Request for Usage of Great Blue Heron Photo

Hi All,

Thought I would present the request of the usage of my photo of a Great Blue Heron. This image is at present only on my Website and has not been included in my APUG Gallery.

Most of the time these matters are dealt with through my stock agency. However, this is an image that is not in their possession.

Any suggestions would be most appropriated.

This is the link to my image:

http://www.nelridge.com/picturepages/greatblueheron.htm

The photo was taken with a Leica R7 and the Leica f 5.6 800mm Modular Apo Telyt lens and I believe the Leica 1.4X Apo Extender.

Here is a copy of the e-mail message that arrived last evening at 1000 PM:

Richard,

I am a realtor in St. Cloud, Minnesota and I am developing a multi-media marketing program. One of the most important parts of an effective marketing program is branding, the use of a slogan or an image easily recalled by consumers.

You have the most beautiful and stunning picture I have ever seen of a Great Blue Heron and I would like to use it as part of my agent branding.

In exchange for the use of the photo, which would be included in print and electronic media, untouched and including your copyright stamp, I will include you’re a link to your website on my website, which receives more than 300 hits per month.

I would like to discuss this with you in person. Please respond with the best time to contact you via telephone as well as the best number to reach you at.

Thank you,

Mark Herron

Realtor

Thanks very much for any suggestions.

Rich

Bummers Richard,

Ya got me all excited as I am using a heron photo for my avatar now!

As far as my opinion as a working photographer, I would require more compensation than a link from a website that gets only 300 hits per month, in this day and age, that is not much compensation for a great photo..

Just my opinion.

Dave

Make a pay per usage fee for in print.eg every issue he prints make him pay a fee.
the contract is your friend. On the site, make him pay a one time usage fee. write out all details and how it will be used.
Got this from a book.

300 hits per month is NOTHING. That is not any kind of compensation - I'd call that little more than giving appropriate credit. Also, especially since he is a realtor, most real estate customers aren't going to go clicking on the link from his site to yours and then say, "hey, I wanna buy some photos!". They most likely will ignore the link, or maybe if you're lucky, they'll browse around a bit and then move on to the ESPN golf statistics webpage or somesuch.

I'd decide what the usage for his logo is worth to you and make it an annual fee, with a sliding scale for the number of years he pre-pays.

I would remove his phone number from a public internet forum, just out of privacy concern (unless that's already public and on his website).

Money should be one of your concerns: he's making a commercial use of your picture, and thus one expect it will contribute to his income as well as yours. Usually, rate is proportional to size and visibility: a full screen picture on the front page of a site is more expensive than an icon-sized one inside the site. For example, Magnum charges 1500$ for a full screen picture on a home page, and 1100$ for a pic of the same size on a secondary page. You might want to shop around to judge which repro rates are appropriate to your work.

Although his web site hits are small, not all agencies take that into consideration. What's more, repro rights for web are often higher than print, because of the potential audience, people snatching the image for their own site, etc.

Nevertheless, he's probably not a big guy, so you might want to get compensation more for the print than for the web.

Depending on your personal ethics, I would also ask a few questions about his business practices, just so you don't find out that he does something that runs contrary to your principles.

If he has any existing pamphlets or other promo media, ask him for a copy, so you can see what his visual style is.

It's funny you should mention this request now because I've been looking at some APUG members' photos for my job's website and publications.

I would say "No". While I have been known to allow use of my images for various reasons - I recently provided two LF images to a New Zealand TV station for broadcast on a news program - this request is of a purely commercial nature, with very little in return (I get about 1000 hits per day on my website, so 300 per month is useless).

I grew up in St. Cloud, Minnesota and lived on a lake there with blue herons. (Just to clarify, the blue herons and I lived on the same like, I did not live with blue heron's. Just what I need, have a rumor floating around that I was raised by blue herons. Look at what that raised by hyenas rumor did to Blansky.)

I would also say no. For one of us (myself, for example) who are not established it might not be a bad deal, but I agree with the others that you need to charge for your photography, it is what you do for a living, and that a link from a realtor's web site in St. Cloud would not be enough to compensate you for the use of your image. Wouldn't his sort of use be fairly cheap? It is a low traffic web site.

I agree that the link from a website receiving only 300 hits per month would be insufficient. As does Robert, I have tens of thousands of hits to my website per month. If an agreement were made, it would require some sort of payment or fee in addition to the web link.

Rich

Hey, I agreed also Rich!!!!!!!

LOL

I'm with the others: I wouldn't give it away either, even if he does praise the pic. From that 300 hits/month, which is already pretty modest, how many are going to go to a photographer's site?

Of course his site could take off and you could curse taking this advice...

Cheers,

Roger (www.rogerandfrances.com)

300 hits per month? Marko's blog probably comes close to that. If 1% of hits result in referrals, and 1% of those are sales (both extremely high rates by internet standards), then you are looking at less than one sale every two years as compensation. Realistically, the odds are several orders of magnitude lower. So, I would insist on some form of monetary compensation. The Magnum figures are not exactly huge by real estate standards, when you consider that the selling agent's fee is typically 3%. So $1500 is $50,000 in sales, or less than half the fee on selling one median house in your area.

DBP said:

300 hits per month? Marko's blog probably comes close to that. If 1% of hits result in referrals, and 1% of those are sales (both extremely high rates by internet standards), then you are looking at less than one sale every two years as compensation. Realistically, the odds are several orders of magnitude lower. So, I would insist on some form of monetary compensation. The Magnum figures are not exactly huge by real estate standards, when you consider that the selling agent's fee is typically 3%. So $1500 is $50,000 in sales, or less than half the fee on selling one median house in your area.

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