Getty Images could buy your Flickr photos

carrie
Flickr’d. I’d pay money for a poster-sized version of this photo of Carrie.

Getty Images may soon buy your Flickr photos. The professional photo database has teamed up with Yahoo!, which owns Flickr, to look for great photos that it can turn around and sell to its clients. Of course, as photographer, you’d get a cut of the action if and when Getty buys your photo off Flickr.

Some of the comments on the Bits blog are all, “Waa, this will kill professional photographers/what incentive do they have now blah blah…” A Getty rep was quick to say that today’s advertisers are looking for authenticity as much as anything else, and Flickr is loaded with “authentic,” and “folksy” images.

Very cool, I think, and all the more reason to use Flickr.