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I don't see what's wrong with his pricing model. He's basing his price on what it would cost someone, starting from nothing, to go out and create a picture like

by nsxwolf 15y ago

I don't see what's wrong with his pricing model. He's basing his price on what it would cost someone, starting from nothing, to go out and create a picture like that. It's actually a discount in that regard since most people would have to spend considerable time learning how to take that photo. It's a perfectly good starting place for a price. And nowhere did he say that price wasn't negotiable.

bmelton 15y ago
In addition, I suspect that's the price he would sell the rights to the photo for (if he would sell it at all), meaning that whomever paid that price would own the work outright. I also suspect that he would be happy to license uses of that photo for substantially less (though I'm VERY curious as to what that cost is, actually) to magazines and other people wanting to use the work on a single-use basis.
richieb 15y ago
He can set the price as he likes. But this does not mean that he will find a buyer.
alphakappa 15y ago
The flaw is that no one is going to recreate that photograph from scratch. Any professional who sells photographs is amortizing the cost of his equipment over many sales. Buyers pay according to what they (and the market) think that particular photograph is worth. The cost of the equipment doesn't really factor into it. It's similar to buying anything on the market - A toaster would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build from scratch (http://www.thetoasterproject.org/ http://www.thetoasterproject.org/), but no one pays that much (not does any manufacturer expect that much) since no one is really going to build one from scratch. The author's argument gets really weird at the end when he claims that if someone misappropriates the image, he would charge the cost of his camera, his laptop, his software - the whole shebang that went into it. It's a very strange way of computing the loss of value to him. The loss of value could be zero (if there was no buyer for that image in the first place - a lot of photographers take excellent images without anyone actually buying or wanting to buy them ever), or it could be many thousands of dollars if it is a piece of art that is highly valued. Basing the value on the cost of the equipment that went into producing it does not do justice to the image either way.

by nsxwolf 15y ago

bmelton 15y ago

In addition, I suspect that's the price he would sell the rights to the photo for (if he would sell it at all), meaning that whomever paid that price would own the work outright. I also suspect that he would be happy to license uses of that photo for substantially less (though I'm VERY curious as to what that cost is, actually) to magazines and other people wanting to use the work on a single-use basis.

richieb 15y ago

He can set the price as he likes. But this does not mean that he will find a buyer.

alphakappa 15y ago

The flaw is that no one is going to recreate that photograph from scratch. Any professional who sells photographs is amortizing the cost of his equipment over many sales. Buyers pay according to what they (and the market) think that particular photograph is worth. The cost of the equipment doesn't really factor into it. It's similar to buying anything on the market - A toaster would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build from scratch (http://www.thetoasterproject.org/ http://www.thetoasterproject.org/), but no one pays that much (not does any manufacturer expect that much) since no one is really going to build one from scratch. The author's argument gets really weird at the end when he claims that if someone misappropriates the image, he would charge the cost of his camera, his laptop, his software - the whole shebang that went into it. It's a very strange way of computing the loss of value to him. The loss of value could be zero (if there was no buyer for that image in the first place - a lot of photographers take excellent images without anyone actually buying or wanting to buy them ever), or it could be many thousands of dollars if it is a piece of art that is highly valued. Basing the value on the cost of the equipment that went into producing it does not do justice to the image either way.