Is usage licensing dead? Not exactly. But the business it was built for doesn't really exist anymore. Print is all but gone. Social media now accounts for 80% (!) of ad spend in the US. Clients want the C word [rhymes with shmontent] by the dump truck load and there are ten times as many people willing to shoot it.

@asksternrep, a prominent photo rep with an excellent advice page, recently posted a follower’s question on her Instagram feed and the comment section got real spicy. Her advice to photographers losing bids over usage: be the best photographer you can be, and clients will pay for limited licensing. Will they though? 

We try to unpack what actually happened to the commercial photography market, why work-for-hire is the real threat, and why "hold the line on licensing" is good advice for 5% of photographers all of the time, a few more photographers some of the time, but never all photographers all of the time. 

"Telling photographers to do better is an outdated answer to a structural shift in the industry."

Links:

@asksternrep — Andrea Stern’s (generally) great advice resource on Instagram

ASMP — American Society of Media Photographers

Find us:

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill's photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: [email protected] / [email protected]

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.

The Danziger Gallery is showing a large-format AI-generated color version of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. Prompt: make a realistic color version of Ansel Adams' iconic Moonrise over Hernandez.

Reaction: gross. But also, this is the AI version of Richard Prince shenanigans. Which pulls us into Prince's Untitled Cowboys — Marlboro ads torn from magazines, rephotographed, sold for millions — and one real cowboy photographer describing what it feels like to watch someone copy your life's work and sell it for $3 million.

From there: do we use AI, and what for? Jay uses it as a marketing coach. Bill mostly avoids it for not exactly ethical reasons. Harder question: if a client can get a convincing image from a prompt in an hour, why should they call us? Bill says it’s a business case: if the people who need appealing to – the audience – are moved by interacting with real images and film, and are actively turned off by AI facsimile, then AI ain’t gonna cut it.

"Knowing something real happened matters to me in the context of viewing photographs."

Links:

Ansel Adams Moonrise, Hernandez, NM – the real one

The AI version of Ansel’s Moonrise, along with a new statement released by the Ansel Adams Trust

Giuseppe Lo Sciavo at Danziger Gallery

Richard Prince “Untitled Cowboy” 

Sam Abell’s iconic cowboy photograph

Bill’s Norm Clasen profile

Bill’s Lynn Goldsmith Copyright Story

Cal Newport

Author of Deep Work; Jay heard him on the Offline podcast talking about AI and the atrophy of difficulty

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill’s photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: [email protected] / [email protected]

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.

This first episode is an origin story — why two working photographers decided to start recording their phone calls and sharing them with strangers. We’ve been having these conversations for years and figured other photographers might get something out of it. But also: Jay can't find much content that reflects the business reality he’s actually living in. Not tutorials. Not influencers teaching us how to establish a personal vision. Just plain talk about commercial photography from people who are in it, confounded by it, and not pretending otherwise.

We touch on AI image generation — and the fact that it’s not photography. We were both relieved to hear Rob Haggart and Heather Morton say publicly that they wish it never happened. Not that that solves anything. We talk about what has actually changed in the business, and the disorienting experience of knowing what a job used to be worth, having no idea what it's worth now, and wondering if the confusion is a character flaw or just an accurate read of the situation.

"What's the value of an image with a lifespan of literally hours?" That's kind of the whole show. But, you know, like not that bad.

Links to stuff we mention:

Chris Buck — Photographer

Chris Buck’s Lena Dunham Blog Post

A Photo Editor — Rob Haggart's long-running blog about the photography business

Heather Morton (@hmphotoprof) on Instagram

Rob and Heather on “The Grain” Podcast about “Photography vs. AI”

Adam Fuss

Man Ray — Artist and photographer; inventor of the Rayograph, the original camera-free photographic image

Theo Welling — Photographer, mutual friend; "see if you can figure out what's going on."

Find us:

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill’s photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: [email protected] / [email protected]

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.