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Comment by liber8 | Hacker News Reader

I think Trey Ratcliff (http://www.stuckincustoms.com/) and many, many others, would disagree.

The market isn't being "eroded" by people giving away their work. The market was "eroded" by the fact that there are literally hundreds, possibly thousands, of people in the U.S. alone who are now skilled enough to regularly take what were once considered "professional" level photographs. There is simply too much supply.

If you want to blame someone, blame Canon and Nikon and Olympus and Sigma. Blame capitalism for giving us such unprecedented wealth that huge swaths of the population now have free time to study, scout, take, edit, and publish photos. Don't blame the artists.

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This is the correct answer. Photographers--even more than musicians and journalists--are having a terrible time coming to terms with the new world. They seem to think they should be paid for their effort and expertise, rather than based on how much demand there is for that effort and expertise.

Actually Trey Ratcliff licences his images CC non-commercial precisely so he can charge (or refuse permission) for this exact specific case.

My point was that he's been successful precisely because he lets people freely use his images under the CC license. It's' more or less the cornerstone of his business plan. His work gets widely distributed and linked back to his site, which helped him build his tribe and sell other products and services.

And my point was that this guy is probably doing the exact same thing (that's how the essay started - talking about letting people use his photos), but isn't happy about it.

Before we talk "erosion" we need to talk about what the market actually was. In reality, alot of lousy "photographers" were able to make a living because they had access to professional equipment.

So the challenge is getting to a higher level of professional skill that you can break off from the pack. That's harder to do now, as you're not making alot of money during the learning process.

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