Re: photos needed (and the value of photography)

**"* W* B* <c*@gardengate.net>**

Well said Mark. 

For a writer try thinking of it this way. Supposed the editor is willing to pay a fair price that allows a photographer to make a living and feed the family. However, for the article, the fee the publication will offer to the writer is a mere $50 for an article that you spent 4 hours crafting plus another 4 hours researching. Forever I keep hearing about the disparity between the value written and visual content. How does the saying go, "a picture is worth a thousand words."

Charlie Bowers
charlie@gardengate.net

On Jun 13, 2013, at 12:54 PM, Mark Turner <mark@turnerphotographics.com> wrote:

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.

-- Mark Turner

=============================================================
Mark Turner  |  Turner Photographics  |  360-671-6851
Family Portraits ... Naturally
Horticultural and Pacific Northwest Photography
Bellingham, WA  |  mark@turnerphotographics.com
www.turnerphotographics.com  |  www.inlandnwgardening.com
www.purebredpetportraits.com  |  www.pnwflowers.com
blog: http://www.turnerphotographics.com/blog
Photographer of Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest & Bellingham
Impressions
==============================================================

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