I'm what you call a serious amateur photographer. I make images because I love the process of creating and sharing art. Telling me that I shouldn't ever share my work because it erodes the value of others who have an entirely different motive is borderline price-fixing.
If you, as an established professional, can't compete with hobbyists and newcomers trying to break in, then you might need to find a different business model.
Why is that?
1. The amount of money offered for the author's work
2. Imploring others to not take "lowball" offers in order to preserve a certain pricing/business model.
Regarding #1: Everyone is allowed to make any kind of offer, and the author is free to refuse them, just as he did. Photography is a business, and everyone is trying to make a deal to make a buck. If Coke offered $100, that's their prerogative, and it's up to the author to either haggle up higher, or refuse them flatly.
Personally, I see no reason why the author was so offended -- the emails weren't rude, they weren't demanding, and the email person "L" was almost apologetic for having only $100 to spend. Since I don't know what company this is, we cannot make assumption on why the author thinks they will sell the calendars for $12.99 (although, there are religious undertones, and my suspicion and speculation is that they will not sell these at a huge profit as the author believes)
Regarding #2, that's been covered well. If I want to sell my software at $0.99 per app and it undercuts the competition, great. We saw iOS developers complain that the $0.99 games are undercutting their profits, but it turned out to be a sustainable model. It's not my problem if I give my photos (or product) away for free and undercuts his model.
Something similar did happen to me. An ad agency found a photo* I had taken and wanted to use it in a campaign. I usually give things away to non-profits, but this was going to be a large-scale thing for a major drug company. I asked what price the person thought was fair and we settled on a reasonable price. Maybe I was lowballed? I don't know and don't really care. It was more than $100, though.
I didn't set a nonzero price just because I wanted to protect other artists ability to make money off of their work, I set a price because I thought it would be cool to have some extra money to buy some new camera gear.
* The picture in question: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martincron/2208026093/in/set-72...
I wonder how hard it would be to negotiate a deal where the photos are given for free, but with a caption or footnote pointing to the photographer's website. That would make the calendar the best advertisement he has had in years. People are going to be staring at his photos all year long!
The way to succeed in the marketplace is to make something distinctive worth paying for, not to lash out at other people who give stuff away for free.
Also, a simple "image credit: Person X" doesn't have to imply that the work was done for free. A potential client doesn't need to know how much previous portfolio pieces cost.
As would all of the newspaper classified ad salespeople, VHS tape manufacturers, blacksmiths, haberdashers, etc.
I see where you're coming from, and it's a valid perspective, although I don't know how realistic it is. All of the attempts to stabilize skills/wages seem to lead to guilds/cartels which keep prices artificially high and harm innovation.
If anything, this economic reality makes the case for a strong social safety net. If someone's livelihood is profoundly disrupted by technology, they should be given a meaningful opportunity to retrain and/or pivot onto something workable without suffering complete and total financial (or physical, in the case of losing one's health care) ruin.
You see I am pissed that I don't have my flying care and robotic servant already. I want progress and will take whatever stability that is necessary to do that.
That's basically how one of the Creative Commons licenses works. It's a valid choice for photographers, but not the only choice.
And at that time the photographers would properly choose credits over nothing at all.
I just pictured a violent "photographer's guild" gang, riding across the countryside on their penny-farthing bicycles in matching vests and destroying the cameras and/or memory cards of those who would dare try to undercut them.
Edit: just for those who don't remember, here's the epic Bill Gates incident from the dawn of the software industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
The Bill Gates thing is a bit different. He was explicitly selling copyrighted works and other people were copying and/or re-selling that. He never tried to discourage people from making their own software and giving it away for free.
It makes sense that the best way to get work in certain fields is to have a reputation. Sometimes the best way to get that reputation is to give away a certain portion of your work.
Bill Gates Selling software = great!
Linus Torvalds giving software away = great!
Bill Gates (or anyone) telling Linus Torvalds (or anyone) not to give software away for free = lame!
Just because someone chooses to make a fun activity in to a job does not mean that person deserves to get paid for it. If they are not delivering economic value, they don't get paid. I cannot go in to my office and decide that I would rather sit around talking to people than putting in real work which adds value and expect to make my salary.
There are types of photography that do pay OK, mainly wedding and event photography. The reason they pay more is because the photographer needs to be contracted to capture a specific image at a specific time. If you decide to be a landscape artist you are competing with every image made ever. This is not a good competitive position to be in and why people will give away their work for free.
Photos are Rivalrous and Excludable as long as the photographer protects them by not posting full sized images or using watermarks. (see iStockphoto).
I do associate value with that property, but that property is limited in value, not due to it not being rivalrous and excludable, but rather because of substitutes.
As an artist, you now have to think very carefully about how to price your work. If you believe your work is of exceptional quality, then by all means, price above the market. Likewise, if you believe your work appeals very specifically to a segment that's willing to pay X price, then go with X price and target that niche. If, on the other hand, your work is fairly generic, of average quality, or generally nothing special to any special groups of people, then making a living as an artist is going to be tough for you. Your choices are to price it to market (which may be $0), or differentiate substantially (enough to bear a nonzero price).
Practically speaking, moral arguments on either side are somewhat irrelevant. Instead, what matters is the artist's positioning relative to everyone else. Today, more than ever, you'll have to make yourself special -- or specialized -- if you want to earn a decent living.
The photographer can do the same by either a) take photos amateurs can't or won't take or b) take photos to order.
FOSS is a foot in the door -- how many of us get consulting contracts or even FT jobs implementing or managing that FOSS? FOSS doesn't run itself, unlike a photo that anyone can ship over to snapfish or uprint.