Getty Images

I'm wondering if anyone else here sells through Getty Images? I have about 30 images with them, and they want another 24. I'm making a bit of money from them but some of their recent business practices are a bit suspect. The one that has received the most publicity is the deal Getty have with Cafe Press, which was brought to light by Remi Thornton. This arrangement means your images can be up for sale on Cafe Press's website, but Cafe Press don't pay anything to Getty (and hence the photographer) unless the image sells. Although this may seem fair, in fact Getty are in effect licensing images without payment.

However, of far more concern to me is the deal they have with Fine Art America , which means they can sell your image as a print (on a site where you could be selling them yourself), and the artist only gets 20% instead of the full amount. The licensing issues are the same as those with Cafe Press, but the implications are very different imo. The main reason I signed up with Getty was I thought selling prints was a separate entity over which I would have full control, but this is no longer the case. Saying this, they don't have any of my images on Fine Art America at the moment, but the most recent batch Getty have requested are largely images that have or I would expect to be sold as prints rather than as stock images.

I'm thinking of terminating my agreement with Getty, though I could lose a nice little earner. I'm wondering if anyone else here is in the same quandary as me, and what if any thoughts others have on this change of direction by Getty and it's implications on the photographer?

The BBC use a lot of Getty images with the Getty watermark still
visible. I wonder if they pay?

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If one of your images is sold to a news organisation by Getty, you get the normal fee (20%)

press sales on Getty are split 65-35 ratio if you are only getting 20% I would be looking for another agency. Some I work for I get 50% although they may not sell as much they tend to get better rates too. I have seen some Getty togs get a measly 2p for an o line use :'(

The beeb and other news organisations usually pay an annual subscription model to Getty and PA where they get all their images from.

I've not had any sales to news organisations, but I will check and see what I do get in those circumstances. I signed up from Flickr, after they sent me a mail about some of my shots. So far I've made more money from less images than from Shutterstock.

I've since looked at other images on the BBC site, it seems standard practise to watermark all the images, so possibly just their standard method.

Example: E Type Jag......
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22729452

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Ah ok the flickr thing is set to just 20% as flickr get a rake from the sale. I assumed you where signed directly with getty.

The bbc credit all images for transparency purposes. For press and stock sales alamy is pretty good although they recently cut their split to i think 60/40 if i remember correctly.