This post has been sad reading for me. First of all, I fully agree the photographers must and should get their names visible next to the images, instead of some agency/collection name only; that is the legal and moral right. If and when that is not done, it is either question of some technical problem in showing metadata or getting the metadata through API, or someone somewhere just is not fully familiar with importance of showing the photographer's name instead of agency/collection name. What ever the reason is, it still is pure mistake and surely many people have learned something from this case.

I personally think it is very dangerous to immediately start saying the agencies mentioned in this post, have stolen the images.  We are talking about professional legal companies here, and it never is good to accuse anyone without really knowing what is going on. And I really do not  believe any of these agencies would steal images. Seeing big collection like this should already tell us there is some proper source for them. Having personal discussion is always a good way to get familiar with people so if problems like this appear, make the call, discuss, find out what is going on.

Both news photo agencies and stock photo agencies, have used sub-agencies and re-sellers all around the world at least during the past 25 years, so much before microstock was started. Different kind of collection names above the agency name have also always been used, so Colossus is no weirdo in that sense. Even today with digital photography and online shopping that is the only way to cover the whole world and maximize the sales. When we choose to work with someone, we must do it with trust. So if I upload my images to some agency, I must trust I get the payments for my sold images; and I must have the same trust if this agency chooses to sell my images through some re-seller/sub-agent, too. If I do not have this trust, I can not sell my images through this agency. But I must have some proper proven reason not to trust before making decisions.

If these re-sellers/sub-agents are used, it always works so that the re-seller/sub-agent reports and pays all the sales to their source; not to individual photographer. Why, because the so called representation contract is with the agency supplying their collections containing images from various photographers. None of the "traditional" photo agencies who have representatives all around the work ask for photographer's approval to sell the images through the re-sellers/sub-agents but it is automatic system: if you put your images for sale in any news or stock image agency, your images are sold not only on their website but also on multiple other agencies' worldwide.  You still get your payments from the agency to whom you uploaded your images, in your sales report you might see country names but you do not see the re-sellers' names there.

So why would we not want to spread our images through these rep channels worldwide to wide audience? Why would we not want to use the ways that have been found successfull ways of selling images? Yes, there are more players taking their share from the sales prices, but it comes back in form of more images sold. But it does not happen in days or weeks but it takes time to launch new collections, to charm the users. And it also means good collection size; if one has only few images, even only few hundreds of images, getting good sales is not possible. I fully understand we all are a bit frustrated with the prices going down all the time and sales going down, but rather than being just angry all the time we should discuss in peace about possibilities and choises; world is changing in microstock too.

Regarding the photographer's name being visible, or the fact it is perhaps not being found important so I personally, I am sorry to say this, feel we can accuse ourselves a bit about that, too: we use nicknames instead of our proper names. That de-valuates our work: when I am selling the images, too, I always ask the editorial users to publish the photographer's name but I understand they find it difficult when they should print there image was taken by some strange nickname only, which sometimes even is in japanese alphabets only, instead of being able to show proper "firstname surname". It also makes my work difficult: I would love to highlight photographers and their work in my blog and marketing by showing the name and some photographer profile with sample images. But I can not find any information about the photographer as when trying to Google the contact information so that I could ask the photographer to tell me a bit about the work, values etc I can not find anything else than urls to some images in some agency. I also believe use of nicknames makes it possible to make keyword spamming as it is so easy to hide behind the nickname.

I love photography and I love image business. I would love to be proud of microstock business, too - but somehow I feel we should start giving more value to our own work, we the photographers, we can not accept other people respect our work if we do not do it ourselves, properly, not only by being angry.

If we shoot microstock, let's do it with pride and show our names. Let's demand all photographers, professional or amateur, to keyword the images better and stop doing keyword spamming (which really devaluates our work and makes users to go away), let's demand the agencies do not lower the prices anymore, let's demand the agencies do not accept low quality imagery. Let's stop offering totally free images which again devaluate our work.