A Picture = 1,000 Words?

Um, Not Really

My dear friends,

As you know, this is the time of year when we create resolutions. Next week is when we start neglecting them.

Here’s one that I’m afraid can’t be ignored.

I love doing this Substack project: the writing, the editing, the photo acquisition. Being retired, I’ve come to value the process of putting each new post together. And yes, there is a little ego involved in reminding myself, and a few curious visitors, that I have assembled a decent catalog of work over these past 50 years or so.

There is one goal I’ve chosen not to chase: money. As I noted way back in my introductory essay, access to Van Cliburn Punched Me in the Mouth will always be free. I vowed never to charge for access. Yet this has become a problem, specifically with respect to gathering photos for each story.

My assumption before beginning this adventure was that I would be able to pepper each page with publicity photos of the artists being featured. Throughout my career publicists have favored me with torrents of images, usually head shots but sometimes more creative presentations, for free. Thus, I assumed, these photos would remain available to me in some PR or label warehouse for gratis use.

A publicist friend here in Nashville disabused me of this notion. As you probably know, PR shots are free only for a given period of time, usually centered around the release of a new album, the launch of a new tour or the endorsement of some product. Once that period elapses, full rights revert back to the photographer, who from that point will charge for their use.

So I began exploring other sources. Many of them were already familiar to me: Getty, iStock, etc. But their rates being way beyond my means, I had to find more budget-friendly providers who also offered images that were relevant to my project. Eventually this boiled down to two, Alamy.com being by far the better, with occasional gems from Shutterstock.com as well. (The lead photo in my recent Brenda Lee post comes from Shutterstock.)

But after a couple of years’ worth of purchasing rights to run pics from both services, I’m finding that even by buying reduced-price bulk packages I’ve burned through more than a thousand dollars since launching with my David Crosby. At first this seemed manageable, but that was before having to spend upwards of $200 per load of groceries, making steep car payments after my Chevy Spark was totaled, paying for new prescriptions of which Medicare is skeptical, veterinary bills … you know, life.

So I have three choices. The first, which would be to post only text with no illustration, is unsatisfactory. Or I could start accepting subscriptions, which puts me into transactional relationships I likely could not handle. And the last is to ask for donations, via PayPal, which would enable me to continue sharing my archive and occasional bits of wisdom here.

First, though, I have to see whether this is feasible. Is this something you could agree to (perhaps once every year or 18 months)? Please let me know in the Comments section. Then we’ll see where we go — or not — after that.

Many thanks!

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