Hi there,
may I introduce myself? I am Alexander and this is my first article on Peakd.
Originally my work is in photography. I started in 2004 while still studying economics and specialized on portraits, beside documentary and landscape photography. But the images I loved the most were not the ones that paid the bills. So I used my network and established a portrait studio in Berlin. On the short horizon that seemed like a good idea. In the long run, I'd like to dive into NFT and photography, since the potential is powerful.
An example: I have a client who is a bit more famous than others, so his image gets shown in more magazines, news outlets and articles. In the moment of the creation of the image I do not know how much "benefit" the image will create - or if it will even end up on a t-shirt. So how can a value the usage right of the work?
The photography business is multi-facetted. As a freelance photographer you are a creative for hire. Most clients want to book you on a daily rate. I also charge per image and type of usage, for example website, press or commercial picture. Of course a commercial picture that gets printed on ads should be worth more than a portrait for Linked.in. But when the simple application portrait will be used in corporate mailing, the photographer mostly wont know and many clients use that missing transparency of real usage to their advantage.
With the rise of Covid many photographers had cancellations for months. So many of them dived into other fields. My lawyer suggested to go after the non-licensed image users. There are thousands of websites, that let you download my most iconic image, but my share of all these is unfortunately 0. Most of these sites are hosted in countries, where no European lawyer stands a chance.
There was a time, when you actually got paid to deliver good content. Magazines were looking for talent and bidding for their next photo series. Image rights have been managed by companies like Getty images and other agencies. Although the spread between creator and platform has been bad 1/3 vs 2/3 but still, there was some income stream to be generated with an extensive image gallery for license under Getty's ties. Usage rights were worth something and photographers have been earning with them like musicians or authors. Now it's just sad, how cheaply image rights are sold and how little control photographers have, with what happens with the images.
It seems the value of the meaningful content got replaced by the pure attraction of the attention. Otherwise how do you explain platforms like facebook, Instagram and TikTok attracting so many content creators to display their art for free?
They don't even get a share of the advertising revenue the platform makes in the midst of the user generated content.
How are photographers and influencers supposed to maintain a healthy creative flow, when its only advertising clients giving them incentives for original content? Or, sometimes even worse, it's their own product/paid service they advertise: "be part of my group", "join my server" or what not.
So my question is: How are we going to create a world (metaverse), were content creators can participate the value of their created work in the long-term?
Might PEAKD be the right choice for this goal?
A social network were good content is valued?
Might NFTs be a good idea to track usage of photography?
Maybe photographers can soon participate real usage of their images?
