Value?
Hello again and welcome to another wandering blog loosely based in the thought process that is NathanPhoto.
This week’s musing has been mainly considering the value of images, what are they, why and future values. Now I do realise that by placing this contemporaneously there are much more important factors to discuss such as the rising costs of living hitting everyone, so my comments are not meant to make light of anyone’s struggle but as the main way of paying my bills is through photography then a discussion of the value of the image is very pertinent.
I do appreciate that this is a difficult topic to unpick especially in a more relaxed format such as this blog, but I will attempt to discuss it around my main question, which is:
Where do we place the value of photographs?
This has been on the periphery of my thoughts for a number of years, thinking about what I used to be paid, what others were reputedly paid and what people wanted to pay for images (not very much). I did think that was in the past but sadly, hearing current work discussions its seemingly still happening. Which could lead to despair.
Anyway it seems that when I think of a subject then a variety of discussion points pop into my consciousness through various medias. This month I’ve seen discussioins around the subject of value with disparate subjects such as handbags, artworks and education all appearing in articles in the various medias. Leading possibly to the unanswerable question of where and how do we value things?
Can we place a value solely on something, as defined by the price?
Is it the price we place upon them or is it the price someone else is willing to pay?
That’s a thorny question with each answer unique to each person.
Linking this debate into my personal thinking about what to do with my archive, what it is value or worth and what to do with it. Current thinking is to sit on the images till a suitable time has past and this will possibly increase their value or just give it to my kids to sell/publish/flog/do what they will with it. Part of that thinking is the proliferation of work from similar timespans (the 1990’s onwards) and I’m not sure I want to stick them in a £7 photobook that could devalue at some point.
In my early days the process was mostly dictated by the editors, of which some unscrupulous ones negotiated different prices for different photographers depending on other factors. There was supposed to be a standard but no one every stuck to it, I try and teach my students the value is dictated by them but realise its difficulties in the practicality of the market. I think a great starting point is to divide what you want to be paid with the houyrs you want to work will equal an hourly rate and one that you can negotiate for. i.e if you want to be paid £20k per year and want to work a 5-day week with 6 weeks a year off then that would equal 46 (weeks) x 5 (days) = 230 then 20k divided by 230 = 86.95 rounded to 87 so you’re looking at getting paid £87 per days’ work. How does that work for you? Yes, I know you have to think of expenses, tax. Cameras etc on top of that but it’s a starting point, no?
As a photographer then do you:
Have to sell 87 images at £1 each or 1 at £87?
Who pays for the image?
What if you take a picture of a product and that sells 100 more units then do you get a cut?
Questions, questions, questions
I think it is all dependent on the person and the photography concerned. Which then depends on how you can monetise your photography.
As a small aside here, when you think about it, what an interesting word value is so to ground these meanderings, I need to be sure that it’s centered around its proper meaning, which as the lord google dictionary states is :
Noun 1.
the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or
usefulness of something. "your support is of great value"
How do you place value on an image, what you took to make it or what someone else is willing to pay for it?
I’ve seen many people value their images higher than people want to pay and I’ve seen many devalue their images, so people think that they have no worth. It’s a difficult one to answer coherently. What’s your images worth? Which by asking I fear will run into too much of a wide-ranging topic with many different strands that could be applied, from Conservatism to Democratism to Republicanism to Socialism to Marxism to Capitalism etc etc etc. In an effort to start my conclusions, I will quote on this with from the internet that is a simple basic claim that.
“…the value of a commodity can be objectively measured by
the average number of labour hours required to produce that commodity.”
Which in turn raises even more questions like: Is photography a commodity? Is the image a commodity? Is art or documentary more valuable? Is recording of images a value all in itself? Etc. Etc. I’m thinking this line of questioning may go into a teaching role or may go into other blogs (and my other channels too?) and in all possibility may be bordering on subjects I’ve touched upon previously (ideas of the 10,000 hours theory anyone?) maybe I’ll discuss this again, if you like?
I will finally conclude here and say thank you for reading…
For the image to tie into this discussion I’ll maybe do a little experiment, here are two images one from the 90‘s and one from this year, what value would you place on these images?
Few words about the images, first image is of a protest I’ve got this dated as 1995 which I believe was a Reclaim the Streets demo in Manchester which I think was a job for the student publication of MMU called Pulp. Think I vaguely recollect a brief that went along the lines of getting an arrest picture, would that have had more value?
The second image is one taken this week which I think is representational of how a lot of people are feeling, just about keeping heads above water with the current clusterf*** of news, prices and the price of existence these days.
If you could message me and tell me the value, you’d put on each of these images that would be great, thank you.
Oh yes and the words of the month for February is ‘love’ so if you’d like to take part in the monthly photo thing then drop me a message same for if you have any thoughts, comments, ideas or anything then you can get me via the usual channels…
Again, thank you for reading and stay safe.