This one’s a Part Two. If you haven’t listened to the last episode – “Let Them Eat Cake” – go do that first.

We pick up where we left off on the unlimited (sa)usage debate that started last episode, this time getting into the practical reality of how we bid jobs, when we mention usage/licensing, and when we don’t. And why the idealistic advice to "hold the line on licensing" doesn't work the way it used to.

In the second half Bill introduces a possible future: retainers. Shooting multiple times a year for a client for less than you might have charged before, but making more than you would for a one-off shoot. Win sorta win? Bill also uses the C-word and Jay doesn’t like it.

"You give the same bid three times and you don't get it, and you say to yourself: I don't think this costs that anymore."

Links:

@asksternrep — Andrea Stern’s (generally) great advice resource on Instagram

ASMP — American Society of Media Photographers

Mike Kelly, architecture photographer

Wonderful Machine — wonderfulmachine.com (commonly referenced resource for licensing and bidding)

Find us:

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill's photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: jay@jayfram.com / bill@sawalich.com

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.

Is usage licensing dead? Not exactly. But the business it was built for doesn't really exist anymore. Print is all but gone. Social media now accounts for 80% (!) of ad spend in the US. Clients want the C word [rhymes with shmontent] by the dump truck load and there are ten times as many people willing to shoot it.

@asksternrep, a prominent photo rep with an excellent advice page, recently posted a follower’s question on her Instagram feed and the comment section got real spicy. Her advice to photographers losing bids over usage: be the best photographer you can be, and clients will pay for limited licensing. Will they though?

We try to unpack what actually happened to the commercial photography market, why work-for-hire is the real threat, and why "hold the line on licensing" is good advice for 5% of photographers all of the time, a few more photographers some of the time, but never all photographers all of the time.

"Telling photographers to do better is an outdated answer to a structural shift in the industry."

Links:

@asksternrep — Andrea Stern’s (generally) great advice resource on Instagram

ASMP — American Society of Media Photographers

Find us:

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill's photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: jay@jayfram.com / bill@sawalich.com

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.

The Danziger Gallery is showing a large-format AI-generated color version of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. Prompt: make a realistic color version of Ansel Adams' iconic Moonrise over Hernandez.

Reaction: gross. But also, this is the AI version of Richard Prince shenanigans. Which pulls us into Prince's Untitled Cowboys — Marlboro ads torn from magazines, rephotographed, sold for millions — and one real cowboy photographer describing what it feels like to watch someone copy your life's work and sell it for $3 million.

From there: do we use AI, and what for? Jay uses it as a marketing coach. Bill mostly avoids it for not exactly ethical reasons. Harder question: if a client can get a convincing image from a prompt in an hour, why should they call us? Bill says it’s a business case: if the people who need appealing to – the audience – are moved by interacting with real images and film, and are actively turned off by AI facsimile, then AI ain’t gonna cut it.

"Knowing something real happened matters to me in the context of viewing photographs."

Links:

Ansel Adams Moonrise, Hernandez, NM – the real one

The AI version of Ansel’s Moonrise, along with a new statement released by the Ansel Adams Trust

Giuseppe Lo Sciavo at Danziger Gallery

Richard Prince “Untitled Cowboy”

Sam Abell’s iconic cowboy photograph

Bill’s Norm Clasen profile

Bill’s Lynn Goldsmith Copyright Story

Cal Newport

Author of Deep Work; Jay heard him on the Offline podcast talking about AI and the atrophy of difficulty

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill’s photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: jay@jayfram.com / bill@sawalich.com

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.