No One Would Buy My Photos, So Here They Are For Free

[waday]

No One Would Buy My Photos, So Here They Are For Free

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/05/no-one-buy-photos-free-mosul-2017/

 

[tirediron]

Interesting; I wouldn't have thought as an independent you could still get an position as an embedded PJ; that said, no hard to see why his work didn't sell.

 

[vintagesnaps]

While I'm trying to appreciate his intentions, it seems like it wasn't the best idea to try this without a freelance assignment with a media outlet. Being there on your own and not having any support from who you're shooting for doesn't seem like the best thing.

There are a couple of cool photos but many have issues with framing, exposure, etc. so I guess if media outlets already had good photographers there he's not going to find a market for these.

 

[waday]

he's not going to find a market for these.

It seems that many news outlets don't tend to care what happens in this area of the world unless it happens to a Christian.

 

[benhasajeep]

I can imagine that was one seriously tough assignment. But going by the pictures. If those were the best shots he got. I can also see why they were not picked up from an outlet. Also that is old news. Everybody is on Trump, Brexit, North Korea, US/Russia, etc.

New wars sell. Old wars don't.

 

[bribrius]

I like 15 of them three are def keepers one pretty damn good imo the other 12 usable and still decent with minor edit. One of them coulda made it to the cover of time magazine if it was a main interest at the moment. So i disagree with most of the above.

 

[Gary A.]

With the proliferication of photoshopped war images, I would think, a walk-on freelancer has a uphill battle in selling his/her images. I only saw one image that was above and beyond and possibly deserved to be published ... the one with the thumbs up indicating a women's son would survive his wound(s). Not having the ID of the woman or her son minimizes the value of the image.

There is little difference between a reporter and a photojournalist. Generally, caption information of who/where/what/when/why are required for every image published. I suspect, as the photog doesn't have formal journalistic training nor serious journalistic resume (as best as I can ascertain), he lacked the backup expected by the news organizations, which would have render his images journalistically viable. I am also assuming that news organizations had sufficient 'art' coming in from trusted and in-house sources that they didn't have to take a chance on someone they didn't know, someone without news credientials/resume, someone without journalistic education and seemingly without sufficient caption/backup information ... that they (news organizations) didn't need to buy his stuff.

Maybe, the reason is simply economics, Kainoa Little priced his mediocre stuff higher than the marketplace would bare.

 

[rosh4u]

Conceptually pictures seem interesting. One of the very nice shots is taken. Appreciate!

 

[AlanKlein]

I enjoyed looking at them and appreciate his effort and bravery. Some of them were pretty dramatic. I'm sorry he wasn't able to sell them. I also think some of the ideas expressed in the posts on having connections with news outlets first and working with others to help assemble his photos with captions in a documentary offering might have worked better for him.

PS: Go to his web page for lots of other photos and you sill see his work is actually very good.
Link: Iraqi Armed Forces