Monday 12 April 2010

Windows of Despair

I've highlighted before NCC's tendency to crowd-source free content, they had a wheeze where Flickr members were asked for permission to use their pics on bus stops. Many people suggested that they should be offering some payment but this fell on deaf ears.

Now we have the Windows of Despair Opportunity initiative.

As you will be aware, the arse fell out of the economy recently and Nottingham has quite a few empty shops. WoO is a scheme to tart these up with local artwork.

Now a positive part of this is the use of some shop units to showcase local designers' work. Such artists will presumably be looking for commissions and sales so they can clearly gain from a bit of free space too market their stuff.

However, like the Flickr bus stop scheme NCC wants local photographers to give up their content for nothing so it can be plastered up in empty shop windows.

I could live with this if they at least made it into a competition with prizes for pics awarded say, weekly or monthly. At least there'd be a bit more of an incentive both financially and with kudos.

It sends the message that photographer's work just isn't valued and that's just not good enough.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Long time reader here - felt compelled though as a keen photographer to comment for the first time on this:

Personally I don't think I'd have too much of an issue here - I wouldn't say NCC are explicitly trying to make profit from the photos here.I also think the potential exposure could be worth it.

You do have a fair point though - they could afford to pay for the use of the images , certainly from what I read here with them squandering money on all sorts of needless consultants..

Andy said...

It's not so much that they're trying to make a profit, it's the lack of respect for people's work.

I accept that it's probably naive to expect them to pay a commercial rate for each and every pic used but offering prizes at least attaches some value.

Utter Disarray said...

Close relative of mine has pics on those shelters. She's too proud of her photo to consider that she's losing out.

Andy said...

@Utter Disarray - what you have there is different horses for different courses.

Utter Disarray said...

Agreed, sir.