How GWC's affect the business

For the last 4 years I have shot a local high school's sectional basketball games. A couple of years ago a guy who had a kid on the cross country & track teams got a camera. He started submitting to the same news site I shoot for. The editor gladly accepted his shots because those two sports don't have a large following and he had other stuff for me to cover. He thinks it is fun to shoot sports, which I guess it is by most peoples standards.
So this year he starts showing up at the regular season basketball games, which the editor usually shot himself anyway, and he starts submitting shots from these games. Well now he shoots them all. I had a conversation with the editor today and he will be using this guy for 2 reasons. One, he doesn't expect the boys or girls teams to advance very far in the tourney and, two, he doesn't have to pay this guy.
Before you say it, no his shots aren't that good, they are just cheaper. In some cases they were so bad in color balance and focusing issues if they would have been my shots I wouldn't even have submitted them.

This leaves me on short notice to start shopping myself around to cover the state tourneys this year. This is the effect GWC's have on the industry. If he asks for payment I am pretty sure the editor would put me back on the assignments as he has made a comment to me before that altho the photos aren't that great the price is right and the guy enoys doing it and is already there. Think about that before you offer to shoot for the access and no pay. You do it for free and then want payment, they may just find themselves someone else who 'enjoys' doing it and doesn't want paid.

Good post Jeff, sorry to hear about your situation, I can only imagine this becoming more and more of a standard practice and the papers "expecting" to get these free photos. Its funny how I notice that every newspaper site now seems to have that "upload your photos here" section to make that mom or dad feel special to get their photo in the paper.

Yeah Cory and if you read the fine print on those, they are a lot of times no longer your property either. They now belong to the newspaper. Another thing no one thinks about when they do that is part of those agreements are that the paper can use it in any way shape or form for this and any other lifetimes they want to.

Happening everywhere Jeff!

The newspaper here was upset when I submitted my invoice for some images in spring. When football season came around I was told I'd be doing some sectional games and never got the call - instead see this amateur being used and the images are not good at all - I still wonder if he knows where the focus button is. There's no standards anymore, it's price. They gave writers P&S cameras to do crappy snap shots for their articles, they suck badly! Happens in other businesses too, I can easily bring up 5-6 cases of it over the last year.

It's not just the GWC Jeff, it's more of your editor accepting lower quality work because the price (or lack there of) was right.

Sledhed wrote in post #4796315
It's not just the GWC Jeff, it's more of your editor accepting lower quality work because the price (or lack there of) was right.

Good ol' saying - you get what you pay for...

You guys, Chris & Mike have seen his work. Can you believe that he would actually put those up for publication? Damn if that were my best from a game I would say I had a card error, dropped my camera or was robbed on the way to my car and they stole my camera LOL. Heck even the old computer corrupted the files and there is nothing left would be a better choice than publishing that stuff.

IndyJeff wrote in post #4796873
You guys, Chris & Mike have seen his work.

Yeah Jeff I saw them and they did truly suck! If that was the best I could do I would have quit years ago. I still say your editor has a lot to do with your situation. He knows the work is poor but accepts them because they are free.

Yea, they did suck...but he enjoys doing it and that's what matters right? ugh...

Most local papers around here only use one small shot of each event, so it's just another case of the free blind pig finding an occasional in focus acorn?
Too bad, & as you said, it's time "start shopping myself around" & let the pigs wallow where they may.

Oh but this is not just one shot. Usually there are 2 with the story and an additional 8-10 on a seperate picture page. Heck most of the time he can't even provide 2 decent shots to accompany the story.

On the similar subject CNN has been accepting shots from anyone (iReport). I can see it if those are the only images of a news item but I get the feeling they will be using them more and more. Funny how we get HDTV for better quality and now the editors are beginning to display less quality images.

IndyJeff wrote in post #4794832
For the last 4 years I have shot a local high school's sectional basketball games. A couple of years ago a guy who had a kid on the cross country & track teams got a camera. He started submitting to the same news site I shoot for. The editor gladly accepted his shots because those two sports don't have a large following and he had other stuff for me to cover. He thinks it is fun to shoot sports, which I guess it is by most peoples standards.
So this year he starts showing up at the regular season basketball games, which the editor usually shot himself anyway, and he starts submitting shots from these games. Well now he shoots them all. I had a conversation with the editor today and he will be using this guy for 2 reasons. One, he doesn't expect the boys or girls teams to advance very far in the tourney and, two, he doesn't have to pay this guy.
Before you say it, no his shots aren't that good, they are just cheaper. In some cases they were so bad in color balance and focusing issues if they would have been my shots I wouldn't even have submitted them.

This leaves me on short notice to start shopping myself around to cover the state tourneys this year. This is the effect GWC's have on the industry. If he asks for payment I am pretty sure the editor would put me back on the assignments as he has made a comment to me before that altho the photos aren't that great the price is right and the guy enoys doing it and is already there. Think about that before you offer to shoot for the access and no pay. You do it for free and then want payment, they may just find themselves someone else who 'enjoys' doing it and doesn't want paid.

This doesn't speak well for you as a photographer my friend. Looks like he was only using you because you were not charging very much. Most likely he could have cared less what your photos looked like apparently.. If he is taking this kids photos over yours only because the price is lower then maybe you weren't producing amazing quality images.

I 100% guarantee you... if you were producing AMAZING shots he would do whatever he could to keep you happy so you won't leave.
Maybe that just happens to me because I take average looking photographs..

Ladies and Gentleman, we must rise above the GWC and only concern ourselves with how we can better market ourselves. There will always be lowballers and new talent entering the marketplace. The only way that you can keep your Clients is simply producing better images. If you cannot keep Clients than you are digressing as photographers, businessman or their needs have changed. I, for one will look to move up the ladder and pursue a higher quality of Clients.

Adaptive wrote in post #4802037
This doesn't speak well for you as a photographer my friend. Looks like he was only using you because you were not charging very much. Most likely he could have cared less what your photos looked like apparently.. If he is taking this kids photos over yours only because the price is lower then maybe you weren't producing amazing quality images.

I 100% guarantee you... if you were producing AMAZING shots he would do whatever he could to keep you happy so you won't leave.
Maybe that just happens to me because I take average looking photographs..

You have never worked on the other side of the business have you? Businesses, especially news, area a bottom line type of company...IF this were for a high quality magazine there might be some merit to your post, but that is not the case in this situation.