Shmee150 causes shitstorm in photography community

Shmee150 have crossed a line they shouldn't have crossed according to the photography community, asking for pictures and offering exposure as payment. A shitstorm has arrived.

Shmee150 has been under fire since this Friday after a screenshot of an email appeared in a Facebook group that houses a community of pro and semi pro photographers. This email, shown in the image below, boils down to a part of the Shmee150 company asking a professional photographer for permission to use his work in exchange for exposure. Exposure in the form of a book that will be sold, hence making money for the company and leaving the photographers without a single penny.

Shmee150 vs creatives

Before we dive deeper into the shitstorm it's necessary to run trough a quick background story of both sides.

Shmee150 is a media company based around a Youtuber called Tim Burton. This is a company that seems to be doing well for itself if you look at their assets like a Ferrari FF, a Mclaren 675 LT coupe and Cayman GT4. Cars that have a summed up value of around 1 million euros. I'd be a bad journalists if I saw this as the fact that the company is financially healthy however.

On the other side we have the creative community. A community that mostly works on freelance bases and is working with gear with a sum of 5 to 20 thousand euros. These are all individuals trying to make a living of what they do and that effort is often abused by companies to cut costs. Proof of this ongoing struggle easily surfaces when you hit big internet, demonstrated by this illustration below.

Facebook rage

Since Friday the gap between these two has become painfully visible again. That visible that Tim himself tried to repair the damage done by posting something personally in the group. This post however made the gap even bigger. He claimed that the team approaching people were new to the game in an effort to cover up the mess by appealing to their ignorance. Additionally his post didn't rectify anything other than further confirming that they wanted free pictures. The community broke it all down in the comments, with no reponse from Tim to this point.

A cruel twist to becoming an internet celebrity/company, or a noteworthy risk of such an enterprise? Either way Shmee150 has gotten itself into a big mess by getting the community against him. Such a big mess that continuing with this book could make a whole lot of people turn against them.

Images and their rights used in the post do not belong to CJ.