We pay cash: the photos that sold this week
Seven photos, $4,100, one very good week for a freelancer from Queens. The photo desk opens its ledger, as it does every Saturday, and explains what it pays for and why.
The Daily Bugle pays cash for photographs. The sign on the door says so, the publisher says so, and every Saturday the photo desk opens its ledger and says so in print. Here is what we bought this week, what we paid, and why.
Seven photographs were purchased between Monday and Friday, for a total of $4,100. Six of them show the same person, from a distance, doing something the publisher considers incriminating. The seventh shows a duck.
Monday: the Chrysler Building, $900
A figure on the spire at 6:10 a.m., shot from a rooftop on Lexington Avenue with a long lens. The figure is small. The spire is sharp. The publisher looked at it for four seconds and said "front page." It ran on the front page.
Tuesday: the 7 train, $600
The same figure, on the roof of a moving 7 train over Sunnyside, shot from a car on the Long Island Expressway by a passenger who "wasn't driving, I promise." The photo is blurry. The publisher said "blurry is honest." It ran on page 3.
“Blurry is honest.”
The publisher, on a blurry photograph
Wednesday: the fire escape, $500
The figure, sitting on a fire escape on West 46th Street, apparently reading a newspaper. The newspaper is this one. The publisher was pleased and displeased in equal measure and ran it on page 5 with a headline we will not repeat.
Thursday: the gala, $700
The figure, on the museum roofline, while a model and three photographers fell down the steps below. The photographer was one of the three. He sold the photo from the ground. The Bugle respects this.
Friday: the bank, $800
A skylight on Sixth Avenue, shot from the roof next door, with a red-gloved hand visible at the edge of the frame. The publisher said "that's a hand" and then "that's his hand" and then "front page." It ran on the front page, cropped.
Friday: the duck, $100
A duck, in Central Park, on a pond the city spent $1.2 million restoring. It is a good duck. The publisher asked why we were paying for a duck. The photo editor said "because it's a good duck." It ran on page 22.
Who sold them
Six of the seven were sold by a freelancer from Queens who has been selling to this paper for some time, who declines to be interviewed, and who, the photo editor notes, "always seems to be in the right place." The duck was sold by a retired teacher from the Upper West Side who wanted it known that she "did not use a long lens, I was just standing there."
The ledger is open every Saturday. The tip line is open every day. If we print it, we pay for it.