I've been published (This is the first one I knew about anyway)

[fracster]

The writer of the article got paid.. the editor got paid.. the people supplying the paper and ink.. the office staff... geeze even the kid on the paper round got paid..... why did you think you where the only person that shouldnt be paid?

Bang on right Tony..............

 

[fixedimage]

Look at the Internet - it stands a reasonable chance of being at least one of the nails in the coffin of printed news.

The big titles that do not have unique selling points (Page 3, xenophobia, re-runs of re-examinations of Princess Diana's favourite pair of socks) are having to put up Pay Walls to get people. To pay for news that is pretty much freely available anywhere else n the Internet, with questionable success.

I'm going to kick the hornet's nest and suggest it will be the way with photojournalism: unless a photo does or says something that no others do or will, it is no better than one which comes from a kid's mobile phone, for free. Photographers will have to adapt or do something else.

Economics sucks, but it will always win.

Props to the OP for getting the image out there, regardless of the reason.

Good points but, in my opinion, while the writing is on the wall for photojournalism, the fat lady ain't sung yet so there's still value in educating amateurs about the damage that giving images for free does.

I also think that while press/photojournalism is where the trend of free images is most noticeable and is having the biggest effect on peoples earnings, it's also prevalent in a lot of other areas of photography.

As a student I get hit with a lot of comps to enter and I get pretty disgusted at how many are thinly veiled attempts at gaining free stock imagery. I'm sure that this "photography for free" mentality is coming from somewhere.

 

[DemiLion]

Simon, firstly congrats on getting officially published, but I agree with the others that not making the paper pay for the image is the wrong approach (note the emphasis).

If you didn't want to take payment on moral grounds (which is fair enough) why not request that the publishers donate the fee to charity, perhaps the local rehab clinic? They can even lay this off against tax, but the principal of 'good enough to print, good enough to pay for' is upheld.

Whether you like the reaction to this thread is by-the-by, however there is a fairly serious battle betwixt proprietors/publishers/photo eds and photographers at the moment not only over the payment for images but also the amount offered.

The sooner the amateur market understands that it's not the principal of receiving payment themselves, but of newspapers and magazines paying for their content that matters, the better. The NUJ are currently discussing a campaign that revolves around exactly this point.

You've complained about The Mail using your images for free and without permission; where do you think that they got the idea that they could get away with this sort of behaviour?