I haven’t been shooting for a very long time, like some of the greats. It’s been about a little over 4 and a half years. In that time I’ve had many, MANY people ask me if they can have my photographs for free. For use on their own site, for use with an ‘article’ they’re writer and so forth. The list goes on and on and on…

Thing is that photographers take time and spend energy and money working on projects and stories that they feel are relevant to society. Its the same as when I go to the dentist. I pay for the work that Dr. Lum puts into cleaning and inspecting my teeth.

I am a proud member of SportsShooter, and yesterday I came across a message board thread started by Scott Serio, a photographer based out of Maryland.

An intern at Deadspin, a popular Gawker Media online publication, was calling out a photographer who runs a site call Dressage-News for not wanting to give him content for free. Content that Mr. Ken Braddick, owner and operator of Dressage-News spent time and effort on to create. The intern, Mr. Tom Ley, calls Mr. Braddick an asshole for refusing to give him free content. You can see the article here where Mr. Ley calls out Mr. Braddick spurring Deadspin’s fantrolls to go ahead and send Mr. Braddick some hate mail.

Now Mr. Braddick is a pretty classy guy and responds to Deadspin in a message here.

The lesson we can probably take away from this is that it pays to be extremely tactful in situations like this. It all goes back to the golden rule right?

That being said, I’m going to have to take Mr. Braddick’s side on this one and say:

Are you serious Deadspin intern dude? Dude told you no, and you start a fucking flame war about it. This is an upside-down world. You’re a dammed intern. Where do you get off acting all high and mighty? I refuse to believe an editor let this through…if so, that guy needs to have his job performance re-assed.

I hope he learns a lesson in life…and soon…that it pays to be nice no matter what someone else says and/or does. An eye for an eye never works.

I wonder is Mr. Braddick is an NPPA member. It would be nice for the advocacy committee to take a stand on this.

What I don’t get is why Deadspin didn’t want to pay for use of the image…I mean…Deadspin has a $300 Million Value and makes $60 Million In Ads per year (As Per www.247wallst.com)