As I understand the economics of the photography market, there are several factors at work.

1) Equipment - this affects the source quality of a picture and thus how it will look when reproduced. Early on a limiting factor was very 'slow' film requiring long exposures, and also limits of grain size which required larger surface area to achieve line density that made it still look OK when enlarged for publication or posters.

Technology has really worked on this constraint, the latest tweak being large format digital sensors that can take 3 pictures of exceptional clarity in low light. This hugely reduced the 'cost' of quality both from an overall light capture sense, and in the opportunity sense where you can take 15 exposures where you might used to take exactly one and thus have a higher probability of getting the picture you like at the lighting opportunity rather than 'missing it' and having to go back the next day/year/whatever (sorry and that relates mostly to outdoor photography)

2) Population of quality photographers. This has been perhaps the most amazing impact of digital photography for me. Generally you get 'good' at taking pictures by taking a lot of pictures and seeing which are good and which aren't. In the film days there was a financial burden due to film developing and printing images which was a prerequisite to getting 'good' at photography.

Today you can take a thousand pictures a week in a variety of settings and environments, you can display them instantly 'poster' sized on a 55" 1080p television you can print ones you like at home on an ink jet printer up to 13 x 19. The change I see there is that for only an investment of time, one can practice photography. This has hugely expanded the number of people who have taken thousands of photographs. Combined with the internet (more on that shortly) and the community groups which provide feedback the number of quality photographers who are taking pictures is higher now than it has ever been.

3) Distribution and Discovery - prior to the Internet photographers had gallery showings, or they did freelance work for periodicals, or they were hired by advertising or modelling agencies. Finding them was 'hard' in the sense you needed a hook into the community and for photographers 'being found' was hard. Thus the 'known' good photographer pool was always smaller than the 'actual' good photographer pool. People who were 'known' reaped the benefit of that as there was an opportunity cost of trying to find another photographer once you had already found one.

The Internet changed all of that, you can find galleries 'online' in Flickr albums, G+ feeds, Facebook pages, blogs, etc etc. So in the past when someone found a photographer and they were thrilled to have found one, they were not in a very strong bargaining position if they thought the price being charged was high, since the cost of finding another photographer was higher still. But now that the cost of finding a photographer is much much lower, and the number of quality photographers is much much higher. The availability of good quality photographs has exploded.

The impact of that explosion is that it is impossible to sustain a price point that was established in a time of scarcity during a time of plenty.

So ripping off a photo is now 'easy' in the sense that people copy an image from a web site or off a flickr feed etc and don't pay the photographer. Of the cases I've read about on the web they have always been one of two situations: 1) The person doing the copying didn't realize what they were doing was illegal and once informed either: a) Licensed the photograph b) Used a different photograph because they felt the asking price exceeded their internal notion of 'value' with respect to using the photo. 2) The person doing the copying knew they were ripping it off and if they are caught they just move to a different picture. In every case I've read about if the photographer has to resort to suing the infringer they have always won.

The important point for me has been that 'getting photos ripped off' has not been a money losing proposition unless the photographer did nothing, and I do recognize that having to be your own police with respect to people stealing your work is a pain.

The second issue of people giving away their work losing 'everybody' money seems even more perplexing. That the price you can charge for a photo has gone down as more people have entered the market can in fact grow the overall market. On a per transaction basis the market value of a photograph may be lower, but those lower prices cause more people to buy photographs, thus increasing the total economic value. To the extent that photographers are good at educating consumers of photographs that licenses are involved and they should seek out a license that is good for everyone.

I don't see this as a 'tragedy of the commons' rather as a an increase in efficiency of the market to match up good photographs with consumers of same. To the extent that it causes people to 'go out of business' and thus reduce the supply is the counter to an infinite supply of free photos.

> On a per transaction basis the market value of a photograph may be lower, but those lower prices cause more people to buy photographs, thus increasing the total economic value.

The problem here is that the market for these photos is fairly inelastic. The people who are taking photos aren't the ones buying them. At the lowest end of the spectrum, free photos don't generate any increase in demand. For instance, the fact that a magazine can get a photo for free doesn't mean that they're going to want to buy more stock photos. It's just going to make them want more photos for free.

Consider how a web developer would feel if there was suddenly a huge influx of high-quality web developers who would develop entire projects for free. Obviously this is economically infeasible in this industry, but that's basically why photographers are mad when it happens to them.

Kind of, but not really. By talented individuals charging less-nothing for some of their photos (likely already taken photos) instead of consuming and annihilating the shared resource of "money available to be spent on photography" they just move that around. This "don't give your photo away, or charge lower prices" argument is the same as all of the other NO!SPEC, anti-open-source/public domain/CC arguments, in that it's a bad argument.

Free and open source software is pretty well understood. For example, by having all of these quality web browsers for free, it allows a larger market for more companies to make more money selling their wares and services online. I believe the original argument against free browsers was something like, "free web browsers will cost jobs and lower the quality of the browser."

Whenever I read the articles or come across an individual that trashes students and amateurs for giving their work away I think a few things.

- Does this person really not understand that by Timmy the undergrad giving the bake sale a good, but not astounding, photo of a cupcake that it frees them, the professional, up to take photos of tiger sharks?

- Is this person actually just incapable of competing on quality or subject matter with amateurs and therefor unable to differentiate themselves?

<i>If good photographers are constantly giving photos away and not charging, professional photography prices and value naturally goes down. It's kind of a tragedy of the commons - photographers who DO give away work get more recognition, but they lower the overall value of their industry.</i>

It doesn't drive value down, it drives prices down for the same photographs. The same photos at a lower price means the value actually goes up. This is actually the opposite of the tragedy of the commons--instead of the commons being destroyed because no one has incentive to care for it, the commons grows over time because people contribute to it directly.

What it does do is force photographers to find new business models. They need to sell valuable hard copies of their work (Have you seen how much a quality wedding album costs?), or they need to charge for their time prior to taking the photographs. For some types of photography this is quite difficult (travel photography, various types of stock photography), for others relatively easy (fashion and event photography).

The only conciliation that I can offer is that I've never had a good experience with anyone who hard balls price, rather than quality -- in any industry, at any price. There will always be a point where the amateurs can't deliver like a professional can, particularly with photography -- that stuffs tough.

I think you are mistaken here. For one thing, there is a chance that free photo will get the photographer noticed and get him hired to create a photo on-demand. That photographer ends up making money (although indirectly) by allowing free use of existing work.

And for another, there is a good chance that if the photo wasn't available for free the publication would have instead used no photo or hand an intern already on staff take a mediocre photo for filler. In this case, no one has lost money.

I am currently a developer by profession and make my money by creating software (on salary). But I do not get mad when others give away software, I use a fair bit of OSS myself (Python, Firefox, etc). I do not think when I see OSS that everybody has lost money. (I also try to contribute, but my contributions are currently tiny).

Because while the analogy isn't perfect there are obvious similarities between programmers releasing their software free (by both meanings) and open and photographers distributing their own photos via Creative Commons or whatever.

At some point, photographers will need to understand that their work is not that unique and that the wealth created by the community through sharing is much greater than that derived by a single artist through the licensing and sale of their work.

Would you apply the same argument to your own line of work?

Spoken like a true I-want-your-stuff-for-free person...

What you're saying amounts to "I'd want it (over other things) if it was free".

Good, move along then, and don't use it because it is no.