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Would appreciate peoples opinions on this.
For a long time many professional photographers have worried about the availability of free images for download. The problem being that this undervalues their profession and is generally damaging to the photography business. I've generally agreed with this and as I have clients who are photographers any damage to their business would have a knock on consequence for my own.
Without thinking too much about it I made just a few images available for free on my website. To put it into context the images are retouching samples, so nothing that would be of much value on it's own. It does of course give people an incentive to go to my website and one photographer client I picked up last year had heard of me because of this.
I've just been advised by someone on a professional photographer's group that this is discouraged by them.
I realise there's nothing illegal, and also that the amount of images I'm talking about is way too small to be a problem on it's own.
Am I doing anything ethically wrong and being a small part of a much bigger problem?
For a long time many professional photographers have worried about the availability of free images for download. The problem being that this undervalues their profession and is generally damaging to the photography business. I've generally agreed with this and as I have clients who are photographers any damage to their business would have a knock on consequence for my own.
Without thinking too much about it I made just a few images available for free on my website. To put it into context the images are retouching samples, so nothing that would be of much value on it's own. It does of course give people an incentive to go to my website and one photographer client I picked up last year had heard of me because of this.
I've just been advised by someone on a professional photographer's group that this is discouraged by them.
I realise there's nothing illegal, and also that the amount of images I'm talking about is way too small to be a problem on it's own.
Am I doing anything ethically wrong and being a small part of a much bigger problem?