A red cardinal sits peacefully on a branch near Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

Good news. I received word this week that Getty Images terminated my agreement with them. I am no longer beholden to Getty, who is contributing to the decline of the stock photography industry.

I call it the Walmartification of stock photography. Photographers labor long and hard to create beautiful images and then peddle these images to a middleman, such as Getty Images. The middleman peddles the images online with a less robust web interface than even Flickr and collect 70 to 80% of the revenue in return. What’s worse, they have developed new ways to sell these images, which means less and less revenue for photographers.

Do you know the difference between a photographer and a large pizza? A pizza can feed a family of four. Combined with the proliferation of digital SLR cameras and high-tech photography equipment in recent years, stock photography agencies have been preying on the amateur (and professional) photographers who lack the savvy to know the difference between a good deal and a bad one. I was one of them and feel stupid for even entering into agreement to have someone tie-up my images for two years so I can make as little as 62 cents on each sale (as I did recently when Getty sold one of my best images to China for this paltry sum). I would need to sell that image 6500 times in order to afford a new camera! And that doesn’t cover my cost for lenses, lighting, fuel, computer software, computer hardware, and my time. At 62 cents a sale I would much rather keep my images to myself than sell them at all. While I do not consider myself a great photographer, I do know my images are worth more than 62 cents…to myself if no one else. I think good toilet paper costs more.

The only thing worse than stock photography agencies are the photographers who allow themselves to be raped by them. I was one of them. Slowly, but surely, photographers are destroying their own trade. They reveal their secrets to anyone who listen to them and they whore themselves to stock photography agencies. In the process they are destroying a once proud industry.

I still consider myself an amateur. I am not a seasoned pro. But I would much rather enjoy taking photographs for myself, not making a dime, and flip burgers as my full-time my job than let someone else peddle my images for next to nothing.

I’m not saying; I’m just saying.