For those currently selling images through Getty, the key question is: How many and how fast will Flickr images will be added to gettyimages.com?
At the recent Microsoft Pro Photo Summit Joseph Jean Rolland Dube, one of the people who worked on "Project Populace" (the code name for planning the Flickr deal) told the audience that plans called for launch in March 2009 with 2,500 images. Dube is currently vice president for content cevelopment at iStockphoto. When Thomas Hawk published this information on his blog, Bridget Russel of Getty public relations issued an immediate correction saying Getty's actual plans are to launch with "tens of thousands of images, with thousands more added to the collection each month."
We’re told the Getty editors are going to choose the photographers they want to deal with and invite them to sign a contract. The contract will authorize Getty to license the images as RM, RR or RF, but not microstock. In addition, will be a way for Flickr’s photographers to indicate that they would like to have their images reviewed for possible licensing by Getty. Thus, editors may not have to scan 2 billion images to find what they require.
The Editing Process
In the last year, Getty editors have been slow getting through the comparatively small number of images submitted by its existing contract photographers. Will Getty demand that its editors be more productive? Will the company hire more editors or impress iStock “inspectors†into service? (They’ve shown no inclination recently to hire additional staff as that costs money. In fact, the tendency has been to fire people, not hire them.)
Asking the existing staff to suddenly review more images seems an unlikely strategy for success. (We assume they have been working as fast as they can.) However, adjusting priorities and asking editors to spend more time reviewing Flickr images and
dramatically less on the review and acceptance of current photographer production would seem a workable option.
If iStock "reviewers" are used to initially cull the Flickr images, they would need additional training because iStock's acceptance standards differ greatly from Getty's.
The process of accepting and uploading Flickr images is much more complex than accepting images from existing Getty photographers. First, once the editor has chosen images they would like to represent, it will be necessary to get the photographer to sign a Getty contract. If there are people in the picture, the Flickr photographer will need to supply model releases, which most probably don't have.
In many cases, larger files will be needed. More personal contact with the amateurs may be necessary to help them understand Getty's professional requirements. Specific information about the subject may be needed for kewording. It may take more time to integrate 100 images from the Flickr community than is required to add the same number of images from Getty's regular contributors. Regular contributor images are required to meet certain standards.
Taking all these things into account, the number of Flickr images added to the Getty collection may turn out to be very small until Getty can train Flickr contributors.
Customers have been complaining they see the same images every time they go to the Getty site. They go to other sources is to find something different. Could the rejected Getty images be the "difference" customers want? Could Getty's recent file purging be counterproductive?
There one advantage to focusing on the production of Flickr photographers rather than current suppliers. These image makers have much lower expectations. They are not trying to make a living selling stock. For them, every sale, no matter how small or infrequent, is found money.