They make it sound so easy. It's not.

Mark

They're not making very much money. And not anywhere near as much as they should. The professionals aren't complaining for the sake of it, they're complaining because it's forcing the entire sector down the drain cash wise. Agencies won't pay decent rates if they can get away with paying next to nothing to people who don't know what their work is actually worth.

It's like the whole 'citizen journalism' thing. It's basically the news agencies getting for free (or near as) what they used to have to pay people a living wage for.

Now on a purely capitalist level that's all fair enough - things are worth the minimum anyone is willing to accept for them. However to a large degree I doubt the 'amateurs' in question would be willing to accept what the agencies are offering if they knew how much the agencies used to be paying to professionals for exactly the same content.

Jon

Or how much the agencies then make on selling the rights to use the images.

The likes of Getty aren't in it for the philanthropy. What the photographer gets out of letting an agency licence an image is small beans by comparison.

So, paying little to 'togs for their snaps devalues the industry and makes life harder for the pros to make ends meet. (Incidentally, I agree with this sentiment.)
This is a Bad Thing, as far as most people are concerned.

But when it's the games or film industry, there's a general brouhaha about outdated business models, that their wares need to be cheaper, and democratisation of the market place for the small developer/film maker.
I wonder if this is because most of you aren't ever exposed to the cost of hiring a 'tog/leasing an image, but will buy a game.

I sell my pics, all the cash goes to charitys and not a single penny goes to me, (which is a good thing )

As a purchaser of images, I was loving istockphoto, but always wondered how on earth people were happy to put their pictures up. However, especially since their purchase by Getty, prices are going up and up and up.

We use iStock at work - I was helping with a leaflet design which required small boy, smiling, lifting a small crab up to the camera.
Found one on Getty, which was perfect, and another on shutterstock, alamy et al.
After we'd stopped laughing at their asking price for the cover of a print run of about 1000 for 6 months (approx. the annual budget for all of our printed materials), the boss went with iStock ultimately.
For this reason, most of the photos used in our literature are generated by me and donated to the charity.