Or maybe not? If you’re into licensing your images for publication here’s something a little out of the box. While the pricing model of microstock still places it on the periphery of many stock shooters operating ‘box’ Redgage, in terms of pricing at least, is way out off the field.  Redgage isn’t a stock photography site though and isn’t going to license your images. Here’s how they describe themselves;

RedGage is a website that pays you for your content and monetizes your social activity.

RedGage helps you make money for what you’re already doing online and by building traffic to your content on RedGage you can maximize your earnings.

Like it or not, Getty are certainly working hard at making the most of Flickr in terms of turning shared photos into stock photos. Last year the Getty-Flickr collection was announced and just as the number of images harvested for it hits 100,000 they announce a free for all Getty link up within the ‘Flickrverse’. This has effectively comercialised the whole of Flickr enabling any interested Flickr user to monetize their photostream via Getty Images.

However, Getty don’t have a complete monopoly on truning Flickr into a stock photography storefront. The Flickr API allows anyone with the necessary skills to build websites, apps etc that will link and synch with Flickr for all sorts of reasons. There is nothing to stop a stock photography agency setting up using this, or individual photographers creating a site for a ‘buy now’ type function for their images on Flickr. Clustershot is an example of a stock photography outlet that uses the Flickr API to allow its users to import their photostream into an ecommerce enabled site. Unfortunately they only offer RF licensing, but it shows what is possible. My previous post on  on Clustershot is here.

The saving grace in this latest move from Getty and Yahoo (as the owners of Flickr) is the fact each deal has to be run past the photographer first. Also, while no-one likes Getty’s cut, getting 20/30% of a sale you’d maybe never otherwise have made is obviously worthwhile. This brings up the obvious question; can it be done independently?

As I only have the grand total of 62 images on Flickr I can’t provide any meaningful experience. I have a ‘contact me’ to license note on my profile which should be the first obvious thing anyone prepared to license their work should do. A serious buyer would find this information if interested and dealing directly with a client wouldn’t, by the sounds of it, be much more work than liaising with a Getty editor on this scheme. The problem may be that buyers could prefer to deal with the known goliath of Getty than negotiate with individual photographers.

It is also possible to format the notes on your individual photo pages on Flickr so you can link to an Alamy image detail pages for instance. However, doing this on a large scale would be laborious and, I think, still technically against Flickr’s terms of service which don’t like overt commercial use of the site.

With so few images on Flickr the decision to be, or nor not to be, with Getty isn’t a big or pressing one for me at present. This really just bubbles Flickr back up to the surface of my thinking. For those of you with significant numbers of images on Flickr though a tempting offer has been made. What do you think?

I don’t envy the picture editors at Getty. The news that they are opening up the Getty Flickr collection for anyone to submit a test batch of ten images to is like opening the flickrgates holding back a deluge of literally millions of images. Already the call for artists pool is overflowing with images, many of which you have to wonder why the contributors imagine Getty might be interested in. The people wrapping their eyeballs around the inevitatble influx of images are going to have a lot on after this announcement.

However, this news goes beyond provoking sympathy for Getty Images’ soon to be overworked picture editors. It is pretty revolutionary. Getty used to be akin to the wholly grail of stock agencies. Being a Getty shooter was something to aspire towards; an achievement that meant you were producing work of quality and distinction. A commensurately impressive remuneration usually followed. Now anyone with a Flickr account can throw their hat into the ring.

A lot of long standing Getty photographers understandably lament the passing of the old days when they enjoyed their elite status but you have to hand it to Getty for not restng on their laurels. They’ve evolved with the changing market place by gobbling up istockphoto and partnering with Flickr to tap into the biggest collection of creative imagery online. As soon as Getty got in the commercialisation of Flickr was ineviatble. This latest move will effectively create a new stock collection cherry picked from the endless supply uploaded to Flickr.

Getty and Flickr have effectively democratised stock photography. Getting into Getty has gone from being the preserve of a relatively few invited high end professionals to an open door ‘show us what you’ve got’ policy. There has been the pay to get in Photographers Choice for some time, but that was $50 an image and required high end cameras. The Flickr collection requires a minimum of 3MP! Your phone could quite possibly be adequate to get you images into Getty. Seriously, most microstock sites have tougher technical entry requirements.

This is because Getty are responding to market demand for images that have a feeling of real life and this demand is often coming from market sectors that don’t need huge files. Its more about the image being right emotionally, not technically. The defunct photoshelter collection was thinking along these lines; they were on to something but didn’t last long enough to make it happen. Getty saw this, and crucially realised Flickr was the quick way to build this new collection.

So, should we all be Getty Photographers now? Check out this thread on the call for artists group and you’ll see not everyone wants to jump into bed with Getty. Personally I hate the 20% royalty to photographers, but then you come around to the old chestnut 20% of a big pie is often better than 50% of a small pie. Getty’s pie is undeniably large; their credits are easily found and they dominate many markets through sheer size. I’m undecided at the moment but will probably upload some more images to Flickr with a view to putting in my ten to apply. There is no obligation to accept any offer Getty make, and if I decided to knock an acceptance back I could at least brag I turned Getty down. Thing is, I’m not sure “Getty Shooter” will carry the status it currently does for much longer.

What do you think?