You can listen to last nights panel discussion on The Future for Photography below. The panel began by giving a brief summary of where they thought the future of each sector – Staff, Freelance & Agency – lay, before the discussion was opened to the floor.
Whilst some were quite bleak about the future of press photography others said there was still a market for quality in editorial photography. The idea was raised that in order to continue making a living from press photography, photographers would have to charge a proper rate for online usage and that this might only happen when newspapers started charging users for content online.
Guardian staff photographer Martin Argles talked about the strong union activity in the Guardian chapel that had preserved good terms for the staff and freelance photographers. Report Digital owner John Harris said that his agency continued to hold NUJ rates for editorial photography, even online. And freelancer Kelvin Bruce said that while it was becoming harder to sell non-exclusive images, he was still able to make a living by covering niche subjects.
A contribution from the floor raised the idea of ‘Sub-Prime photographers’ whose consistent under-cutting picture rates meant they would never be successful longterm and that there should be collective action to combat bad rates. Another contribution from the floor said that the only way to earn a living was to make yourself indispensable, by finding a niche and charging the proper rate for your work.
Agency, Audio, Business, Freelance, John Harris, Kelvin Bruce, LPB, Martin Argles, Photography, Podcast, Staff
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 12:42 pm by Jonathan Warren and is filed under Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The survey “Photojournalists-An Endangered species in Europe?” by the IFJ was mentioned and the download link is here:
http://www.ifj.org/assets/docs/023/247/2cdcf17-bac4cf7.pdf
[...] panel debate brought up some interesting points (and it was recorded and is now available on the London Photographers Branch web site) but I think failed to grasp the magnitude of the changes that are currently [...]
I don’t have time to sit in front of my computer to listen to this audio. What I DO have time for is to listen to it on my iPod. Why on EARTH have you made it possible to listen to this and NOT download it? It was a public meeting why is the audio restricted?
Surely the NUJ LPB isn’t copyrighting the audio?
You can download the MP3 here: http://londonphotographers.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/audio/the-future-for-photography.mp3
Many thanks. It would be helpful if this link could be made available within the main post. Please feel free to delete my earlier post. Thank you.
Hi Jonathan,
Would it be possible for us to embed the audio on Journalism.co.uk? with a full description of the event and links to this post and site.
No worries if not.
I love the way the podcast kicks off with Martin Argles in downbeat mode. It’s a very useful recent history of working conditions and how EVERYTHING’S changed, in ONLY TEN YEARS . . . what’s around the corner, then ?
The link given says, that the file is not found – please can someone point me in the right direction for a link that actually leads to the audio?
The audio is no longer available. I’d love to listen to this if at all possible.
Does anyone have the MP3 still?
Thanks
Dave
Apologies for the technical hitch, the audio is now back online.