Once in a while I get the odd request from folks who want to use my photographs. A few of them specify that they would like to purchase the photograph, but most of the freeloaders think they are doing me a favor by asking my for a free copy of my photo to use on their website or magazine. I hate these people, especially the websites and magazines who make a profit by using your work, but are not willing to pay you anything.
Like in the case above. Forget the fact that I’m not even addressed properly. The person here probably is a content curator for a popular website in India. Notice how she wants to use my photo for free, on their website, which is clearly making a (surely commissioned) post for Canvera (a wedding album printing company in India). Canvera is obviously paying them money for this, and they clearly are not interested in paying me for my photograph. On top of that, she expects me to do her work for her and send her a list of what I think are my best photos along with the write ups. Her job can be easily replaced by a cron job and a few lines of code.
This is the state of affairs right now. Where popular website, either steal your photos, or expect you to hand over your photos to them, as though they are doing you a favor. Anyway, I never got a response from them.
On the other hand we have people like Paulina, who got in touch with me over email asking if she could get a high resolution copy of a photo that I had clicked of Christian Andreu, from Gojira, as she wanted to gift her boyfriend (a Gojira fan) a poster of the said photograph, for his birthday.
Christian Andreu (Gojira)
Now, I love metal fans, and I like people who ask nicely. Which means only one thing — there is a poster of Gojira on a wall somewhere in Poland! More photos of Gojira – Live at the Indian Metal Festival.
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