Releasing your work for free online is a controversial business model that can potentially lead to financial gain. Charlotte spoke to Jonathan Worth about his experiments with ‘free’.

One of the best things about social media is that opportunities can arise when you least expect them. You can be sitting at your desk, happily going about your business, when all of a sudden a new contact drops into your lap – and this is precisely what happened to me this month. In a break to my scheduled article on LinkedIn, the business-network for professionals, I spoke to the lecturer and photographer Jonathan Worth, who recently hit the online headlines for his interesting experiment to see if the disseminating effect of putting work online for free can be used for “good”.

Earlier this year Jonathan took a series of portraits of the writer and online activist Cory Doctorow where Cory was holding a Creative Commons license, permitting free reuse and remixing of the image as per that particular license. During this time, Cory explained to Jonathan that selling physical copies of products already available online for free (Cory gives away ebook versions of his written work) has made him money, which convinced the photographer to investigate this style of business to see what relevance it had for photographers. Together they developed a trial of several different business models – including selling limited edition signed sets which featured a print of the photo and pages from the manuscripts of Cory’s new book. These sets were on sale at different price points, ranging from $8 to £240, yet all the while the same images were available to download in hi-res via Flickr or Archive.org (for the finer details of the experiment, visit Jonathan’s blog at http://bit.ly/jonathanworth). Despite what you might think of Creative Commons and the idea of giving your work away, Cory’s “celebrity” and hundreds-of thousands-strong band of followers helped to make the experiment a success – the sets of prints sold out, the increased exposure has led to more work for Jonathan and the photographer was recently invited to be a fellow of the Royal Society of Art, “in recognition of (his) innovation and influential role in developing new business models for Photographers using the social web”. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

CG: How long have you been experimenting with social media?

JW: Understanding what that means is really important - if you mean 'how long have I been using Facebook and Twitter?' then it’s a couple of years and a few months respectively - but if you mean how long have I been sharing resources with a select community of friends and colleagues then - always. The mechanics of doing this has changed but in principle we've always shared and sought like-minds, and I think it's important to communicate this to people baffled or equally bored by the prospect of micro-blogging.

How does/has disseminating the picture online for free increase its perceived value?

I think maybe it's better to turn it around and ask a similar question. Say for instance, if Leonardo DaVinci's ‘Mona Lisa’ had gone under his bed and no one had ever seen it, along with everything else he painted/shot, what would be the perceived value of that image today?

The answer has to be nothing, because no one would have heard of it or him, and in fact it probably wouldn't have survived. If it had though, then once discovered, the news of the image’s quality and its historical importance would spread, and as more people demanded to see it so the value of that experience would increase likewise. We'd find ourselves in the situation today where the picture is probably one of the most copied in the world and very few people get to see the original. Because everyone knows about it, the perceived value of the picture is priceless.

Now I understand that we're not comparing like with like as the painting itself remains unique but this was the point of the trial. The images were, and still are, available to download in high-res from both flickr and archive.org, and yet people still wanted to own a signed ltd edition version, and they were willing to pay for it. Incidentally the most expensive [prints] were the first to go - I understand now that economists call this "price discovery" - I should have set the high-end price a lot higher.

Were you able to track how the buyers found out about the images/manuscripts?

One of the things that I learned is that the community of followers that one has are a powerful force and that's super-relevant for photographers. Cory has 30,000 twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of blog followers.

Had you worked with Creative Commons licensing before? What do you think of it, as a photographer?

I think CC is brilliant. I've never understood lawyer speak and resented being financially beholden to their dark art. CC enables me to take control of my licensing in an informed and easily communicable manner.

Will you use it again?

Yes – absolutely - I've registered my whole site. I haven't used the same flavour of license that Cory and I did [in the portrait] as that was too free at this point for where I'm at, but hopefully soon.

I think some photographers see CC licensing and think they're giving their images away for nothing. That's rubbish. The flavour/version that I'm using is very similar to the traditional copyright that I always assumed I had in place anyway; BY (you must attribute the work to me when you reproduce it) NC (you can't charge people to access it) and ND (you can't make derivative works). So this way, when people use my images on their blog, fan site or screensaver I just ask that they make it attributed to me (which usually means a link) and I get the best of all worlds. They get my pictures to people that otherwise wouldn't see them and I get advertised.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Has your experiment been a success, in your opinion?

I just got back from a week in NY where I met with Fred Ritchin (After Photography) and spoke to his class at NYU. I also met with Stephen Mayes (Vii) , Aiden Sullivan (Getty) , Steve Pyke and David Campbell amongst a bunch more. I got instant access at every magazine that I tried to see. I've been made a Fellow of the RSA (which alone provides collegiate access to thousands of inspirational people), I'm working with Jon Levy at FOTO8 on new strategies for Photojournalists and we’re collaborating on an exhibition and event for next year, and hundreds of thousands of people have heard about me and seen my pictures in a particular context that I decided upon. That has never happened before and for once I feel in some control of that. So yes, in my opinion this represents a successful two months’ work.

Would you advise other photographers to try this approach for themselves?

No I’d advise them to move the trial forward with particular (and creative) relevance to their mode of working and their practice. Then I’d ask them to share what they do with the broader community at newphotographics.org.

More information
http://www.jonathanworth.com
twitter.com/jdubbyah

The picture of Cory Doctorow on Flickr