Photographers: Know what is due to you

Don’t rush for credit, ask for cash too.

Our birding group just got this pleading email:

Hello,
I am ___ , from ___ newspaper, I am looking for a photograph of Grey Hornbill, sighted in the City, supporting the news write up. If some one has one has one photograph, please do send with credentials. My deadline is 7pm. Please.

My response to the egroup:

This is going to be a very unpopular post in several circles, but I need to say it.

Just a word to everyone that when I was getting articles published in your paper regularly, many years ago, the paper would pay Rs.200 per photo that they published. But they would often forget to give credit. (And yes, the payment would come after 8 weeks!)

Please state the amount that the your newspaper will pay now, as well as giving due credit to the photographer.

Every photographer would like to see his/her images in print, but they also invest a lot of time and effort in the pursuit of their shots, and many of them invest very large sums of money in their photographic equipment So when the photograph is used in a newspaper, by a staffer, it’s only fair that they be paid for it.

In case the paper is not able to pay, there are plenty of stock photos of birds on the internet, which can be downloaded and used for free, from the media commons. I cannot understand why this cannot have been done for a 7pm deadline.

Let not the rush to see one’s images in print make photographers forget that they should get both credit…and cash!

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