A few months ago Getty Images announced that they were going to start cherry-picking images from Flickr, the photosharing site that everyone loves. Shock rippled through the photography community. Pros were up in arms about amateurs getting a cut of the pie. Amateurs were excited because they were dreaming of fame and fortune. Then nothing. For a few months all was quiet and the uproar faded in to the past.
In December of last year Flickr users started receiving emails from Getty inviting them to contribute images. They had sifted through thousands and thousands of images to find the ones that they wanted added to their collection. I was one of those to receive an invitation. In the end I submitted 69 of the pictures that they asked for. As of right now you can find 68 of my images on Getty here.
In a few days the first sales reports should start coming in. I’m excited to see what will happen. Having worked with stock before I know that there is a lag time between images going live on a site and sales coming in. What I’m interested in is seeing the reactions of these thousands of new stock artists who have no idea what to expect but value their images greatly.
The adventure begins.
UPDATE:
The first round of sales reports came out yesterday. As to be expected with a new collection there do not seem to have been many sales made yet. The collection was live for only the last two weeks of the month. Considering that limitation I was quite pleased to see that Getty was able to sell two of my images in that short time span. I know from working with other stock agencies and stock photographers that it will take a few months to really see how the collection is doing and whether or not my images are making a splash, so to see sales after only two weeks is a nice surprise.
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