Eight months after the deal was first announced, Getty Images has gone live with a new collection of images taken from Flickr, the wildly popular image sharing website.

The partnership was struck last July, allowing Getty to license selected images from Flickr (with the photographers' permission). In return, Flickr agreed to make images available for licensing only through Getty.

Over the past eight months, Getty's editors have been browsing through more than three billion images from Flickr's 47 million members in order to make their selection. 'Our editors have chosen 147,000 Flickr images to date for the collection,' says Andy Saunders, vice-president of Creative Imagery at Getty. 'We have more than 10,000 images actually accepted. Several thousand are available now, and within the next two weeks, all of them will be available.'

Once the images were selected, photographers received an invitation, via Flickr, to participate in the collection. In order to have the selected images included, photographers were asked to ensure that they had model releases as well as high-resolution versions of the images. They were also asked to sign a contract giving Getty exclusive licensing rights for the selected pictures for two years.

Flickr members were then asked to transfer the images to the Getty website. 'We can grant access to the largest size already uploaded to Flickr or we can upload a separate file,' says Flickr member Stephanie Fysh. 'There's also a very user-friendly interface constructed for Getty, which some earlier selected Flickr users beta-tested.'

While the Flickr Collection now includes more than 4000 images (with a further 6000 to be uploaded in the next couple of months), not all selected Flickr photograph made the cut, especially since photographers have had no input on which photos should be included. 'They chose about 10 of my photos. Unfortunately, the majority were taken with my iPhone, and the rest were street portraits,' Flickr member Jessyel Ty Gonzales says. 'Although I didn't agree with the shot selection - I felt I had much better work for them - it was frustrating that they chose shots from my mobile phone camera that are so low in resolution that they were automatically disqualified. Also, I rarely get any model releases from people I photograph on the street, so those photos were also ruled out. In the end, I had one shot that was eligible out of the 10.'

Opting out

Others chose not to take part in the new business. 'Most of the people on the photos they picked from my photostream are also Flickr people and good friends of mine, and I wouldn't feel good about asking them to sign a model release for me just so I can make some money,' says Mathias Meyer. 'I'd rather sell my images myself than have them appear in random places without credit. It's cool they're doing this with Flickr, and I have no gripes with either of them. It doesn't make Flickr itself any less fun for me. I'm sure a lot of people are happy to put up their photos on Getty, it's just not what I have in mind, photography for me is about having fun and having a good time, not about making money.'

For the Flickr members that made it to the final stages and whose pictures were added to the collection, the financial rewards still do not equal that of other Getty contributors. According to Saunders, Flickr contributors will receive 30% of all sales for rights-managed imagery and 20% for royalty-free sales. A Getty photographer usually receives 35% for rights-managed images. While it is 'not as high as some of the more "photographer-friendly" stock agencies out there,' says Fysh, 'after seeing the model-release/submission process, I suspect that as a photo buyer I would lean toward Getty collections for images taken on private property or including people - knowing the paperwork actually has been verified is comforting. I like to think that I might get more in the long run out of the Getty association than I have out of my other stock-agency associations. And some of the photos they selected I would never have thought to submit to an agency, which is the point, really.'

State of independence

However, in interviews with a dozen selected Flickr members, it appears that the majority share one common view: they do not feel they are now part of the Getty operation. 'This definitely feels like being part of a specific Flickr collection, and not of Getty,' Fysh explains. 'We don't have the ability to submit other images for consideration by Getty.' Gonzales agrees. 'I am not a part of the Getty agency. I just happen to have some photos with them that will be a part of the Getty collection. I would feel more at home if I was allowed to show them further work for approval or given an assignment.'

Getty has responded to this criticism by announcing that 'in the next few months we intend to add a new feature that will allow (Flickr users) to tag images that (they) are interested in licensing'.