From Russia With Love

August 8th, 2018
Gwyn Headley

by Gwyn Headley

Managing Director

We were excited when Russia Today showed interest in a fotoLibra contributor’s images.
But they contacted him direct (how DID they find his address?) so he put them on to us, and this is how the exchange went:

Hello Sima
D— T— has asked me to contact you regarding your enquiry about using some of his Soviet Era Russian images.
fotoLibra handles the licensing, invoicing and image file supply for our contributors, so if you tell me the image rights you require and for how long, we’ll be able to confirm a price.
Regards
Yvonne Seeley

Dear Yvonne, thank you for getting in touch with us.
We’ve been interested in using a few images of Soviet Moscow in photo gallery on the RBTH.com platform with description.
Unfortunately the budget isn’t planned for publishing material RBTH, so I was wondering if there any option we could publish few photos of D— T— with his and fotoLibra.com courtesy fee free?
Thank you for your time!
Kindest regards,
Sima

Hi D—
I’ve just looked up Russia Today and it benefits from annual government funding in 2016 of $307million. That they claim to have no budget is clearly nonsense.
I’ll reply accordingly.
Best
Yvonne

Hello Sima
Thank you for your reply.
No, we will not supply Russia Today with free images.
I imagine you get paid for carrying out your job as do your journalists and website developers. Photographers need to be paid for their work too.
If you find a budget, do come back to us.
Regards
Yvonne

She is so polite! I would have started mentioning Novichok and other such gifts from the Russian people. But this is the way the world is going, not just Russia. You do all the work, they don’t expect to pay. Remind Yvonne to tell you about Sir Peter “I don’t pay anybody for anything” Hall one day.

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