo entirely. Everything in-between is gettys choice.

So in short, you can either leave your photo in with getty and deal with the changes, or totally remove your photo from getty.

Since I'm a hobbyist I don't mind too much, but I can see how it's very hard to pursue stock photography or photojournalism as a primary career anymore.

So how is times a noncommercial blog? They sell a magazine for profit.

vengence wrote in post #16937418
So how is times a noncommercial blog? They sell a magazine for profit.

Commercial use is legally defined as being used to sell/promote a product, business or service that is for profit.

If this article was directly promoting TIME, the selling of magazine copies etc then it would not qualify for the free embed program. However this article is strictly editorial/informative in nature.

Now a lawyer might have a fun time arguing that the close proximity of advertisements to my photo may cross some lines....... I have an intense work schedule though and am not interested in trying to play legal games like that haha, as intellectually interesting as I may find the topic.

...are you sure thats an embeded image? It looks like they paid for it.

Embeded images have the Getty logo on it, along with sharing buttons, like the below:

http://79hbm1979mg58bn​h1fp50y1bry.wpengine.n​etdna-cdn.com …ds/2014/03/07-940x709.png

Nate,

Since this is with Getty, I am assuming that they have sold it repeatedly. Is this the case? I mean, while this one use was "free", have you not had this sell numerous other times - sales that have resulted in a commission for you?

NatDeroxL7 wrote in post #16937438
Commercial use is legally defined as being used to sell/promote a product, business or service that is for profit.

If this article was directly promoting TIME, the selling of magazine copies etc then it would not qualify for the free embed program. However this article is strictly editorial/informative in nature.

Now a lawyer might have a fun time arguing that the close proximity of advertisements to my photo may cross some lines....... I have an intense work schedule though and am not interested in trying to play legal games like that haha, as intellectually interesting as I may find the topic.

I'm not arguing if it's worth your time to go chase them down with a stick, don't get me wrong. Just the idea that anything on time's website is non commercial doesn't pass the sniff test. It's like saying something on apple's website is non commercial.

You could be right, getty doesn't have real-time sales stats for sellers in the moment collection so I wouldn't know yet anyhow. At that resolution I might get $8 or so for online use only. If it does end up printed then based on times distro size I could be getting a bit more.

I'm surprised that the linked embed image looks so good compared to a paid file.

Of course they probably know what the average consumer knows and cares, and they just buy the smallest size and uprez a bit

Tom Reichner wrote in post #16937988
Nate,

Since this is with Getty, I am assuming that they have sold it repeatedly. Is this the case? I mean, while this one use was "free", have you not had this sell numerous other times - sales that have resulted in a commission for you?

Interestingly enough, they license a very similar photo to this one as a rights managed license that I've made about $215 from, but have never sold the nearly identical royalty free file.

I have taken in about $550 over the last 3 years from 4 individual photos I license through them. Most if this was from the first year when they had fairly high prices, but lately getty has made quite a few changes to adapt to the market and stay competitive with the microstock players.....or just bought the microstock players haha


I sell through shutterstock as well, which had long been a good source of revenue from selling my photos to bloggers, as the subscription style microstock model is really appealing to them. I would get .25 a sale, but most of my photos have sold 7 or more times there, with an occasional "big sale" around $2-20 when someone wanted it for more than a blog.

Getty was focused more in the "high end", but as those customers have become fewer and fewer, they were losing sales to micro companies who offers a "good enough" product for cheap.

The whole getty moment collection and embed program is a good way to pull that blogger market in to them, and from there it's only a matter of time before those bloggers and their readers finally want to buy something, and getty will be tops on those potential customers lists to buy from.

It's a pretty good move. I'm considering moving all my micro photos to getty, if I feel this new marketing technique will make it worth the exclusive contract