MicrostockGroup

Hi All,

 Just had a chance to see what the new collection is made of. Say goodbye to Macro RF. Getty is pulling images from every collection they have in RF Macro to fill this site. It will have great images all Macro RF and the work that Istock photographers get to put on Getty will go there as well.
 Not necessarily a good thing for Macro but we all new it had to change. Getty is now clumping it's Macro RF into a new subscription site that will be very popular to directly compete with SS and the Micro markets in general. Tons of professionally shot stock from Digital Vision to Brand X and everything in between. Hang on it's gonna get a bit crazy again.
 Problem is the next step for Micro shooters working through Getty is they will only have this option unless they can produce quality to meet their RM collections or they are willing to pay for Photographers Choice uploads. Really take a hard look at this. Maybe it will revive Macro RF a bit but at what cost to Micro RF. Subscription Macro RF, that is kinda scary at first thought but we will have to see what will come of it.

Best,
Jonathan

This is fine on IS and thinkstock



but this one is refused on IS for copyright, because they can recognize the Mfg.?



They don't even pretend that they made any attempt to clean the catalog and remove copyrighted images. Notice CV designation and search results.

857 search results for Ford (Car Manufacturers' Brand Names)


This is going to be interesting.

Yes, I recognize the opportunity to have more sales at a sub site, which should be helpful. But what about the double standard? I thought these were hand picked and reviewed?

These "former macro images" are mostly the bottom of the barrel.  They are not "high quality".  The reason they are being sold as subs is just to clear out old underselling inventory.  Not much to feel threatened by there... 

Another thing I just noticed is it includes Photodisc images but not Flickr.

Is Getty Flickr stuff now considered premium?

Don't really see any quality RF macro images on there...just their wholly owned stuff and it all looks very micro to me

First of all. Elephants, goldfish or even London is close to niche. These are not the images you make big money from in micro business or anywhere. This is why the uploaded macro collections do not have thousands them. Make a search for 'business', 'people', 'family'! Some istock images can find their way to the top of the searches but they are the minority. Just look at the pictures you see on the first 5 pages and ask yourself are my similar images better then these? Yes, these are not the bests of Getty but very decent images. They are still much better than 99% of micro images. Only a very few of microstock contributors can compete with them. If you feel you are one of them then ok, you are lucky.

Oh, and one more thing. Yes, these macro images look a bit microstockish... because these are the images the micro shooters are trying to copy. 

I opted out of third party and promotional use, as well as the partner programs at IS, and yet I just found one of my images being sold on thinkstockphotos.com.

Off to email support.

edit: done. I went to the page where my image is on thinkstock. Tried to copy and paste the url so IS would know where to find it...it wouldn't work. I also noticed a note on the support ticket page:
* Please note * Due to an extremely high volume of tickets at this time, there may be up to a 5 day wait for ticket responses. If you require immediate assistance, please call us:

I would imagine they are going to be busy. Think I'll call them.

Looks awful. I don't see anything positive for contributors coming from this.

Isn't All business about the customer?

Don't be so sure.  Lots of noise about going Istock exclusive in response to the latest from Fotolia...

I have given up revenue by opting out of subs with StockXpert and opting out of the istock partner program.  It looks like a lot of us have had enough of them reducing subs commissions to $0.25.  I am also going to spend more time doing RM, footage and using other ways to sell my photos this year.  It wont make a difference to the sites but I will feel better not having to rely on them so much.

There's always "noise", but rarely ever much action.  Nobody wants to be the "first" to stand up to the agencies because they're afraid nobody else will follow.

One major problem is the sheer volume of contributors... So many of whom are not doing or attempting to do MicroStock for a living...  They are 'tickled pink' to get that extra $20 a month and they just keep on uploading not caring what the agencies do.  Sadly, THEY are the contributors who are in control and the agencies use them as the stick to beat the pros into submission.

Hi Dook,

  Actually I wrote that incorrectly. Istock shooters as of now will still have the opportunity to upload to Getty collections. So far it seems that most of the Macro work that Istock exclusives have posted on Getty has been through Photodisc one of their poorest sellers. It's not impossible that eventually all of the images that Istock exclusives send up stream will fall into this category along with all their holly owned imagery. Getty will post their holly owned images at the top this will hurt Micro and Macro photographers. They did it to Macro RF before Micro was getting off the ground, they will do it again. Images at the very top of the search from their holly owned work doesn't have to be stronger, placement is a huge part of sales in stock. Besides when this collection gets going they just launched and you have not seen the amount of work they will be pushing over to this collection yet, just the tip of the iceberg so far.
 Another side is the images they have wholly owned in these collections are going to become more selective as they try to offer more of a Vetta look to their new collection, they own some great imagery that is not on the new site yet. I don't think there are massive buyers for these individual styles of imagery but they will be subscription so buyers might shop there instead of paying Vetta prices for great imagery.
 This is Getty the guys that own everything with the exception of one big agency. The only other agency that can give Getty a run for it's money is Corbis, pretty small market to try and grab a piece of. Like I said not everything is on the table and we will have to see where this goes. I am just not excited about it as an RF producer. I am focused on producing RM completely now in Macro, we made this change a while ago thinking something very much like this to happen between Macro and Micro RF, one big happy family. Just my opinion.
 One up side for Istock, they are owned by Getty it is the other Micro sites that are in trouble from this move more than ever.

Best,
Jonathan