Update - The BBC got back to me, apologizing, saying that my feedback has been noted, and that they hope to work together on a project with less financial constraints int he future.
Considering that most publications ghost or make you feel stupid when you insist on a fee, this was a nice gesture.
Have you ever gotten a note from some editor saying that they have no budget for photography and that they - the editor - isn’t getting paid either? I didn’t think so. The people begging for free photographs are being paid. And - and - do not get me started on unpaid “internships”.
Recently was asked by a major camera retailer if they could use a photo of mine in a slide show for a podcast they are doing. "We have no budget," they told me. I suggested that since the photo community supports their business, and that the picture they were interested in was made using equipment which I paid them dearly for, that they ought to give back -- and was able to wrangle a decent store gift card from them. /// I've been offered credit a million times, and have had to respond that my landlord doesn't accept just "credit." /// I've been told that "we're a non-profit," and have responded that I'm not, and that working for free isn't a good business model. /// "Can you give this one to us, we have a lot of stuff in the pipeline" is another thing I've heard multiple times. No, why don't you pay me for this one, and I'll consider a discount next time. Of course, there's never a next time. /// I could go on, as probably every photographer reading this could also.
"The reason is simple — no other professionals would give their work for free, non-profit or not, except photographers."
I don't know if I'm misreading this, but as a filmmaker and video editor I see this a lot too, as well as requests for designers, motion designers, illustrators, animators, musicians, writers... Pretty much any creative professional. And one part of the non-profit specific pitch is that some non-creative professionals donate time or skills for tax write-offs, so non-profits often get used to some sort of alternative compensation.
With the prevalence of "for exposure" asks non-profits do, you'd think they'd have a quick and manageable "for tax write-offs!" pitch (note that I don't know how realistic that is or how it works). However, for some reason I've never heard of artists donating art to non-profits for a write-off, I've only heard of art owners donating their art. Something something money laundering, etc.
If photography is as bad as the lit scene, I bet photography contests’ fees are egregious, too, and the contests aren’t transparent about how many subs they accept.
While I'm not always very happy with Substack's management, one thing that got me to move on to this platform after almost two decades of blogging on a WordPress installation hosted by my employer was that a few of my friends who had writing careers had long complained that those of us who wrote for free were (and then had) killed the profession of writing. Sadly, I now acknowledge they had a point, and it involved a lot of the same kind of excuse-making by major publications that you describe here--once they knew there were people who wrote for personal satisfaction or attention and had other jobs, they knew they could get a lot of content for free. And a lot of people also thought, "This is a loss-leader, if I give a couple of pieces away for free, someone will hire me". This also turned out to be untrue.
However, I don't think it's just the lame-ass excuses of organizations looking to save money that are the problem. The other problem is that it turns out there are a LOT of creative people on this planet--a lot of people who write well, take photographs well, make great art, make clever small videos, etc. In the 20th C. most of those people were gated off from publication or exhibition by a small army of culture-brokers--editors, museum directors, gallerists, producers, etc. What that did was not only create a kind of false sense that there was only a small creative elite capable of making art, entertainment and insight, but it also kept the raw amount of culture-making down to what we could all consume with our available leisure time. (Which we had more of in the old pre-digital world in part because labor activism in the early 20th C. established sharp boundaries between leisure and work and capped the amount of time people were allowed to work.) The crumbling of the gatekeepers' ability to control access to high-value culture-making not only revealed how many people were capable of great work, it buried all of us under an avalanche of culture, more than we could ever consume, and fragmented our attention.
Even if we constructed some form of creative solidarity that forced people who bought content to really buy it, we'd still have the problem that there are limits to how much end consumers can pay for content and limits to how much content they can actually view or read, so we'd either be spreading the revenues very thin over a vast number of creators or we'd have to reinvent the gatekeepers and reinforce the tournament economy determining who gets to be paid--which then undercuts the solidarity necessary to keep other people from giving away what they make.
I once had an editor who was so incensed by my refusal of his offer to work for free, that he contacted some of my paying clients trying to blackball me. They of course did the decent thing and told him his fortune. He went out of business 2 years later.
Many years ago I was burned by a travel startup that promised credit (links) and future paid gigs. The credit was on their website but hidden so deep that no one would ever see it and as they grew instead of paying for photographers they transitioned to using free images from Flickr. Lesson learned
So true. I was a working photographer as a second career and these requests came all the time. I always said no, including one publication who said they had no budget for photography (via the paid writer of the piece) and were genuinely incredulous that I didn’t want to provide my work for nothing. I usually ask a body offering credit for photography if they can provide a list of groceries retailers and utility providers who take photo credit in lieu of money. Oddly I’ve never got that list.
I have really come to loathe nearly all "non-profits" and especially NGO's. They wield their non-profit status like a handicapped parking placard to weasel into prized spaces, while crying out how constricted their budgets are. But ever see how much they get funded and how much their officers draw in salary? Like so many things in today's world, they're scammy and oftentimes scummy.
I've lost count of how many times I've been told some variation of we can't afford to pay you, but... I was asked a few weeks ago for an image that would be reproduced in a book on a subject I had photographed. I passed on providing it for free. While I understood their claims of a limited budget, I asked what they could afford to pay me. Never heard back.
Update - The BBC got back to me, apologizing, saying that my feedback has been noted, and that they hope to work together on a project with less financial constraints int he future.
Considering that most publications ghost or make you feel stupid when you insist on a fee, this was a nice gesture.
A colleague once said "Being offered photo credit is like being offered a cigar from your own box."
perfect
Have you ever gotten a note from some editor saying that they have no budget for photography and that they - the editor - isn’t getting paid either? I didn’t think so. The people begging for free photographs are being paid. And - and - do not get me started on unpaid “internships”.
Recently was asked by a major camera retailer if they could use a photo of mine in a slide show for a podcast they are doing. "We have no budget," they told me. I suggested that since the photo community supports their business, and that the picture they were interested in was made using equipment which I paid them dearly for, that they ought to give back -- and was able to wrangle a decent store gift card from them. /// I've been offered credit a million times, and have had to respond that my landlord doesn't accept just "credit." /// I've been told that "we're a non-profit," and have responded that I'm not, and that working for free isn't a good business model. /// "Can you give this one to us, we have a lot of stuff in the pipeline" is another thing I've heard multiple times. No, why don't you pay me for this one, and I'll consider a discount next time. Of course, there's never a next time. /// I could go on, as probably every photographer reading this could also.
Artists can die of exposure.
"The reason is simple — no other professionals would give their work for free, non-profit or not, except photographers."
I don't know if I'm misreading this, but as a filmmaker and video editor I see this a lot too, as well as requests for designers, motion designers, illustrators, animators, musicians, writers... Pretty much any creative professional. And one part of the non-profit specific pitch is that some non-creative professionals donate time or skills for tax write-offs, so non-profits often get used to some sort of alternative compensation.
With the prevalence of "for exposure" asks non-profits do, you'd think they'd have a quick and manageable "for tax write-offs!" pitch (note that I don't know how realistic that is or how it works). However, for some reason I've never heard of artists donating art to non-profits for a write-off, I've only heard of art owners donating their art. Something something money laundering, etc.
You can't eat hope. -- Neil Young
Amen.
If photography is as bad as the lit scene, I bet photography contests’ fees are egregious, too, and the contests aren’t transparent about how many subs they accept.
Many are just scams.
While I'm not always very happy with Substack's management, one thing that got me to move on to this platform after almost two decades of blogging on a WordPress installation hosted by my employer was that a few of my friends who had writing careers had long complained that those of us who wrote for free were (and then had) killed the profession of writing. Sadly, I now acknowledge they had a point, and it involved a lot of the same kind of excuse-making by major publications that you describe here--once they knew there were people who wrote for personal satisfaction or attention and had other jobs, they knew they could get a lot of content for free. And a lot of people also thought, "This is a loss-leader, if I give a couple of pieces away for free, someone will hire me". This also turned out to be untrue.
However, I don't think it's just the lame-ass excuses of organizations looking to save money that are the problem. The other problem is that it turns out there are a LOT of creative people on this planet--a lot of people who write well, take photographs well, make great art, make clever small videos, etc. In the 20th C. most of those people were gated off from publication or exhibition by a small army of culture-brokers--editors, museum directors, gallerists, producers, etc. What that did was not only create a kind of false sense that there was only a small creative elite capable of making art, entertainment and insight, but it also kept the raw amount of culture-making down to what we could all consume with our available leisure time. (Which we had more of in the old pre-digital world in part because labor activism in the early 20th C. established sharp boundaries between leisure and work and capped the amount of time people were allowed to work.) The crumbling of the gatekeepers' ability to control access to high-value culture-making not only revealed how many people were capable of great work, it buried all of us under an avalanche of culture, more than we could ever consume, and fragmented our attention.
Even if we constructed some form of creative solidarity that forced people who bought content to really buy it, we'd still have the problem that there are limits to how much end consumers can pay for content and limits to how much content they can actually view or read, so we'd either be spreading the revenues very thin over a vast number of creators or we'd have to reinvent the gatekeepers and reinforce the tournament economy determining who gets to be paid--which then undercuts the solidarity necessary to keep other people from giving away what they make.
I once had an editor who was so incensed by my refusal of his offer to work for free, that he contacted some of my paying clients trying to blackball me. They of course did the decent thing and told him his fortune. He went out of business 2 years later.
Well written and 100% on target, for many publications and many, many photographers.
Many years ago I was burned by a travel startup that promised credit (links) and future paid gigs. The credit was on their website but hidden so deep that no one would ever see it and as they grew instead of paying for photographers they transitioned to using free images from Flickr. Lesson learned
So true. I was a working photographer as a second career and these requests came all the time. I always said no, including one publication who said they had no budget for photography (via the paid writer of the piece) and were genuinely incredulous that I didn’t want to provide my work for nothing. I usually ask a body offering credit for photography if they can provide a list of groceries retailers and utility providers who take photo credit in lieu of money. Oddly I’ve never got that list.
I have really come to loathe nearly all "non-profits" and especially NGO's. They wield their non-profit status like a handicapped parking placard to weasel into prized spaces, while crying out how constricted their budgets are. But ever see how much they get funded and how much their officers draw in salary? Like so many things in today's world, they're scammy and oftentimes scummy.
I've lost count of how many times I've been told some variation of we can't afford to pay you, but... I was asked a few weeks ago for an image that would be reproduced in a book on a subject I had photographed. I passed on providing it for free. While I understood their claims of a limited budget, I asked what they could afford to pay me. Never heard back.
Oh hahaha of course. Try being a web designer…
These are quite similar to the concerns authors face in their publication scenarios.