Re: photos needed (and the value of photography)

**r* <r*@comcast.net>**

Mark,
I'm not a professional photographer...as some are on the list. I'm a writer that sells photos with my articles. I do not give away my photos...nor do I not need the money...

It is a sore point for me too..to hear that $50 is too low to bother. In my world it is not. I suspect others understand my world...

I only have trouble that the comment was posted to the list. Others that believe $50 is fair...will get involved...if it is too low for some...fine...they won't reply. I just don't need to hear how low it is.

I have no problem with the rest of the comment praising the detailed request. It was a great request. Like I said, I wish I had the photos or could get them...

I think the long time writers and photographers on the list tend forget about us relative newbies and how the comment appears as negative.

An example would be an executive saying they won't take a salary less than $100, 000. Good for them...all power to them...but I don't want to hear about it if I am a lower level clerk...

Just sayin...

Sandie Parrott

>From my Android phone on T-Mobile. The first nationwide 4G network.

-------- Original message --------
From: Mark Turner <mark@turnerphotographics.com> 
Date: 06/13/2013  12:54 PM  (GMT-05:00) 
To: gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org 
Subject: Re: [GWL] photos needed (and the value of photography) 

Sandie Parrot wrote ...

Some of us would jump at a $50 per photo rate...I wish I had the photos...or
access to these plants...
I'm sorry, but your note hit me negatively.
I'm glad you are doing well enough to turn this down, but I don't think it
needed to be posted to the list...

-----
Sandie, I replied privately to the original requestor with my standard
minimum usage fee, which is considerably higher than $50 per image and
probably in line with what Saxon licenses his photos for. I haven't heard
back, which I presume means she found someone who accepted the fee being
offered.

A $50 photo license may sound generous to you, but when you stop to think
about the time, effort, and expense that goes into creating a library of
horticultural images it begins to look pretty puny. That $50 license fee has
to support the photographer, the time involved in running a business that
doesn't directly generate income, and the photographer's family. It's
challenging to find enough markets for garden images to make a business. At
$50 each, I have would have to license nearly 15 photographs per month just
to pay my health insurance premium. On an annual basis about 1500 licenses
at $50 each would put enough money in my pocket, after expenses, to earn
about as much as a first year public school teacher. One $50 license fills
the gas tank in my 20-year old truck one time, which fuels one 300-mile
round trip to find and photograph gardens or wildflowers. It's less than I
earned for the same use in 1996.

It's challenging for those of us for whom photography is a full-time
business, and a sole means of support for our families, when people who
"don't need the money" license their work at low fees, or give it away.
That's probably more true in 2013 than it was when I started, but
photographers have been asked to work for nearly free as long as I've been
in the business and that's approaching 20 years.

Somehow editors, designers, publishing company owners, and printers are
expected to make a decent living at what they do but writers and
photographers often get the short end of the stick. Some other "day job" or
spouse's income is somehow supposed to make up the difference.

Sorry, it's a sore point.

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