Friday 9 August 2013

The price of Twitter.

When a tornado drops down in Ontario, that's a news story to be sure. But when every single image posted in a slide show of that story is from a Twitter feed, today that's not much of a story. Or does anyone really care that all of the images come from Twitter?

I can remember as a young photographer coming across a fire at an apartment building. As the fire department had just started to get the fire under control, I felt it would be okay for me to take photos of the blaze. As soon as I had images that I thought the local paper might use, I headed out. My local paper did use two of the images and I got paid for both. That's right! I got paid to take pictures of a news event!

Now my point is, how many of those images of the tornado used from Twitter were paid for by the news source? Some of them? All of them? Or is it what I think the total money spent for these news images. Zero!

As long as people are happy just to see their images on the web and not get paid for them, and editors do not have to pay for images, your local photo-journalist is out of work.

Free is the best price I have ever come across to be sure...but it won't pay the rent.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/photos/tornadoes-spotted-in-ontario-slideshow/another-pic-of-the-arthur-tornado-onstorm-tornado-pic-twitter-com-wac5l1k8dz-photo-1375970615471.html


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