Johnny Lilburne, it's fine to enjoy taking your own photos. Some of the ones you linked to are OK. But none of them even approach average pro wildlife photos, let alone great ones. That's not a knock, but I am another noting that technology doesn't make good photography. Good photographers do.
As for Misrach, he'll likely be taken to the cleaners. We're talking about an incredibly wealthy company that expects the pic to help drive sales of its new product. That's worth significant money and he should be paid accordingly.
Claiming that "that this is good no matter what" and then to say "And the same thing is true of blogs, like the one we discussed above, whose sole purpose was to promote stock images and direct people back to the site to purchase the rights to those images," is contradictory and flies in the face of the experience of most who have tried working for exposure (pardon the pun). I've been a working writer for years. I've done some high profile work, and I can count on my fingers the number of times that someone has said, "I've seen what you can do and would like to talk to you about an assignment." For many reasons (how few members of an audience buy work and the tiny chance that the few people who might need work or rights coming across your stuff when they actually need something), exposure isn't a good form of marketing for solo photographers and writers. Will you find some annecdotal evidence to suggest that it does? Sure. But you wont' find anyone who can really make a living depending on that evidence.
"We were a bit skeptical, and found it odd that the company seems to not want to admit that its business model is almost an exact replica of the earlier BountyQuest that failed miserably."
I cover high tech at BNET and spoke with the company's president, who brought up the BountyQuest example herself. So saying that it doesn't want to admit to this doesn't sound accurate in my experience.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by ErikSherman.
Came to see the (thanks!) link and ended up having a huge laugh. FTW.
Johnny Lilburne, it's fine to enjoy taking your own photos. Some of the ones you linked to are OK. But none of them even approach average pro wildlife photos, let alone great ones. That's not a knock, but I am another noting that technology doesn't make good photography. Good photographers do.
As for Misrach, he'll likely be taken to the cleaners. We're talking about an incredibly wealthy company that expects the pic to help drive sales of its new product. That's worth significant money and he should be paid accordingly.
Claiming that "that this is good no matter what" and then to say "And the same thing is true of blogs, like the one we discussed above, whose sole purpose was to promote stock images and direct people back to the site to purchase the rights to those images," is contradictory and flies in the face of the experience of most who have tried working for exposure (pardon the pun). I've been a working writer for years. I've done some high profile work, and I can count on my fingers the number of times that someone has said, "I've seen what you can do and would like to talk to you about an assignment." For many reasons (how few members of an audience buy work and the tiny chance that the few people who might need work or rights coming across your stuff when they actually need something), exposure isn't a good form of marketing for solo photographers and writers. Will you find some annecdotal evidence to suggest that it does? Sure. But you wont' find anyone who can really make a living depending on that evidence.
"We were a bit skeptical, and found it odd that the company seems to not want to admit that its business model is almost an exact replica of the earlier BountyQuest that failed miserably." I cover high tech at BNET and spoke with the company's president, who brought up the BountyQuest example herself. So saying that it doesn't want to admit to this doesn't sound accurate in my experience.