MicrostockGroup

Oh man!  is this what its come to?  jeez,  no pride in it anymore. Sad.

To be honest, Im beginning to doubt most of these even have qualified personell to spot a professional shot anymore.

Wow, that is a HUGE image.

Not that I approve it, but I see it more and more often in tv ads as well: bad lighting, unprofessional cameras... just to look "natural"

so sad... good ads were the only thing I enjoyed watching on tv

I'm surprised the Glacier Bay image is ok for advertising without MRs. I know IS won't accept such images (I've had one where the people were even smaller within the frame, and it wasn't accepted).

I also like the last one (taken with a TS lens) the best.

Because it appears that the photographer actually set up lights for this shot, put a wig on a dog that is actually holding still for a moment and the look on the dog's face is hilarious - that's why.

Everything else is "just" like walking up to it and taking a picture.

Yep, I have dozens of snaps of giant frogs on swings.

This week's Hot Shots is enough to make me consider the whole Fickr Getty thing.

Somehow the comment that if IStock rejected it then Getty wouldn't think it's good enough over on Flickr just doesn't ring true.

#1 looks quite soft. I bet in the other images there is some focal point somewhere - hard to tell.

I really don't want to judge the images themselves. Good for the photographers to find a buyer who needs them.

It just shows that more could sell than what we get approved at most agencies.

And why even bother shooting "beautiful business woman on headset" if all it takes is snap-shot style pics to sell them for a much higher price?

I think this seriously undermines the entire stock image concept.

Fine, if there are buyers that need a business team shot with 5 pro-models and the whole shebang. But then the agencies should also realize that true-life shots should have their place as well.

It's ridiculous to see the approval standards at IS, SS and some other nit picking agencies as long as P&S images sell at X times the price at Getty.

I don't get it.

I do admit that English is not my mother tongue but I don't know how you could read that between my lines.

Just because in image is taken without much thought or planning doesn't automatically mean that it's a bad image or that it doesn't convey a message.

My point was that the Flickr images in question don't appear to be taken with a concept in mind. I might be totally wrong, that's possible I admit.

To me it appeared that the dog shot had some thought process to it. I don't have wigs laying around, nor do I have access to someone owning a dog that doesn't freak out when a wig is placed on its head. I think this was some sort of concept well thought out and executed.

Just take the frog on the swing. Whichever way I would try to take an image of such a scene, I would not have taken it with the frogs legs cut off. In fact it takes more than a blink of the eye to recognize what this thing in the foreground even is. It's not super obvious that a frog is hanging around on a swing... Now is this some genius pro-shooter who knew exactly at the time of shooting that Getty would look for such an image? Was it a lucky shot in the dark? Would I dare spending my time submitting images like that one?

That's what I would like to hear from you.

Merci for the compliment about my dogs mister FD
Imho the first 2 are a (bad) joke... there's something to say for the others though...(personally not a fan of the glacier one either, the flower meadow looks nice... but seen it before, many times. again, imho of course)
I agree VB it's all about what the image conveys and i've seen some super snapshots (who are super because of their spontanity and unexpected impact), but those first 2 are snapshots, point, no impact whatsoever for me.... if buyers really want to pay for that i think it might be time to go do something else; total waste of efforts.

I opened one thread about "hot shots" before. It was similar to this one.
The way of choosing these images for hot shots collection is a real mystery to me, because I think they needed to look just 2 minutes more to find tons of much better images. These images are obviously selected by just one person without any consultation with others. Maybe the person is important enough that no one has courage to tell him/her that images are bad. To me it looks like the person doesn't have any experience in photography, even tho he/she works in Getty....
I am not a pro, but I feel free to say that almost anyones portfolio contains better images than these.