Assignment vs. Stock - Is Stock Risky?

Photographer Thomas Barwick produces a great deal of images. Getty Images has 3,479 images available online via their Digital Vision brand, and other brands - including Photographer's Choice, where he may well have paid to put the images up. Mr Barwick's work here stands as evidence of the value of actual assignment photography, rather than stock. Doing a "search within" for the phrase reveals 193 images include a laptop. Having a look at those images reveals that he probably lined up the whole class - boys, girls, brunette, african american, glasses, no glasses, and with teachers, among them.

Unfortunately, for two PC part manufacturers, and I stress "PC", they both were fishing from the wrong ocean of images. First, they were images of a Macbook, second, well, you take a look....

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They tried - probably attempted to secure exclusivity to the image they wanted, because the actual images they each used appear to be off the website, just this one. This is the only image on the Getty site. Note the position of the youth in the background. This is the link to the images on the Getty site, and the image is available on a CD, likely with others from the same shoot of the boy.

Next up, is one of the variations from that same shoot. ASUS used a different image and cropped out the ports, because they obviously were not PC ports, they're Macbook ports. Here's the ASUS official product page.

Then there's the MSI computer. Note that they've modified the ports on the side of the Macbook, and added in the MSI logo. Here's the MSI official laptop section, here.

ASMP has a great recouce that goes further in-depth on this subject - check out their website here -Rights Managed Stock vs Royalty Free Stock. I wrote about this previously, back in November - (Black Friday? Try, "You Get What You Pay For" Friday!, 11/23/07).


The evidence mounts - assignment photography, commissioned for the client, and precluded by others in the same field, or altogether, is worth a great deal. If nothing else, it's worth it to avoid the embarassment.

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Via: Zeke K & Jeff Kowalsky/Engadget/ eepc.de

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