A few weeks ago I received a mail from Flickr obliging me to remove my link to my personal website.I am a professional photographer, so I offer photography services on my website next to presenting my images , the mail stated that Flickr accounts are for personal use and if selling products/yourself through your photostream could cause account termination.
Now, I never put a photo for sale on flickr, nor has it been my intention to grab clients through them, I’m just a professional photographer putting a link to its website on a photography site in 2008 and must, along with a large group of peeps, have misread the prohibition to put a link to one’s site.
Now, a few weeks later, we get to read this press release :
“Getty Images and Flickr Announce Exclusive Partnership to Offer New Collection of Creative Imagery.”
“We are excited and proud to be partnering with Flickr to offer our customers even more choice for their projects. Our customers will be able to select and use the best imagery from a fresh collection of high-quality images chosen by us from Flickr’s diverse and prolific community,” said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images. “Flickr is the ideal partner as we continue to move the imagery industry forward by offering the broadest range of high quality digital content to our customers.”
followed by this response from PhotoShelter by the way…
So, I’m not allowed to put a link to my own website offering photography services being a professional photographer, and I’m warned with a possible account termination, but when Getty comes to license your images for peanuts converting Flickr in a semi-micro stock site , everybody is ‘excited’.I can understand a business venture, but after receiving the ‘non-commercial angel mail’ it tastes kind of bitter.Of course, it’s their project and they can do what they want when they want how they want to.
What can one do ? Nothing obviously, will have to make a 2nd site where I don’t commit the capital sin of offering my services for what I’m paying for being self-employed.Links to this blog were allowed though.
Don’t get me wrong, Flickr is a great site, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback for my images and it’s a great tool for tips, being inspired, share more images, networking, etc , the support team was kind and nice and all, I would just like them to have more of an ‘open mind’ …
Related posts :
Getty Images and Flickr Announce Exclusive Partnership to Offer New Collection of Creative Imagery.
PhotoShelter Warns Flickr Users .
Dripbook Online Portfolios out of beta.
Portrait Professional 8.1 announced.
Remove haze from landscape photos photoshop tutorial.
Filed under: flickr, the web
