Thursday, July 18, 2013

Fake vs. Real Tear Sheets

It’s been awhile since I posted anything but I need a real decent rant posted here about this topic…
Let’s talk about the big dog in the room… Mag Cloud. As soon as it started to become noticeable to photographers and/or models that didn’t have any tear sheets they thought… “Why not make our own tear sheets!” Ethically, they didn’t/don’t care if it was unethical as the value to “make your own tear sheets” for credit purposes. I’ve seen many photographer websites where it’s a list of 10, 15, 30+ tearsheet credits from these worthless publications. And its not just a zero value to putting on a tear sheet, its completely pointless. Here’s the only tiny point it has, its form of a photo sharing with other colleagues in the profession, such as for photography/model mag cloud magazines, it’s a form of a way to show off with other colleagues. No different than other resources such as flickr, 500px, forums, facebook, etc… Here’s the big difference…. The person who “created” the magazine can make money from the magazine. And here’s the KICKER… they generally won’t give a penny to those who contributed! Won’t offer royalty, won’t pay licensing fees, won’t even pay for a printed copy of the magazine which are generally priced $15-$20 each!
These so called “publications” have ZERO value to anyone. If you contribute to it you value yourself so low that you are telling the entire planet your work is completely worthless. A tearsheet is where serious and REAL credits reside and shown, not ones you made up yourself or was featured on some magazine that can’t afford to send you a printed copy at least!
What’s more disgusting is some of Mag Cloud magazines that are ran by photographers, use these so called “publications” as a form of payment… since they think their magazines have monetary value of some kind to some people and some people think it has value that its good enough as actual cash so they’ll model just to get featured into their magazine and charge other photographers whom don’t have these fake magazines.
Here’s when its okay to use Mag Cloud… anything but trying to run a publication. If you want to run a publication do it right… charge for advertising, if not advertising, then give at least some royalties to the contributors as minimal compensation and showing that their work has a value at all especially when its featured in your publication.