The Portfolios

Yoyo is taking her artistic career to new heights. Last week we received a random email through our Flickr account:

Hi Rindy and Xianyi,

My name is Maryrose Mondiello. I work in the Rights
Clearance department at Corbis. www.corbis.com

I’m working on bahalf of a client – an advertising agency -
who is interested in using one of your images in an online
advertisement.

Skeptical, I clicked through to the website to find a very professional stock photography company. So I wrote back. Seems the ad agency they are working for, AKQA, wants to use a picture that Yoyo took us some of us playing football. They are creating web banners for VISA credit cards that will run on CBS Sportsline for about 2 weeks in the run-up to the opening of the NFL season. And they want to pay us for it. But best of all, they are not buying the photo outright, but only “renting” it, meaning we get to keep the rights and if they want to use it again in the future they’ll have to pay us again. The money is probably a tenth of what they might pay a real pro, but it’s enough to cover our internet hosting fees till the end of the decade, and that’s fine by us. Though we’ll probably just blow the cash on shoes or something…

Here’s the photo that they chose. It shows me and some friends huddling up during one of the pickup football games I organized last spring. It’s not going to win any Pulitzers, but Yoyo really set up the shot beautifully. The composition is just great, with us standing to the right, and the football laying peacefully to the left. I think it’s a wonderful picture.

Here is the example that the ad agency sent us for how they plan to use the shot. They only show the ball and our huddled feet. Click the images to see them larger.