Information wants to be free, and the only thing holding it back are profits.

But what I really want to know is, how close to one million are you, and how are you tracking that?

Well, I’ve got a long way to go. I’ve got a little over 18,000 photos published to Zooomr and a little over 11,000 photos published to Flickr. I’ve probably got about 30,000 finished photos total — so a fair chuck still to be uploaded to both sites.

But my best days in photography are still ahead of me. It’s hard for me to really get my output where it needs to be because I’ve got a day job and a family including four kids to raise right now. So at present my pace is slower than it should be and probably will be for the next 15 years or so.

But a few things will happen after the next 15 years.

1. I’ll be able to retire and focus 100% of my time on photography.

2. My kids will be grown and off to college giving me more time for my art.

3. Advances in technology will allow me to work faster and faster in terms of processing my work.

Assuming I can live until age 90 (I’m in good health and I think medical advances in the future will push out life expectancies), I’d have to publish on average about 53 photos a day to get to one million. I’m averaging about half of that today, about 25 photos a day. But I think given the factors above I’ll probably be able to do it.

I also plan on walking across America as one of the first things I do after retiring and shooting every day. I think that an experience like this where you immersed yourself in a year long photowalk or so could produce an amazing amount of photographs.

But all of this is a goal and whether I make it or not remains to be determined.

http://cutcaster.blogspot.com/2008/03/sites-to-help-you-copyright-your-images.html

In addition, John Harrington wrote a great blog post about copyrighting your work and the steps to do it. i think it is a great read for you.

http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/2007/09/walk-through-copyright-office.html

But what I really want to know is, how close to one million are you, and how are you tracking that?

Image theft becomes a serious problem only to those who make a living by them, i.e. professional photographers. They depend on the money generated by their images.

Think about your own profession, whichever it is. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind using your skills on this profession to help a friend, for free. But you sure wouldn’t like if your boss came out one day and said “Y’know…I just don’t feel like paying you for your work today”.

Jeff, my work is not in the public domain. Rather it’s licensed Creative Commons non-commercial. This gives me enough protection if I change my mind in the future.

I’m curious if your idea of letting the bird fly encourages such locations…?

I’d be fine with this personally. You might not be on the other hand.

I’m curious if your idea of letting the bird fly encourages such locations…?

_Am

I too respect your decision to share your work with the world. I think it is very generous of you to do so and I very much enjoy looking at your images. I was wondering though if you had thought of the implications this generosity might have at a later date. I know you have many grand plans for your work in the future as you have spoken of them many times. There may be many other opportunities for you to both share as well as monetize your body of work at a later date that you have not even thought of yet. Having all or most of your work in the public domain could conceivably hinder or even prevent you from being able to execute some of your future projects or greatly limit your ability to monetize your work. It is certainly feasible that with the body of work you are creating, there will be opportunities for you to make your living later in life from your present creativity and efforts. Having your work in the public domain could for instance lower the value of your work if you were to try to sell fine art prints, or your images as stock photography, as you would no longer have control over who, how, when, and where your images would be used.

Jeff

Why? It doesn’t matter. That’s their choice.