PhotoShelter Town Hall: New Stock and Old Arguments

PhotoShelter's new "town hall" series, which premiered in New York September 14, is ostensibly designed to bring together photographers and art buyers to talk about where the industry is headed, especially as it applies to the online realm. But we all know that it's also a convenient forum for them to introduce their new photographer-friendly stock agency (full exclusive report at popphoto.com), the PhotoShelter Collection.

And it certainly didn't hurt their cause to include in the "roundtable" discussion Roy Hsu, a photographer and president of the Stock Artists Alliance, which is leading the charge against Getty's announcement a few weeks ago that it would offer $49 "web use" licenses for images from all of its collections, including its top tier Rights Managed images. A number of photographers' organizations have joined the effort to have Getty rescind the offer, including ASMP, APA, EP, and U.K. and Canadian groups.

What started off with PhotoShelter CEO and founder Allen Murabayashi gently prodding Getty and Corbis employees in the audience with "we know you're out there," ended up as a full-blown airing of grievances against Getty. Photographer Kareem Black, who was also on the panel, has been represented by Getty for years and said he has watched his checks "go down over the years." "They believe in quantity rather than quality," he complained. "Someone's making money, but the photographers aren't."

Another topic that generated a lot of heat was image copyrighting. In one of the day's most genuine and enjoyable moments, PhotoShelter VP of Marketing and panel mediator Grover Sanschagrin singled out photographer and PhotoShelter user Landon Nordeman to ask if he registers his images for copyright. "Um, no." "Why not, just a pain?" Grover asked, while the audience tittered. "Um, yeah, basically." But isn't he worried about misuse? Well, Landon admitted, he did Google his images once and find one as a background for someone's MySpace page. "But I wasn't too worried about it," he admitted.

Landon, and the many photographers who share his state of mind, got a little talking to about copyright, not least of all from keynote speaker and commercial photographer Chase Jarvis, who is currently in the middle of several ongoing copyright cases over misuse of his images. His battles are proof of the importance of registering: his copyrighted images can bring up to $150,000 each in statutory damages plus lawyers' fees; multiple unregistered ones brought about $400 total for years of misuse.

Chase is also working with the Library of Congress and online photo sites like PhotoShelter to put the copyright registration process online. It's easier than you think already, though. Hundreds of images can be registered at once for a $45 fee by sending in a form and DVD of the images. Go here for details.  But Chase is also the first to warn that change is in the wind, and defending to the death a stake in the shifting sands of copyright law doesn't make much sense.

In many ways Chase embodies the conflicting attitudes that permeate today's photo industry and were reflected in the PhotoShelter event. A successful commercial photographer, Chase is incredibly hard-working, but also lots of fun. He brought his own DJ for backup music for his keynote and showed fast-paced videos of his globe-trotting shoots (conveniently editing out most of the back-breaking setup work and days of tedious travel). The PhotoShelter event itself was pretty rock-and-roll, held in the Filmore East and aimed in some ways at inspiring photographers more than intensely informing them. Likewise the whole industry seems in a state of unprecedented foment most of the time, but also terrified of the speed and complexity of all these radical changes.

And like Murabayashi said at the beginning of Friday's session, "By the end of the day, you'll either be really enraged or giddy to get back to photography." Like most photographers struggling through the present market, the audience seemed to be a little bit of both.

~Miki Johnson

(Photo: "An audience of several hundred photographers and photo professionals listens to photographer Chase Jarvis and his accompanying DJ from the floor of the Filmore East theater in New York City at PhotoShelter's town hall event September 14." By Jack Howard)