denyerec.co.uk

I stumbled across another stock photography site today called Dreamstime or something. Didn’t give it a thorough workout but I noticed that they’re flogging high-res stock images for 77 US Cents.

77 US Cents.

Gah. You know the issue is so tired with me I can’t even find the energy to rant about it. People say “You may as well put photos up on a site and get 30 cents per download off it” using the arguement that “You wouldn’t make money off it anyway, so why not?”
The “Why not” to me is painfully simple. Good images are simply worth more than that. Equipment, time, travel, expenses and gosh-darn, bloody **experience**. To see people throwing good images that have cost them to produce onto sites like this just makes me sad. Will there come a point in the future where there won’t be any such thing as a professionally produced image, because people have become too accustomed to paying $0.77 for a photo? I’ve had experiences in the past of people asking “How much?” and when they’re told they go crazy with things like “Why should you charge that when I can get photo’s off the ‘net for a dollar?” (Or worse, steal them from Google images…)

It seems to me as if there’s 3 broad categories of people who upload stock to these sites. Either they were never going to make a penny off their casual shots, so they’re giving it a go to see what they can make. Then you have the people who don’t value their work and think that $1 per copy is “all they can hope for” because they’ve been beaten into submission by a market demanding stupid cheap prices for quality work. Finally you have the people who treat it like a full-on enterprise. They’re Pumping thousands of images into the database using napalm tactics to ensure that they get a reasnoble financial reward, even if they’ve put in far more work than the cash value they’re getting out.

Why should I even care? I’m trapped in a moral (?) dilemma of sorts. I’m broke, I could use the money, but do I really want to sell out my artwork for a lousy 50p a shot? I could literally make far more working in McDonalds and wouldn’t have to stress about technique, location, new material, ideas, equipment, insurance… The list goes on.

Maybe I’ve just got the wrong mindset, perhaps it is all well and good, it’s a sensible way for photographers to make money etc etc yadda yadda. I just can’t feel it though, giving away your creativity for 50p a time. ..

People pay more for a king-size Snikers bar.

Ok. Almost 2 days into using the Spam Karma plugin. Give the man a Nobel prize and get his code into the WordPress core.

Awesome work, basically. If you have wordpress get this plugin, no question about it, simply the best spam blocking doo-jar whats-a-mah-jig available.

If I actually had any money, I swear for something this useful, I’d part with some of it.

So long as it’s not about sodding Texas Holdem or Cialis.
I’ve installed a new plugin, the seemingly wonderful Spam Karma 2.0. While I’m putting it through it’s paces please PLEASE get right in touch with me via email (Contact Me page) if you get bounced, blocked, or accused unfairly of being a filthy good for nothing spammer.

Peace.

Hopefully.

I poke my head above the parapet of my own distractions to bring you this little chestnut of warm, fuzzy news: Girl slashed in classroom attack

Ok, so I was being sarcastic about the warm fuzzies. I left highschool maybe 10 years ago (Bloody hell. I feel old now.) I can pretty much state that the worst that ever happened was a fist fight,a couple of broken bones and a knockout. There were grudges and hard feelings but nothing that would have hospitalised anyone.

Now we’ve got girls knifing each other up in class?

Maybe this is how Rome self destructed, the populus turning in on itself and decending into anarchy. Or maybe the senate was hit by a 15-year old female knife gang…

Does anywhere in the world seem “nice” anymore? Please send me details of real estate prices and the cost of milk. Of course, it could be that the modern media is just getting better and better at bringing us the bad news? It would be silly to dismiss out of hand the possibility that there is no more wrongdoing in the world now than there was 50 years ago, except now we’re kept abreast of every single peice of it and can no longer live in blissful ignorance. I’m not old enough to say and to harp on about how “Things didn’t seem so bad when I was 10″ seems a little trite as I’d never watch the news or a read a paper and there was no available internet to tell me of the latest stabbing in Scotland, or shooting in California.

Can anyone tell me, definatively, if things really are getting worse?