Stockland Martel

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At his Photo Business News & Forum, John Harrington does not mince words. His is a no-b.s. blog, right down to the way he describes his list of recommended reading: “These are books I’ve read and own, and think highly of, not some generically pre-populated list.”

Right. So when he learned of the new microstock site SpiderPic, which bills itself as “a site-comparison search engine for stock photography,” he was characteristically frank: “…This will create a price war,” he wrote in a post yesterday. “Further, guess what – the loser will be – that’s right – the photographer.”

Let’s step back a minute and take a look at this Spider-Pic service. Here’s an excerpt from the site’s About section:

“With SpiderPic you can find the photos you want, compare their prices, and ultimately get the one with the lowest price available. We make it extremely easy to search all the popular stock agencies simultaneously. We also allow you to simply enter the URL of any stock photo you found on the web, see where that photo is available from, and at what price. Want an even easier solution? Try our browser extension to compare prices with one click from anywhere on the web.”

Harrington, a successful D.C.-based photographer who has also authored a book on business practices for photographers, isn’t really decrying Spider-Pic per se— “…They are just making it easier to do what someone previously had to do manually,” he notes. But he is trying to give his colleagues a heads up.

“If you are one of the many photographers who are selling the exact same image in different portals, at difference rates, for the same exact usage, then you need to re-think your common sense – not to mention your business sense,” he urges. “…As creative budgets get slashed by these low prices, budgets will make it all but impossible to create fresh content for assignments, and that’s bad long term.”

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Related:

• Microstock Diaries: “Microstock Comparison Websites.”

• Thoughts of a Bohemian: “A Microstock Price War?”

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