Competition = working for free.

[TMARK]

Nice link    I've never had a problem doing editorials for good magazines with a production budget that covers the costs, or even at a loss if it's prestigious enough because naturally that's gonna result in commercial work later on. What I DO object to is the avalanche of local wannabe magazines contacting you nowadays expecting you to work with no budget whatsoever, that's just bullshit.

Misbehave? Mass Appeal? I'm glad they folded, although Mass Appeal had some good photos every now and again.

Most of the crappy mags want Ben Watts for free, and they get it from the fresh out of SVA kids who all want to be Ben Watts.

[Robert Roaldi]

There's a related article on "crowdsourcing" in this week's Macleans (Cdn) magazine: dirt-cheap-labour/.

Must be the new economy. Everyone is self-actualizing by doing whatever they want and not charging for it. I am waiting for the movement to catch on in grocery and real estate. I'd love it if food was free and I didn't have to pay for my house.

Won't be long now before the big box stores start asking their "associates" to stock those shelves for free. Free market volunteerism, yeah! Funny how CEOs still expect to be paid though. Obviously, I'm not seeing the big picture.

[amsp]

There's a related article on "crowdsourcing" in this week's Macleans (Cdn) magazine: dirt-cheap-labour/.

Must be the new economy. Everyone is self-actualizing by doing whatever they want and not charging for it. I am waiting for the movement to catch on in grocery and real estate. I'd love it if food was free and I didn't have to pay for my house.

Won't be long now before the big box stores start asking their "associates" to stock those shelves for free. Free market volunteerism, yeah! Funny how CEOs still expect to be paid though. Obviously, I'm not seeing the big picture.

Yeah, I love how for some reason the people asking for free stuff always expect to get payed themselves, I wonder why that is  

[mmurph]

Obviously, I'm not seeing the big picture.

No, you're not!

Content, the Creative Commons, crowd sourcing -  anyone can **create**, all content is created equal, why pay for it when you can grab crap from anywhere and spoon feed it to the masses?

Now, the means of distribution - ah, that is where true genius lies - the oligarchy maintains control of distribution and reaps their just rewards for their risk taking!  

I mean, who would ever have thought of stapling two sheets of paper together to create - get this - a magazine!! In the past at least - or stringing wire so that something truly prescient like cable or the internet could come into being?  

The capitalists are being justly rewarded for their fealess entreprenuerism!  Ah, gotta love that word - you know, they are the heroisc risk takers. The content providers are just grist fior the mill, they oil the cogs of the machinery - with theor blood.  

Cheers!

Michael

[feppe]

There's a related article on "crowdsourcing" in this week's Macleans (Cdn) magazine: dirt-cheap-labour/.

Must be the new economy. Everyone is self-actualizing by doing whatever they want and not charging for it. I am waiting for the movement to catch on in grocery and real estate. I'd love it if food was free and I didn't have to pay for my house.

Won't be long now before the big box stores start asking their "associates" to stock those shelves for free. Free market volunteerism, yeah! Funny how CEOs still expect to be paid though. Obviously, I'm not seeing the big picture.

The big picture is that nobody is forced to do this stuff for free. People already pay to advertise for companies (witness D&G shirts and Gucci bags), so doing some menial labor for free is not a stretch by any means.

You can get "free" groceries from some idealistic communes - free to some extent. Some religious groups already do crowdsourced real estate by building a prayer room with volunteer work and materials.

"Proper" crowdsourcing can be used for tremendous social benefit - there's a galaxy classification project, for example -, and I don't see why it should not be used by corporations if people are willing to donate time to a worthy cause.

Then again, "worthy cause" these days might consist of writing a wiki of a TV series, or taking candids of Salma Hayek in a bikini, so perhaps you have a point

Actually, thinking of it, the latter is a worthy cause...

[nikf]

You can get "free" groceries from some idealistic communes - free to some extent. Some religious groups already do crowdsourced real estate by building a prayer room with volunteer work and materials.

"Proper" crowdsourcing can be used for tremendous social benefit

How naive is that?! It's all about power, goals, interests, oppression, exploitation and so on ... if people are not chasing their interest in this societies they stand in line as sheep for a cut throat.
It's not a discourse about a different, more 'human' society - it's all about business that's forced on all creatives to survive.
What's next? Finding 'good' arguments for child labor?

[Phil Indeblanc]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY

THAT WAS JUST FANTASTIC!  haha...man I wish that could be a video you can do as a preview to a portfolio some how.

[Phil Indeblanc]

another YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE
(Harlan Ellison -- Pay the Writer)
Ok, it's Harlan Ellison and he talks about writers - but it's the same sick nonsense everywhere.

That is just beautiful....!!

I think these in a series are a true display and a art expression for professional artists working in the new century!

[feppe]

How naive is that?! It's all about power, goals, interests, oppression, exploitation and so on ... if people are not chasing their interest in this societies they stand in line as sheep for a cut throat.
It's not a discourse about a different, more 'human' society - it's all about business that's forced on all creatives to survive.

How exactly is it exploitation when an able-minded adult chooses to do something for free? Nobody's forcing anything on anyone.

[Juanito]

A few people have already brought up the point that doing work for fashion magazines is basically a form of self promotion. Sometimes you get enough money to pay for expenses; sometimes you don't. But what about books like the Workbook, At Edge, Blackbook etc? If I want to be in one of those books, I have to pay thousands of dollars. What's the difference between those books and fashion editorial?

Both make money for the publishers. Both go out to my target market. Both allow me creative freedom.

Given the choice between not having to pay for self-promotion and paying for it, I'll take not paying thank you very much.

John

[PatrikR]

A few people have already brought up the point that doing work for fashion magazines is basically a form of self promotion. Sometimes you get enough money to pay for expenses; sometimes you don't. But what about books like the Workbook, At Edge, Blackbook etc? If I want to be in one of those books, I have to pay thousands of dollars. What's the difference between those books and fashion editorial?

Both make money for the publishers. Both go out to my target market. Both allow me creative freedom.

Given the choice between not having to pay for self-promotion and paying for it, I'll take not paying thank you very much.

John

Each month there's probably in USA alone 50 different fashion, style, beauty magazines for sale (estimated by quickly looking at Amazon's fashion magazines to make a point). If each of them has 5 editorials that makes 250 free jobs per month, 3000 shoots goes unpaid each year. If photog A should get paid 1000 dollars per editorial then the photographers donated 3 million dollars to the corporate world.

If photog A does one job for free who is ever gonna notice his wonderful and creative editorial out of those 3000 creative and wonderful editorials? This sounds like the Idols competition, few will make it the rest will pay it.

[harlemshooter]

Quite an interesting thread...

Inevitably, given the poor state of our saturated economy, demand for goods and services will continue to decrease until our market driven economy corrects itself.  We would do well to question our assumptions and adapt to remain competitive (even premier brands/top photographers).  Another factor, I would think, is how the photo industry is easier to break into given the advent and efficiencies afforded by digital technology, paradigm shifts in e-commerce practices and less print in circulation.

Different times, different methods as long as the end result is building your business.

[Phil Indeblanc]

Quite an interesting thread...let's not get too naive.

Inevitably, given the poor state of our saturated economy, demand for goods and services will continue to decrease until our market driven economy corrects itself.  We would do well to question our assumptions and adapt to remain competitive (even premier brands/top photographers).  Another big factor is how the photo industry is easier to break into than ever before given the advent and efficiencies afforded by digital technology, paradigm shifts in e-commerce practices and less print in circulation.

The economy will correct itself only so much, I think technology has just afforded things to be cheaper, and the global "worforce" as a whole has afforded to do things more by the numbers/masses, and I think something has to be recreated to localize labor in order to build value, but for a long time to come, things will not correct to any major level...the foundation things are building on are now a bit different.

[TMARK]

Each month there's probably in USA alone 50 different fashion, style, beauty magazines for sale (estimated by quickly looking at Amazon's fashion magazines to make a point). If each of them has 5 editorials that makes 250 free jobs per month, 3000 shoots goes unpaid each year. If photog A should get paid 1000 dollars per editorial then the photographers donated 3 million dollars to the corporate world.

If photog A does one job for free who is ever gonna notice his wonderful and creative editorial out of those 3000 creative and wonderful editorials? This sounds like the Idols competition, few will make it the rest will pay it.

Please re-read the posts by the fashion shooters for an explanation of how the industry works.

[lisa_r]

So it does look like this pretty much is exclusive to editorial fashion - Don't Pay the Photographer. Or the model.
Like the sweet Mr. Ellison said in that video, everyone else at the magazine is is getting paid.

[Phil Indeblanc]

So it does look like this pretty much is exclusive to editorial fashion - Don't Pay the Photographer. Or the model.
Like the sweet Mr. Ellison said in that video, everyone else at the magazine is is getting paid.

 everyone...thats not an intern :-)

[ziocan]

Each month there's probably in USA alone 50 different fashion, style, beauty magazines for sale (estimated by quickly looking at Amazon's fashion magazines to make a point). If each of them has 5 editorials that makes 250 free jobs per month, 3000 shoots goes unpaid each year. If photog A should get paid 1000 dollars per editorial then the photographers donated 3 million dollars to the corporate world.

If photog A does one job for free who is ever gonna notice his wonderful and creative editorial out of those 3000 creative and wonderful editorials? This sounds like the Idols competition, few will make it the rest will pay it.

What you say make no sense, because of those 50 magazines on the USA new stands, at least 45 pay and pay pretty well. SELF magazines, even pay up to 1000$ a page if the photographer is worth. Many of the american magazines pay 500$ a page (nearly double of european magazines) and if you do a story of 8 / 10 pages that is hardly working for free.
There are magazines that do not pay and are not worth working, because nearly nobody cares about them. But it does not take a crystal ball to tell which they are. On the other hand there are a few others which do not pay ( pay only expenses) but are worth working because they normally get on the desk of art directors, editor in chief and clients.
Some of the photographers here complain that magazines do not pay for editorials and make it sounds like all the magazines do not pay at all, simply because they are not good enough for being asked to work by the vast majority of magazines that pay.

Magazines do pay for editorials, just a small minority do not pay.

Not mentioning that beside what you are paid per page or photo, the magazines pay for the digital package, up to 1500$ a day (even on this economy) so if you carry your computer, cameras and assistant, you can claim those money and pay for your equipment and they pay for the retouching between 100 to 250$ a photo.

[lisa_r]

ziocan, plenty of good and not so good magazines pay something - just not enough to cover expenses and have decent profit left over if you are doing anything other than renting a cheap studio and shooting on a seamless. $500/page does not cover it for a location shoot. Now if you are getting $500 or $1000 per page plus all expenses, well that'd be fine I guess. Still there are plenty of damn good fashion magazines which simply do not pay that.

[ziocan]

So it does look like this pretty much is exclusive to editorial fashion - Don't Pay the Photographer. Or the model.
Like the sweet Mr. Ellison said in that video, everyone else at the magazine is is getting paid.

It may be an exclusive of those that are not ready for better magazines yet.
that is what it is.
Vast majority of magazines around the world (even the good ones) do pay.

[ziocan]

ziocan, plenty of good and not so good magazines pay something - just not enough to cover expenses and have decent profit left over if you are doing anything other than renting a cheap studio and shooting on a seamless. $500/page does not cover it for a location shoot. Now if you are getting $500 or $1000 per page plus all expenses, well that'd be fine I guess. Still there are plenty of damn good fashion magazines which simply do not pay that.

Of course I mean 500$ a page just as photographer fee and the production expenses including at least one assistant is all on the magazine.
I do not know what magazines you are referring too.
But If you consider ELLE, Marie Claire and similar magazines around the world not so good, then good luck.
But even Vogue pays the photographers. Less than 500$ a page for sure and also you will wait to be paid for at least 4/6 month, but they pay.

Plenty of european magazines prefer to do shooting on location traveling abroad rather than just outside the city, because they get packages for Tourism Bureaus around the world, therefore they do not pay for air fares and hotels.