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How a College Student Used Creative Commons to Dominate Political Photography

150 points by gregdoesit 11y ago

Agustus 11y ago
I am not one to say that the rich get richer, but this may be a specific case of an individual being supported by his parents circumventing the normal process of working the ropes to progress up to taking photos of the people discussed. On the other hand, it is great that these photos are available as they allow bloggers to use these to make their site look more professional. Journalists cannot help inserting their views of candidates, Zachary Crockett, describes anyone who works for Trump as "Cronies." Since, @zzcrockett will read this now, you need to keep your opinion out, your other articles were great, keep them that way.
- jccalhoun 11y ago
  My thought on reading this was "how does he afford this?"
  - emw 11y ago
    Gage's work is probably not prohibitively expensive in terms of money. A few plane tickets to Iowa and New Hampshire every four years, lodging in each for maybe a few days. He also attends Comic-Con every year. He has a good DSLR and lens kit, but that's a one time cost. If he had a paid summer internship in accounting, a side job during the academic year, and supportive parents this all seems doable for a middle class college student attending a public university with in-state tuition. The bigger cost in Gage's photography is almost certainly time. He's uploaded almost 40,000 photos to Flickr since December 2007 -- roughly 5,700 photos a year. Even with the one-person-many-angles style seen in his Flickr stream at https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/with/24744613302/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/with/24744613302/, that's a lot. He also captions his photos, e.g. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/24744613302/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/24744613302/. The vast reach of his photography is likely a sufficient incentive for Gage to invest all that time and significant-but-not-immense money. I hope Gage continues his excellent work.
    - wavefunction 11y ago
      Expensive to whom? The average college kid? Don't kid yourself.
    - x43b 11y ago
      >>Gage's work is probably not prohibitively expensive in terms of money. "between states to more than 40 speaking engagements." "I traveled to nearly every part of the country to cover his political events,” "Skidmore is hot on the campaign trail again, toggling his time between New Hampshire, Iowa, and Arizona" Prohibitively expensive is a relative term, but it is hard to imagine this not costing 10s of thousands of dollars and being out of the reach of most high school and college students.
      - pyre 11y ago
        Maybe not in this particular case, but you could definitely make a case that photographing political candidates as that pass within range of a day-trip (or maybe a two-day-trip) of where you live is just the cost of time, gas, (food,) and lodging. Someone could do something similar using such a model.
      - emw 11y ago
        > * it is hard to imagine this not costing 10s of thousands of dollars and being out of the reach of most high school and college students.* I would be surprised if Gage and his parents have spent more than $10,000 of their personal money on this hobby. Again, cost near that range is certainly significant, but not monetarily immense for a middle class kid with a consuming hobby and supportive parents over the course of 7+ years. Gage has been frugal in his choice of college, and gets funding from GoFundMe campaigns. He also seems to have had side jobs. Simply choosing to attend a community college and then an in-state public university as Gage has done -- rather than a private university for 4 years -- is probably enough to defray a huge portion of his hobby's cost. I suspect Gage is also frugal in his means of travel and lodging. A sibling comment mentions the possibility of photographing candidates that come within a day or two trip of home. I imagine that accounts for most of Gage's photography. Consider this note from [2]: "Skidmore is a 19-year-old student at Glendale Community College in Phoenix and a freelance graphic designer. A Ron Paul supporter, he began photographing politicians when he was living in Terre Haute, Indiana, attending events held by Rand Paul during his successful 2010 Senate run in Kentucky." The drive from Terre Haute, IN to Lexington, KY is about 4 hours. That's completely doable in a day trip. I've driven 4 hours each way in day trips for similar free culture pursuits. It costs about $80 for gas and food. > "between states to more than 40 speaking engagements." Travel among multiple US states to attend 40 speaking engagements over the course of 7 years is not necessarily a major financial burden, even for someone Gage's age. > "I traveled to nearly every part of the country to cover his political events" "Part" can be pretty general. One could have covered events in Arizona, Iowa, New Hampshire and, say, Virginia and say one has traveled to nearly every part of the country -- the American West, Midwest, Northeast and South. > "Skidmore is hot on the campaign trail again, toggling his time between New Hampshire, Iowa, and Arizona" I think it's much more likely that Gage has been to New Hampshire and Iowa each once or twice in the 2016 campaign season, rather than flying out every weekend or so like a high-level political operative or corporate executive from his Arizona State University dorm room. --- [1] http://priceonomics.com/how-a-college-student-used-creative-commons-to/ http://priceonomics.com/how-a-college-student-used-creative-... [2] http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/09/how-a-19-year-old-student-became-one-of-the-hottest-political-photographers-in-the-country http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/09/how-a-19-year-old-student-b...
- ghaff 11y ago
  I'm actually not sure how much is really new here. Yes, he's expended a lot of effort and done this systematically and he's released the photos as creative commons which isn't normally the default so a lot of people don't use it. However, as we speak, there are any number of students both on college newspapers and other amateurs taking many thousands of pictures of candidates at their stump speeches and rallies. And this has been the case for a long time. The photos just aren't readily available for reuse.
- myNXTact 11y ago
  This is the exact opposite of the "rich getting richer!" Whenever we start discussing income and wealth trends in the United States we always neglect how we as a society have gotten richer through technological progress. Even the poorest houses in the USA have computers and tv's that would blow the minds of people from the 1990's and be incomprehensible to people from the 1950's. Cameras have gotten better and better while getting cheaper. Twenty years ago the only people taking photos of this quality were professional photographers. Now we have college students who can work really hard over a school break and be able to afford a great camera setup.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    >Twenty years ago the only people taking photos of this quality were professional photographers. Now we have college students who can work really hard over a school break and be able to afford a great camera setup. Eh. Plenty of amateurs using SLRs were taking good, solid photos 20 or 30 years ago. How do you think the pros got their jobs if not by becoming good photographers first? It is far easier these days is to take photos that are technically proficient especially in difficult light. (My brain probably still holds way too much arcane and now useless information about B&W film processing chemistry.) And, of course, it's far easier for amateurs to get their photos seen.
    - myNXTact 11y ago
      How many pictures do you think the average newbie needs to take to become a "proficient" photographer? 10,000? How much would it have cost to develop all that film twenty years ago? A modern user doesn't just have a better camera than those twenty years ago, they also have a built in dark room with unlimited "prints" (digital viewing).
      - ghaff 11y ago
        10,000 is probably high for "proficient"--whatever that means exactly. I was probably shooting a few 36-exposure rolls of B&W film a week when I was in school. A roll of Tri-X is about $5 today and was probably something similar in adjusted dollars then. (We did generally load our own film but that's in the noise.) Chemicals and paper adds a bit more. So, I don't know. $7 x 150 rolls or whatever. So maybe $1000 plus gear. The gear might actually be a bit cheaper than today assuming access to a darkroom. Color would be significantly more but you probably wouldn't do your own processing. To your basic point though. Yes, it's much easier today. The instant feedback, much improved ability to work in low light, no-cost experimentation, easier to use equipment, etc. As a result, I think it's much easier for people to get to the "good enough" stage today even if becoming really accomplished isn't necessarily all that much easier.
- zo1 11y ago
  >"Journalists cannot help inserting their views of candidates, Zachary Crockett, describes anyone who works for Trump as "Cronies." Since, @zzcrockett will read this now, you need to keep your opinion out, your other articles were great, keep them that way." He puts in a few other silent "jabs" inside the article. Everything from "tea-partier" to "If you have the willpower to scroll past this image [of Donald Trump]". It's unfortunate, because it's a good article that conveyed and presented something very few knew of before reading it.
- protomyth 11y ago
  > I am not one to say that the rich get richer, but this may be a specific case of an individual being supported by his parents circumventing the normal process of working the ropes to progress up to taking photos of the people discussed. It basically the modern version of the rich kid doing an unpaid internship fund by his parents. The new thing is skipping the company.
- 8ig8 11y ago
  Kinda like a VC-backed startup disrupting an industry.
notlisted 11y ago
Admire his persistence and dedication to creative commons. That said, I can see why professional news photographers feel threatened and perhaps a little insulted too... Most shots in the article and on his Flickr feed look merely 'good enough' or 'usable' (as opposed to 'great').
- amitparikh 11y ago
  If 'good enough' and 'usable' @ a price of 'free' is what's becoming ubiquitous, hasn't Mr. Skidmore just locked in on a new-ish market equilibrium?
- ghaff 11y ago
  To be fair, the vast majority of photos that even top professionals take probably just fall into the "good enough" category as well. It's often hard to do a whole lot exciting with someone giving a speech from a podium. Magazine cover shot material is relatively rare. I also suspect that, in at least some cases, the pros' press passes may get them better shooting locations and opportunities. That said, I basically agree with you. And I've certainly met photographers shooting conferences and similar who nonetheless manage to produce images that are a cut above.
  - notlisted 11y ago
    Top professionals take many crappy pictures. If they have just once shot of a situation/person, that crappy shot may end up in the feed, but usually the bad stuff is filtered out by them or their agency. I see a lot in the flickr feed that should have been left out, or at least cropped.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      One of my annoyances about flickr is that I wish there were a way to highlight a subset of photos as my "gallery" which would be the default view unless someone wanted to see everything. An observation I've heard a number of people make about professionals is that, if they're covering an event, they'll basically always come back with something solid and publishable even it it's not knock-your-socks-off great. This is admittedly easier in general these days but was harder when you were shooting film under difficult conditions.
mwsherman 11y ago
Here Comes Everybody.
autarch 11y ago
Hilariously, I'm pretty sure that this article is violating the license! This person's photos are licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/). Among its terms are "ou must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use." Maybe I missed it but I did not see any link to the license or indication of whether changes were made. Simply crediting the copyright owner is not sufficient to satisfy the terms of the license. Also, with CC < 4.0 you need to include the work's title. The Trump site is doing exactly the same thing, not linking to the license
- ghaff 11y ago
  I use (and attribute) CC photographs all the time and I have to say that I wasn't even aware of a couple of those requirements. Sadly, I think terms like these, as well as the optional non-commercial variant, are serious issues with CC. Attribution can be hard to carry along with a photograph consistently but at least the idea of a photo credit is pretty deeply ingrained in professional publishing circles if not the Web more broadly. I expect most of the other requirements and limitations are rarely followed to the letter.
  - thephyber 11y ago
    They aren't "serious issues" with CC. They are the legal terms under which you are allowed/licensed the use of the copyrighted content. If you don't know the license and the requirements of the license, how you can pretend to fulfill them? You are just waiting for a lawsuit and "ignorance is no excuse" in the eyes of the law.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > Among its terms are "[Y]ou must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. > I did not see any link to the license or indication of whether changes were made. It doesn't say you must indicate whether changes were made. It says you must indicate if changes were made, which leaves the case of "no changes" ambiguous.
ThinkBeat 11y ago
What impresses me most when I look through his stream on Flickr is his access. It is not easy to get into as many events as he has managed, and it even harder to get a seat or being allowed to get close enough to get a good picture. If he is not working for, or assignment for a media company he probably doesnt have a press pass, or at least not one that gets bouncers / security people to step aside. Presumably he gains more and more access as his pictures are published. This is the key thing that will help him if he ever wants to get paid work out of it. Leading powerful politicians will know him, and know him as a photographer. Getting that recognition is not easy for a photo journalist. Getting started in photo journalism is really hard, and its getting harder as news agencies downsize both regular journalists and photographers The market is turning more and more toward video and crowd sourcing images. Lets say you went to school, studied photography, getting started as a freelancer, you take ok pictures and you submit them and pray for a publication. If you are luck you get picked up a little here and there, but unless you get lucky, no one really pay attention to who you are. He has taken a bold step, and his name is now known to editors at major publications. Getting that network is far more difficult than learning how to take pictures.
- mc32 11y ago
  The article mentions where he sees this as a hobby and is more interested in pursuing a more traditional career in business. On the other hand, in the comments section you witness some bitterness by more well known photogs who see him as an amateurish interloper. He knows it's a career that's dying that it'll be overtaken by crowdsourced images taken from cellphones as their image quality improves (for the telephotos), so he's uninterested in it as a career.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  The kid has money. Traveling to all these events isn't cheap. So I think it safe to assume he and/or his family are donors at some level. It doesn't take much of a donation to get a seat close to the front, far less than the cost of traveling to the event.
  - brudgers 11y ago
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Ok, and all this time I thought Gage Skidmore was a "fake" name like Alan Smithee[1] that photographers who didn't want to dilute their own brand used to get their work out. That it is a real person, and has such a wide swatch of candidate pictures, is pretty cool. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee
- ikeboy 11y ago
  Wow. The film's creation set off a chain of events which would lead the Directors Guild of America to officially discontinue the Alan Smithee credit in 2000. Its plot (about a director attempting to disown a film) eventually, and ironically, described the film's own production; director Arthur Hiller requested that his name be removed after witnessing the final cut of the film by the studio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Alan_Smithee_Film:_Burn_Hollywood_Burn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Alan_Smithee_Film:_Burn_Hol...
nefitty 11y ago
It's interesting that there is a backlash brewing against Skidmore from the pro photog community. Giving away his work for free seems similar to the way bloggers pour countless hours into creating content for their sites. People don't expect to pay to read your blog post, but of course they should expect to pay you if they need custom content made for them. Competition is fierce, and I'd be surprised if this type of thing isn't happening in every content-creation industry. I can actually think of an example relevant to HN: the ubiquity of free, open source software.
- saulrh 11y ago
  The complaints about undercutting real photographers actually kind of amused me. The big political parties spend literally half a billion dollars a year on advertising. If they find a photo good enough to go on the front page of their website, they are perfectly willing to make that photographer's year, and they're not going to skimp on something that important. There's no undercutting going on here - they decided that this guy's photographs were the best options. Maybe it's because the marginal value of a higher-quality photograph is not worth the money for some reason, in which case political photography as a business is doomed. Maybe it's because he's not making technically great photographs but is somehow better at political photographs. Maybe it's because the licensing is a bureaucratic nightmare and the cost to a party of using a professional photograph is 90% the manpower required to deal with it costing any money whatsoever. Whatever it is, I seriously doubt that it isn't the major political parties cheaping out.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    >The big political parties spend literally half a billion dollars a year on advertising. If they find a photo good enough to go on the front page of their website, they are perfectly willing to make that photographer's year, and they're not going to skimp on something that important. I'm actually surprised that a major campaign would just see a CC photo on flickr and decide to use it (assuming that's what happened). Pretty much no ad agency or other non-editorial user would do such a thing. There's too much risk that the photographer could object to the use (in spite of the CC licensing) or didn't actually own the rights to the image in question or had exclusively licensed it to someone. As someone else pointed out, they're not even using the image in a way that technically meets the letter of all the CC license requirements.
vaadu 11y ago
The professional photographers display the same arrogant entitlement mentality that's seen by so many of those being obsoleted by innovation. Skidmore is not putting professional photogs out of business, the professional photogs inability or unwillingness to compete is putting themselves out of business.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Yes, it is indeed difficult to compete with free even with a better product. This isn't about competing with "innovation." It's about better distribution channels for the free stuff that has always existed. To be clear, there's absolutely nothing wrong with putting photos up on the web and allowing for their free reuse. But, yes, it is the collective use of free/cheap photographs that are good enough for their target purpose (and sometimes as good as anything a pro would have created) that are cutting into the professional photography business.
- JabavuAdams 11y ago
  Will it seem so arrogant and entitled when it's your job? I recently took a cab for the first time in a long while -- I've mostly been using public transit and Uber. The cabbie was a nice 57-year-old guy who's scared that he won't be able to provide for his family in another couple of years. Who's going to hire a 57-year-old ex-cabbie to service Uber's self-driving cars? This is a real social problem that we need to address.
MCRed 11y ago
Calling Ron Paul a "tea party" candidate is accurate only if you recognize the Tea Party as a grassroots libertarian movement that, among other things, supported gay rights. Calling him a "libertarian" candidate would have been more appropriate. While the TEA PARTY was a libertarian movement (That supported gay rights) the term was not trademarked and was quickly hijacked by propagandists on the left and the right to try and pretend like it was a neocon movement. This shows the wisdom of Linus Torvalds and Satoshi Nakamoto trademarking Linux and Bitcoin respectively. Alas, having read this blog, I feel it is pretty well spun to support a vary specific political bias and I'm not surprised they made this statement-- probably attempting to portray Ron Paul as a neocon deliberately. I know they are YC alumni and thus I risk being banned for daring to criticize them. But at some point you gotta get out of your filter bubble and realize there's a real world out there.
cooper12 11y ago
I don't think professional photographers are in danger yet. The guy was only able to succeed because of several factors: access to elections is open to everyone (he probably doesn't even need to be close if using the right lens), it isn't too difficult to take a picture of someone speaking at a podium, and if the subject is putting any energy into speaking the photo will come out looking decent. Professional photographers on the other hand have to deal with open environments with varying lighting and subjects which requires a lot more skill. I think what he's doing is great. A creative commons is an absolute necessity in today's age. Imagine a blogger had to pay for each image they used; they wouldn't even be able to illustrate their subjects. Freely licensed content is also the lifeblood of Wikipedia, which doesn't allow images of living people under fair use. For things which can't accept amateur quality, professional work will always be available. It certainly says something about the profession if Trump's campaign is willing to choose amateur photographs over theirs: they're not selling themselves hard enough or networks are not worth as much as they used to be in today's digital age.

150 points by gregdoesit 11y ago

I am not one to say that the rich get richer, but this may be a specific case of an individual being supported by his parents circumventing the normal process of working the ropes to progress up to taking photos of the people discussed. On the other hand, it is great that these photos are available as they allow bloggers to use these to make their site look more professional. Journalists cannot help inserting their views of candidates, Zachary Crockett, describes anyone who works for Trump as "Cronies." Since, @zzcrockett will read this now, you need to keep your opinion out, your other articles were great, keep them that way.

jccalhoun 11y ago
My thought on reading this was "how does he afford this?"
- emw 11y ago
  Gage's work is probably not prohibitively expensive in terms of money. A few plane tickets to Iowa and New Hampshire every four years, lodging in each for maybe a few days. He also attends Comic-Con every year. He has a good DSLR and lens kit, but that's a one time cost. If he had a paid summer internship in accounting, a side job during the academic year, and supportive parents this all seems doable for a middle class college student attending a public university with in-state tuition. The bigger cost in Gage's photography is almost certainly time. He's uploaded almost 40,000 photos to Flickr since December 2007 -- roughly 5,700 photos a year. Even with the one-person-many-angles style seen in his Flickr stream at https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/with/24744613302/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/with/24744613302/, that's a lot. He also captions his photos, e.g. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/24744613302/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/24744613302/. The vast reach of his photography is likely a sufficient incentive for Gage to invest all that time and significant-but-not-immense money. I hope Gage continues his excellent work.
  - wavefunction 11y ago
    Expensive to whom? The average college kid? Don't kid yourself.
  - x43b 11y ago
    >>Gage's work is probably not prohibitively expensive in terms of money. "between states to more than 40 speaking engagements." "I traveled to nearly every part of the country to cover his political events,” "Skidmore is hot on the campaign trail again, toggling his time between New Hampshire, Iowa, and Arizona" Prohibitively expensive is a relative term, but it is hard to imagine this not costing 10s of thousands of dollars and being out of the reach of most high school and college students.
    - pyre 11y ago
      Maybe not in this particular case, but you could definitely make a case that photographing political candidates as that pass within range of a day-trip (or maybe a two-day-trip) of where you live is just the cost of time, gas, (food,) and lodging. Someone could do something similar using such a model.
    - emw 11y ago
      > * it is hard to imagine this not costing 10s of thousands of dollars and being out of the reach of most high school and college students.* I would be surprised if Gage and his parents have spent more than $10,000 of their personal money on this hobby. Again, cost near that range is certainly significant, but not monetarily immense for a middle class kid with a consuming hobby and supportive parents over the course of 7+ years. Gage has been frugal in his choice of college, and gets funding from GoFundMe campaigns. He also seems to have had side jobs. Simply choosing to attend a community college and then an in-state public university as Gage has done -- rather than a private university for 4 years -- is probably enough to defray a huge portion of his hobby's cost. I suspect Gage is also frugal in his means of travel and lodging. A sibling comment mentions the possibility of photographing candidates that come within a day or two trip of home. I imagine that accounts for most of Gage's photography. Consider this note from [2]: "Skidmore is a 19-year-old student at Glendale Community College in Phoenix and a freelance graphic designer. A Ron Paul supporter, he began photographing politicians when he was living in Terre Haute, Indiana, attending events held by Rand Paul during his successful 2010 Senate run in Kentucky." The drive from Terre Haute, IN to Lexington, KY is about 4 hours. That's completely doable in a day trip. I've driven 4 hours each way in day trips for similar free culture pursuits. It costs about $80 for gas and food. > "between states to more than 40 speaking engagements." Travel among multiple US states to attend 40 speaking engagements over the course of 7 years is not necessarily a major financial burden, even for someone Gage's age. > "I traveled to nearly every part of the country to cover his political events" "Part" can be pretty general. One could have covered events in Arizona, Iowa, New Hampshire and, say, Virginia and say one has traveled to nearly every part of the country -- the American West, Midwest, Northeast and South. > "Skidmore is hot on the campaign trail again, toggling his time between New Hampshire, Iowa, and Arizona" I think it's much more likely that Gage has been to New Hampshire and Iowa each once or twice in the 2016 campaign season, rather than flying out every weekend or so like a high-level political operative or corporate executive from his Arizona State University dorm room. --- [1] http://priceonomics.com/how-a-college-student-used-creative-commons-to/ http://priceonomics.com/how-a-college-student-used-creative-... [2] http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/09/how-a-19-year-old-student-became-one-of-the-hottest-political-photographers-in-the-country http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/09/how-a-19-year-old-student-b...
ghaff 11y ago
I'm actually not sure how much is really new here. Yes, he's expended a lot of effort and done this systematically and he's released the photos as creative commons which isn't normally the default so a lot of people don't use it. However, as we speak, there are any number of students both on college newspapers and other amateurs taking many thousands of pictures of candidates at their stump speeches and rallies. And this has been the case for a long time. The photos just aren't readily available for reuse.
myNXTact 11y ago
This is the exact opposite of the "rich getting richer!" Whenever we start discussing income and wealth trends in the United States we always neglect how we as a society have gotten richer through technological progress. Even the poorest houses in the USA have computers and tv's that would blow the minds of people from the 1990's and be incomprehensible to people from the 1950's. Cameras have gotten better and better while getting cheaper. Twenty years ago the only people taking photos of this quality were professional photographers. Now we have college students who can work really hard over a school break and be able to afford a great camera setup.
- ghaff 11y ago
  >Twenty years ago the only people taking photos of this quality were professional photographers. Now we have college students who can work really hard over a school break and be able to afford a great camera setup. Eh. Plenty of amateurs using SLRs were taking good, solid photos 20 or 30 years ago. How do you think the pros got their jobs if not by becoming good photographers first? It is far easier these days is to take photos that are technically proficient especially in difficult light. (My brain probably still holds way too much arcane and now useless information about B&W film processing chemistry.) And, of course, it's far easier for amateurs to get their photos seen.
  - myNXTact 11y ago
    How many pictures do you think the average newbie needs to take to become a "proficient" photographer? 10,000? How much would it have cost to develop all that film twenty years ago? A modern user doesn't just have a better camera than those twenty years ago, they also have a built in dark room with unlimited "prints" (digital viewing).
    - ghaff 11y ago
      10,000 is probably high for "proficient"--whatever that means exactly. I was probably shooting a few 36-exposure rolls of B&W film a week when I was in school. A roll of Tri-X is about $5 today and was probably something similar in adjusted dollars then. (We did generally load our own film but that's in the noise.) Chemicals and paper adds a bit more. So, I don't know. $7 x 150 rolls or whatever. So maybe $1000 plus gear. The gear might actually be a bit cheaper than today assuming access to a darkroom. Color would be significantly more but you probably wouldn't do your own processing. To your basic point though. Yes, it's much easier today. The instant feedback, much improved ability to work in low light, no-cost experimentation, easier to use equipment, etc. As a result, I think it's much easier for people to get to the "good enough" stage today even if becoming really accomplished isn't necessarily all that much easier.
zo1 11y ago
>"Journalists cannot help inserting their views of candidates, Zachary Crockett, describes anyone who works for Trump as "Cronies." Since, @zzcrockett will read this now, you need to keep your opinion out, your other articles were great, keep them that way." He puts in a few other silent "jabs" inside the article. Everything from "tea-partier" to "If you have the willpower to scroll past this image [of Donald Trump]". It's unfortunate, because it's a good article that conveyed and presented something very few knew of before reading it.
protomyth 11y ago
> I am not one to say that the rich get richer, but this may be a specific case of an individual being supported by his parents circumventing the normal process of working the ropes to progress up to taking photos of the people discussed. It basically the modern version of the rich kid doing an unpaid internship fund by his parents. The new thing is skipping the company.
8ig8 11y ago
Kinda like a VC-backed startup disrupting an industry.

notlisted 11y ago

Admire his persistence and dedication to creative commons. That said, I can see why professional news photographers feel threatened and perhaps a little insulted too... Most shots in the article and on his Flickr feed look merely 'good enough' or 'usable' (as opposed to 'great').

amitparikh 11y ago
If 'good enough' and 'usable' @ a price of 'free' is what's becoming ubiquitous, hasn't Mr. Skidmore just locked in on a new-ish market equilibrium?
ghaff 11y ago
To be fair, the vast majority of photos that even top professionals take probably just fall into the "good enough" category as well. It's often hard to do a whole lot exciting with someone giving a speech from a podium. Magazine cover shot material is relatively rare. I also suspect that, in at least some cases, the pros' press passes may get them better shooting locations and opportunities. That said, I basically agree with you. And I've certainly met photographers shooting conferences and similar who nonetheless manage to produce images that are a cut above.
- notlisted 11y ago
  Top professionals take many crappy pictures. If they have just once shot of a situation/person, that crappy shot may end up in the feed, but usually the bad stuff is filtered out by them or their agency. I see a lot in the flickr feed that should have been left out, or at least cropped.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    One of my annoyances about flickr is that I wish there were a way to highlight a subset of photos as my "gallery" which would be the default view unless someone wanted to see everything. An observation I've heard a number of people make about professionals is that, if they're covering an event, they'll basically always come back with something solid and publishable even it it's not knock-your-socks-off great. This is admittedly easier in general these days but was harder when you were shooting film under difficult conditions.

mwsherman 11y ago

Here Comes Everybody.

autarch 11y ago

Hilariously, I'm pretty sure that this article is violating the license! This person's photos are licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/). Among its terms are "ou must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use." Maybe I missed it but I did not see any link to the license or indication of whether changes were made. Simply crediting the copyright owner is not sufficient to satisfy the terms of the license. Also, with CC < 4.0 you need to include the work's title. The Trump site is doing exactly the same thing, not linking to the license

ghaff 11y ago
I use (and attribute) CC photographs all the time and I have to say that I wasn't even aware of a couple of those requirements. Sadly, I think terms like these, as well as the optional non-commercial variant, are serious issues with CC. Attribution can be hard to carry along with a photograph consistently but at least the idea of a photo credit is pretty deeply ingrained in professional publishing circles if not the Web more broadly. I expect most of the other requirements and limitations are rarely followed to the letter.
- thephyber 11y ago
  They aren't "serious issues" with CC. They are the legal terms under which you are allowed/licensed the use of the copyrighted content. If you don't know the license and the requirements of the license, how you can pretend to fulfill them? You are just waiting for a lawsuit and "ignorance is no excuse" in the eyes of the law.
thaumasiotes 11y ago
> Among its terms are "[Y]ou must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. > I did not see any link to the license or indication of whether changes were made. It doesn't say you must indicate whether changes were made. It says you must indicate if changes were made, which leaves the case of "no changes" ambiguous.

ThinkBeat 11y ago

What impresses me most when I look through his stream on Flickr is his access. It is not easy to get into as many events as he has managed, and it even harder to get a seat or being allowed to get close enough to get a good picture. If he is not working for, or assignment for a media company he probably doesnt have a press pass, or at least not one that gets bouncers / security people to step aside. Presumably he gains more and more access as his pictures are published. This is the key thing that will help him if he ever wants to get paid work out of it. Leading powerful politicians will know him, and know him as a photographer. Getting that recognition is not easy for a photo journalist. Getting started in photo journalism is really hard, and its getting harder as news agencies downsize both regular journalists and photographers The market is turning more and more toward video and crowd sourcing images. Lets say you went to school, studied photography, getting started as a freelancer, you take ok pictures and you submit them and pray for a publication. If you are luck you get picked up a little here and there, but unless you get lucky, no one really pay attention to who you are. He has taken a bold step, and his name is now known to editors at major publications. Getting that network is far more difficult than learning how to take pictures.

mc32 11y ago
The article mentions where he sees this as a hobby and is more interested in pursuing a more traditional career in business. On the other hand, in the comments section you witness some bitterness by more well known photogs who see him as an amateurish interloper. He knows it's a career that's dying that it'll be overtaken by crowdsourced images taken from cellphones as their image quality improves (for the telephotos), so he's uninterested in it as a career.
sandworm101 11y ago
The kid has money. Traveling to all these events isn't cheap. So I think it safe to assume he and/or his family are donors at some level. It doesn't take much of a donation to get a seat close to the front, far less than the cost of traveling to the event.
- brudgers 11y ago

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Ok, and all this time I thought Gage Skidmore was a "fake" name like Alan Smithee[1] that photographers who didn't want to dilute their own brand used to get their work out. That it is a real person, and has such a wide swatch of candidate pictures, is pretty cool. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee

ikeboy 11y ago
Wow. The film's creation set off a chain of events which would lead the Directors Guild of America to officially discontinue the Alan Smithee credit in 2000. Its plot (about a director attempting to disown a film) eventually, and ironically, described the film's own production; director Arthur Hiller requested that his name be removed after witnessing the final cut of the film by the studio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Alan_Smithee_Film:_Burn_Hollywood_Burn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Alan_Smithee_Film:_Burn_Hol...

nefitty 11y ago

It's interesting that there is a backlash brewing against Skidmore from the pro photog community. Giving away his work for free seems similar to the way bloggers pour countless hours into creating content for their sites. People don't expect to pay to read your blog post, but of course they should expect to pay you if they need custom content made for them. Competition is fierce, and I'd be surprised if this type of thing isn't happening in every content-creation industry. I can actually think of an example relevant to HN: the ubiquity of free, open source software.

saulrh 11y ago
The complaints about undercutting real photographers actually kind of amused me. The big political parties spend literally half a billion dollars a year on advertising. If they find a photo good enough to go on the front page of their website, they are perfectly willing to make that photographer's year, and they're not going to skimp on something that important. There's no undercutting going on here - they decided that this guy's photographs were the best options. Maybe it's because the marginal value of a higher-quality photograph is not worth the money for some reason, in which case political photography as a business is doomed. Maybe it's because he's not making technically great photographs but is somehow better at political photographs. Maybe it's because the licensing is a bureaucratic nightmare and the cost to a party of using a professional photograph is 90% the manpower required to deal with it costing any money whatsoever. Whatever it is, I seriously doubt that it isn't the major political parties cheaping out.
- ghaff 11y ago
  >The big political parties spend literally half a billion dollars a year on advertising. If they find a photo good enough to go on the front page of their website, they are perfectly willing to make that photographer's year, and they're not going to skimp on something that important. I'm actually surprised that a major campaign would just see a CC photo on flickr and decide to use it (assuming that's what happened). Pretty much no ad agency or other non-editorial user would do such a thing. There's too much risk that the photographer could object to the use (in spite of the CC licensing) or didn't actually own the rights to the image in question or had exclusively licensed it to someone. As someone else pointed out, they're not even using the image in a way that technically meets the letter of all the CC license requirements.

vaadu 11y ago

The professional photographers display the same arrogant entitlement mentality that's seen by so many of those being obsoleted by innovation. Skidmore is not putting professional photogs out of business, the professional photogs inability or unwillingness to compete is putting themselves out of business.

ghaff 11y ago
Yes, it is indeed difficult to compete with free even with a better product. This isn't about competing with "innovation." It's about better distribution channels for the free stuff that has always existed. To be clear, there's absolutely nothing wrong with putting photos up on the web and allowing for their free reuse. But, yes, it is the collective use of free/cheap photographs that are good enough for their target purpose (and sometimes as good as anything a pro would have created) that are cutting into the professional photography business.
JabavuAdams 11y ago
Will it seem so arrogant and entitled when it's your job? I recently took a cab for the first time in a long while -- I've mostly been using public transit and Uber. The cabbie was a nice 57-year-old guy who's scared that he won't be able to provide for his family in another couple of years. Who's going to hire a 57-year-old ex-cabbie to service Uber's self-driving cars? This is a real social problem that we need to address.

MCRed 11y ago

Calling Ron Paul a "tea party" candidate is accurate only if you recognize the Tea Party as a grassroots libertarian movement that, among other things, supported gay rights. Calling him a "libertarian" candidate would have been more appropriate. While the TEA PARTY was a libertarian movement (That supported gay rights) the term was not trademarked and was quickly hijacked by propagandists on the left and the right to try and pretend like it was a neocon movement. This shows the wisdom of Linus Torvalds and Satoshi Nakamoto trademarking Linux and Bitcoin respectively. Alas, having read this blog, I feel it is pretty well spun to support a vary specific political bias and I'm not surprised they made this statement-- probably attempting to portray Ron Paul as a neocon deliberately. I know they are YC alumni and thus I risk being banned for daring to criticize them. But at some point you gotta get out of your filter bubble and realize there's a real world out there.

cooper12 11y ago

I don't think professional photographers are in danger yet. The guy was only able to succeed because of several factors: access to elections is open to everyone (he probably doesn't even need to be close if using the right lens), it isn't too difficult to take a picture of someone speaking at a podium, and if the subject is putting any energy into speaking the photo will come out looking decent. Professional photographers on the other hand have to deal with open environments with varying lighting and subjects which requires a lot more skill. I think what he's doing is great. A creative commons is an absolute necessity in today's age. Imagine a blogger had to pay for each image they used; they wouldn't even be able to illustrate their subjects. Freely licensed content is also the lifeblood of Wikipedia, which doesn't allow images of living people under fair use. For things which can't accept amateur quality, professional work will always be available. It certainly says something about the profession if Trump's campaign is willing to choose amateur photographs over theirs: they're not selling themselves hard enough or networks are not worth as much as they used to be in today's digital age.