American Life Photo Contest / Discuss

AluminumStudios    says:

"Sponsor/judges reserve the right to reproduce the submissions in full or edit and enhance the submissions at its discretion. Sponsor is authorized to use submissions as it sees fit, including usage in advertising and online without compensation, as indicated in these Official Rules and the Capital One Flickr Group Rules."

If you read the rules and fine print, contests like this don't exist to exhibit your work, give you a chance at recognition, nor anything like that. Big companies have realized that they can get HUGE amounts of photos for free by offering a "contest."

Capitol One is claiming usage rights on all photos entered into the contest. Think about it, how much would it cost for a company to properly license a photo from an artist for a big campaign? Well, at fair market value, it would cost a lot more to properly acquire a collection of images than the prizes are worth.

Everyone who enters this contest is feeding a corporate leech and killing off those who make their living with art and photography.

Of course you want to enter because "what if my photo was used on a credit card, everyone would see it right???!!!"

Well, have you ever seen a photo on a credit card, or in a corporate campaign and once considered who the photographer was? Have you ever looked up the photographer to see more of their work?

The imagined exposure isn't really real.

Also, how much money are you paying on the interest of your credit card? Capitol one is a corporate giant who can afford to license images, but rather they choose to offer a "contest" so they can get all of these photos for free by people who don't know better.

Companies and groups like this on flickr make me sick.
Originally posted at 2:20AM, 20 December 2008 PDT (permalink)
AluminumStudios edited this topic 42 months ago.