A hot topic for photographers is the \u201cfree conundrum\u201d.\u00a0 Many amateur photographers are as good as professionals.\u00a0 They take as much time in learning the craft and in planning a shoot; they just don\u2019t do it for a living.\u00a0 They\u2019ll post their images on websites, forums, Flickr, and so on.\u00a0 At some point a good photographer is contacted and asked if an image can be used for something.\u00a0 For example, I\u2019ve been asked by a Scandinavian tourist board if one of my White-Tailed Sea Eagle photos could be used in a brochure.\u00a0 I enquired to find out what they were willing to pay.\u00a0 They wanted me to do it for free.\u00a0 Free sounded like a rip-off to me because I used expensive equipment and paid a lot of money to go on the trip.\u00a0 I also took great care in processing the photo in question.\u00a0 That said to me that my time, effort, and skill were worth \u20ac0 to this government organisation.\u00a0 There was no way that I would accept that.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, I\u2019ve allowed a local start-up business use some of my photos (for web usage) in return for access to their birds of prey and for photo credits on their site.\u00a0 It was a fair trade: they didn\u2019t have any budget but they have something of value to me.\u00a0 I’ve also contributed photos to a not-for-profit nature website who happily credit the contributors.\u00a0 We both win.<\/p>\n
Why am I blogging about this on an IT site?\u00a0 Let me explain \u2026<\/p>\n
I was listening to \u201cThey Photography Show\u201d podcast this morning and they talked about how photographers shouldn\u2019t give away their wares for nothing.\u00a0 It says that your value is \u20ac0 and that you\u2019ll always be there to be taken advantage of.\u00a0 That struck a chord.<\/p>\n
Back in 2006, I set about trying to raise my profile in the business.\u00a0 I started blogging.\u00a0 Part of that was writing guides and whitepapers.\u00a0 I then started getting asked to present.\u00a0 All cool.\u00a0 That lead to community opportunities, writing books, networking with local IT people, and joining the MVP community.<\/p>\n
But there are those who want to push too far and take too much.\u00a0 One huge corporation wanted to take one of my ConfigMgr 2007 guides, and republish it internally for commercial usage without paying me.\u00a0 There\u2019s lots more like that which is unacceptable.\u00a0 And there are those who assume my time, skill, and effort can be taken for granted without any consequences.\u00a0 Uh uh! In the immortal words of Damon Wayans: Homey don\u2019t play that<\/a>.<\/p>\n Questions through my blog, presenting at community events where expenses are covered, helping out that isn\u2019t free consulting are all good.\u00a0 That\u2019s just being a helpful part of the community.\u00a0 But assuming that I am (or, anyone for that matter, is) a free support service that you can call upon to sort out your commercial problems instead of hiring a professional is plain greedy.<\/p>\n People like myself put a lot of time and effort learning about this things we work with.\u00a0 We put in that extra effort after we have \u201cclocked out\u201d, unlike many others.\u00a0 If you have a quick question or a community request, then cool, we can help out.\u00a0 But if you\u2019re looking for a free commercial solution then you need to get your wallet out or put in the extra work for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A hot topic for photographers is the \u201cfree conundrum\u201d.\u00a0 Many amateur photographers are as good as professionals.\u00a0 They take as much time in learning the craft and in planning a shoot; they just don\u2019t do it for a living.\u00a0 They\u2019ll post their images on websites, forums, Flickr, and so on.\u00a0 At some point a good … Continue reading “Can\u2019t Give Away Everything for Free”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}