[WikiEN-l] NYT: Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos

[Carcharoth]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataliya_Gotsiy

Is that the photograph that our article claims caused her career to
down downhill? That claim need citing or removing. It might also
explain why that photograph isn't in her article.

But going back on-topic, yes, this is another way for photographers to
increase their profile while still maintaining a revenue stream from
recent photography. The biggest hurdle to the "reputation" gain from
Commons and Wikipedia is the lack of credit in articles for
photographs (you normally have to click through to the image page to
get the photographer credit, unless the photographer is famous). There
have been cases (I won't name names) of photographers putting their
name in the filenames, but there should be other ways to address the
"credit" issue.

But that debate has been done to death before.

Carcharoth

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Durova<nadezhda.durova at gmail.com> wrote:
> Many professional photographers have older work whose commercial value is
> almost nil.  In fashion photography, for instance, the commercial lifespan
> of a photograph is extremely short.
>
> Here's a featured picture of that type:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gotsiy3edit2.jpg
>
> These types of shots normally go into a photographer's portfolio as proof of
> their skills.  Yet often they still have encyclopedic value and the
> photographer may have more to gain by relicensing them under cc-by-sa with a
> source link to their own website.
>
> -Durova
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 8:13 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 8:38 PM, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/arts/20funny.html
>> >
>> > One error on licensing. Claim that Wikipedia requires you to give up
>> > your copyright unchallenged. Otherwise, pretty good! And should have
>> > the right effect in terms of promo photo donations.
>>
>> The bit I found most fascinating was the professional photographer
>> explaining how Wikipedia can help his career, but can also reduce his
>> income (from resale of his pictures).
>>
>> "He said that having his work on Wikipedia has increased his online
>> visibility [...] but that the costs are potentially high. “This is the
>> lifeblood of my career,” he said, noting that photographers may get
>> paid very little for a celebrity shot for a magazine. They make their
>> money from resales of the image."
>>
>> Earlier in the article, his contributions to Wikipedia (Commons) were
>> described:
>>
>> "Jerry Avenaim, a celebrity photographer. He is unusual in that he has
>> contributed about a dozen low-resolution photographs to Wikipedia"
>>
>> It would be interesting to compare why low-resolution is considered OK
>> here, to support and encourage the revenue stream of a professional
>> photographer, but not in the case of the National Portrait Gallery
>> (where the underlying works are public domain), and the revenue stream
>> is (in theory) supporting the digitisation costs.
>>
>> I should disclose here that although I am not a professional
>> photographer, I do work in the photography industry, and I'm aware of
>> some of the ins and outs of how photographers (and others) earn money
>> from their services, skills, and the end products of photographs and
>> images.
>>
>> It usually comes down to access and opportunities, in this case to
>> celebrities, in the case of the NPG, to a collection of public domain
>> artworks. For news photographers, it is being in the right place at
>> the right time. For nature and landscape photographers, it is funding
>> trips to far-flung landscapes or having the patience and skill to
>> find, photograph and identify an animal or plant. And there are lots
>> if niche photographers as well, that specialise in certain areas,
>> which may require specialised and expensive equipment.
>>
>> Carcharoth
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>
>
> --
> http://durova.blogspot.com/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>