I was actually talking with Dave Stowe recently about this very subject.
To me any photo adds value to any publication, whether it’s not-for-profit or for-profit. I always draw the line based on my assessment of the organization involved. Generally speaking, I will freely give my images to any not-for-profit organization (say Birdlife Australia or similar, or individuals in the field of scientific research), but when it comes to book, magazine and other media publishers, they are all the same as far as I am concerned. I would never give any of them anything for free, as I could not care less about “seeing my name in print”. I do some work with a couple of bigger publishing companies and they always pay a fair fee per image. For others who contact me I assess on a case by case basis and if they don’t want to pay, they can get the images from Joe1Dking from Flickr or anywhere else.
At the end of the day, images are worth as much as the buyers want to pay for them. But sadly, the “revolution” of digital imaging made it difficult to earn any fair compensation for the work and most importantly technical and field skills involved in obtaining publishable quality images. One needs to remember that many images, even those grossly lacking real technical photographic quality, may look “awesome” when viewed at 72dpi and 800-1000 pixels wide on a computer monitor.
Cheers Akos Lumnitzer http://www.amatteroflight.com
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